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Sunday, April 11, 2004 A Trip Last Friday, someone remarked that lately I had been "chained to the lab bench." It's not that I don't think that what I do shouldn't be hard work, but one must pause and consider if something isn't just a tad bit wrong if someone else says something. Or maybe I just like to be contrary. It's one thing to tell myself that I don't have a life. It's another if someone else says so. So I decided to go on a rather unplanned trip out of Hanover, just for Saturday. This probably doesn't prove that I have a life except maybe that I like to run away, abet temporarily, from perceived criticism. (As an aside, this does bring up the question of what it means to have a life. Must I lead an Indiana Jones-like existence for my life to have validation in other people's eyes? If I am not clever or heroic or interesting for the rest of my days, am I somehow less entitled to an existence than you or the billions of other people in this world?) While traveling, I've observed a curious thing. Whenever a group of people notices me in their vicinity, they talk louder. Whenever a couple sees me approaching, they suddenly get all amorous when a second before, they were merely two people holding hands. Is everyone an exhibitionist or is something else going on subconsciously? Perhaps I represent something they are afraid of--being a stranger, a loner without friends or lovers or family, an outcast. Perhaps by being an exhibitionist, they try to confirm to themselves that they are part of a social network and that I am not. In some ways, by being a lone traveler, people watching becomes a depressing and vicarious sport. Most of yesterday was spent at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. For a first time visitor, it's not so much confusing but overwhelming. I could have easily spent half a day in just one gallery so going back for a repeat visit would be an understatement. The museum's collection encompasses art from ancient to modern, from western to the far east. My favorite exhibition was the Japanese postcards. I'm a somewhat casual collector (just the cheap and the cute) and would never be so extensive or niche oriented. I spotted an odd message in one of the comment books scattered throughout the museum: "I am blind and I am disgusted by the fact that you have denied me the right of touching the objects." Below that, someone else wrote: "You sure write really well for a blind man." Someone was obviously trolling and being snarky, but I do wonder, what would be the point of a museum for a blind person? Sure, there are audio guides, but wouldn't it be easier to just stay at home and listen to an audio book about 19th century artists? But I am not so much irritated as amused by someone being a smartass on paper. At a high traffic museum, I don't mind too much the screaming children, the crowds, the crazy tourists with cameras, the slightly ominous museum attendants, or the people who just don't get it, but I do mind the pseudo-intellectualism that inevitably runs rampant inside museum walls. Maybe I'm just one of the stupid unwashed masses who looks like I need a harsh lecture on post-modernism, but I do have a brain, no matter how much of an uncouth cabbage head I might look to certain Prada wearing ladies. The thing is, I don't want to be lectured at or told what to believe. I know art, politics, and literature mainly consists of high-minded people attempting to convince other people of their ideas. But I don't care how you would like for me to interpret Jackson Pollock's black squiggles on canvas. I'd determine that for myself, even if I have to stare at the damn painting for the entire day. An unexpected thing happened, though. A middle-aged woman approached me in the museum bookstore (I wasn't quite sure why I was there except to buy a postcard of Renoir's Dance at Bougival which I had seen at one of the permanent galleries. What can I say? I'm a sucker for the romantic French impressionists.) and gave me a ticket to the Gauguin Tahiti exhibition. Originally, I had not planned to see it. The museum's permanent collections already was more than enough, but the Gauguin required the visitor to pay extra on top of general admission. So I profusely thanked this stranger who had decided to bestow a ticket to me. Why she picked me out of the hundreds of other people in the museum I don't know. Maybe I didn't look so much like a cabbage head or maybe it was because I was alone and didn't have someone tagging along and whining about how a museum is just a collection of old and boring stuff. The Gauguin Tahiti exhibition was crowded, stuffy, and hot. Maybe the museum deliberately didn't have any circulating air and packed in patrons like sardines into the gallery to create a hot, humid atmosphere to view Gauguin's tropical paintings. Or maybe the exhibition was just popular. It has only been previously shown in Paris and the present showing at the MFA is the only time it will be shown in the U.S. Many visitors were exclaiming, "Oh how beautiful!" or "I like his use of colors," but one woman, probably cranky from the crushing atmosphere remarked, "I'm sure I saw this at Paris, I just don't remember it." If she doesn't remember it, she either has a serious memory problem or is a very jaded museum traveler. Gauguin's style and subject matter is hard to dismiss as the usual. It's not so much mysterious but puzzling and maybe a tad obsessive. One has to wonder about a man who built "a house of pleasure" in the tropics and proceeded to paint, draw, and etch bare-breasted women surrounded by ominous symbols. There was a self-portrait of Paul Gauguin in a rather unnoticed corner of the crowded gallery. (Unnoticed because people were busy pondering Gauguin's numerous sketches of a frightened woman lying naked in bed while a dark figure stares at her.) Gauguin had a rather pale and insipid face and I was suddenly struck by how it reminded me of Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness. I came out of the exhibit thinking that Gauguin was more than a little depraved--genius or no. As for the rest of the afternoon, I spent it sitting at the edge of the Boston harbor, my feet dangling above water. I watched the waves rippling in the cool, not-quite-spring breeze and half a dozen dinghies bobbling like so many rubber toys. And I tried to think about nothing. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:33 PM : ]
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