Art Love
When we took our kids to Chicago, Joe wanted to go to the art museum. He had gone there in college, and again when he and I visited in the early days of our marriage. We really liked art museums, and he wanted to share this special one with our kids.
I disagreed. I thought the kids were too little to appreciate what we would see, and that they’d be bored and then hate art museums forever. If we wanted them to enjoy art, I argued, we should wait until they were older and could appreciate it more.
To my surprise, when we asked the kids for their opinion, they were united in their desire to see the museum. They were curious and interested in everything we saw, and eager to identify the paintings in the brochure. They made the museum so much fun, and their genuine excitement at finding the pieces of art they were looking for made all of us eager to help. I found out halfway through the museum that they had heard of many pieces of artwork from an episode of The Muppet Babies, but that only made me more proud of them.
When my kids went through the museum, they were looking for delight–the artwork they recognized and already associated with stories, and new pieces to love. They weren’t so concerned with technique or brush strokes. They were looking for love.
Ultimately, that’s what Bianca Bosker does in her new book, Get the Picture. Bosker seeks to answer the questions of what makes a thing art, and then what makes it good art. Her goal is to develop her eye, so that she can recognize beauty and artistic talent wherever she sees it. To train herself and help herself answer her questions, she worked for gallerists, became an artist’s assistant, attended art shows and fairs, had her face sat on for performance art, and became a guide at the Guggenheim.
Bosker is a great writer, and this book was structured to follow the course of her education and lead the reader through the complexities of looking at art. Along the way, it made me laugh, introduced me to interesting artists, and opened the doors of a world I had never seen from the inside. Reading this book made me eager to go back to an art museum, or just to spend a few minutes longer with something that feels like art to me, noticing and paying attention to it.
Her experiences reminded me what I like about art, and helped me answer the question of what makes good art, and what makes beauty, for myself. Whether you have always been an art lover or you are still hesitant even to form opinions about it, this book has some art love for you.