Today, let’s dive into step #2, THINK.

There is a misconception about how to think about art—I often hear students say, “How can you give me a grade in art history? Isn’t thinking about art all about what I think about it, with no right or wrong answers?”

What a perfect place to begin—how we think about art is different than our opinions about art. You are certainly entitled to any opinion about art, and whatever else crosses your path. But, just as is true in any historic study, art history has facts—loads of facts that are verifiably true.

Just as scientists have rigorous peer-reviewed studies around their work, the categories, the stories, the symbolism, the context, the biographies, all the lore surrounding these artworks is carefully collected, vetted, and distributed. And beware to anyone throwing around this information loosely! (Although, did anyone catch that the fake museum tour guide story was made up? ).

I don’t ask my students to like all of the art I teach, but I do ask them to understand its place in history. When art unlocks its stories, its facts, its lore about the people who made it, it is as if we are transported in time. This thing reveals so much about how it was to be human in its particular context. Art is my favorite time machine!

Here is my strategy for how to think about art:

1. When gathering information, start with general, obvious concepts and let them lead you to more specific facts.

2. Remember step #1, LOOK? Let your observations guide you to relavent information.

3. The museum often offers priceless resources in labels, text on walls, interactive computer elements, docents, audio guides—these are all resources for you to grow your pool of knowledge. Go slow, spend time with fewer objects, and take in as much information as you can happily receive. Our problem is often too much information, not enough, so better to learn about a few things we love than to zombie about, totally flooded with historical facts.

I’d love to teach you a way to think about art by using a familiar example, one I’ve written about before, our celebrity starlet, The Mona Lisa:

1. If we start broadly, we can identify this as a portrait painting. Someone paid Leonardo to paint someone.

   From here, we can dig deeper into the stories of the people, who they were in their community, what they valued, and how portraits revealed positions of power or status. The labels and guides can help us (see step 3)!

2. If I let my observations guide me here, I notice that this painting has a hazy quality to it. I also notice that the entire painting seems quite yellow. Also, her face is quite pronounced—don’t people usually have eyebrows?

With my curiosity piqued, I’m excited to learn from this painting—the hazy quality comes from a technique that Leonardo developed, called ‘sfumato’, and I can go down a rabbit hole about Leornardo’s innovative fusion of Italian and Northern Renaissance style. The yellow finish is due to Leonardo’s insatiable desire to innovate, and his homespun varnish turned the entire painting yellow. Since we wouldn’t love it any other way, conservators will never reverse this discoloration! Finally, Mona Lisa was a plucker. It was fashionable for women of this time period to pluck their eyebrows and around their hairline to emphasize their cranial capacity. In this era of Renaissance humanism, women asked their beauticians to make their brains look bigger, imagine that.

3. The text on the walls, the labels near the paintings, the audio guides are all here for you. (Although not particularly for the Mona Lisa, so here’s a start!)

   You know this, but there is no exam at the end of the visit. Let the facts and information support your own curiosity. It doesn’t have to be a slog—take time with the art that sparks your interest and leave the rest; if it is meant to be, you will be back to see more next time.

When you start broadly, let your observations lead, and let the facts be supportive (not oppressive!), this THINK stage feels full of adventure and discovery! I want this for you!

We’ve come so far, learning about how to LOOK and THINK about art. The last part of this meaning-making process brings it all home. Looking forward to sharing it with you here next week.

The first step to connecting deeply with any artwork is to look.

Obviously, right?!

But there is a particular way of visual observation that is a real skill to learn and practice

.

We love watching characters like Benoit Blanc from the Knives Out mysteries confound the rich and famous, even fellow police and detectives through his masterful ability to know whodunnit and accuse the secret murderer. How does he do it, we ask? Perhaps his most impressive skill is his keen visual observation—he has the patience to LOOK closely, to be open to seeing something unexpected in plain sight and have focused attention in the process. Just like the satisfaction of Benoit Blanc’s solved murder mystery, we can feel deep connections to the artwork, to the culture in which it was made, and to ourselves as we see the artwork mirroring own humanity back to us.

Slow Down

It takes discipline to slow down in a museum environment that can feel frenetic. With so many art pieces on display, how can we possibly look at each object with such deep attention? My mind cries out in protest, “I already know what I’m going to see! This is going to be boring! I’m uncomfortable!”

Hear me now: it is far better to look deeply at a handful of artworks than to see the full museum collection on fast-forward speed. You don’t win a prize for your eyeballs looking at every object. Take a breath and relax. Let your body settle in and open up to the conversation the artist has invited you to join.

Start with a few guiding questions.

1. What is this?

   While often, but not always, straightforward, it’s steadying to say, “this is a painting! This is a sculpture! This is a performance artist crying while cartwheeling!” (perhaps at the Museum of Modern Art).

2. What is this made out of?

   Art is made from stuff—and what that stuff is can tell us loads, whether it’s marble, fresco paint, or solid gold.

   

3. How did the artist compose this object?

   A painting full of horizontal lines feels sturdy and even sleepy, while a vertical Eiffel Tower feels powerful. Active diagonal lines give a sense of dynamism and energy. Just as a director stages a scene of a play, an artist places the subjects of her artwork in a meaningful way.

   

4. What is the surface texture like? Imagine the difference between a Van Gogh painting, with a surface that looks like buttercream frosting vs. the photo-quality surface of a painting by Jacques-Louis David.

   

5. Look closely at line, color, highlight, shadow: all of these things are careful decisions by the artist to communicate with you.

As you take time to look, I advise that you not jump about to what it’s all about. Build your observation skills first and let your mind (so eager to know the story) take the back seat and learn from what your eyes observe first. Art rewards the patient viewer.

Next week, we will move to the next step of this mindframe process, but for this week, I invite you to look at the world around you; remember: every building you walk past, every fancy mural in a restaurant, every painting hanging in a lobby is the product of decisions made by its creator. And in a screen-heavy world that pulls our eyes away from our surroundings, I’m challenging myself and you, if you’d like, to build your ability to look.

Tell me how it goes!

Wrapping up the summer might mean shaking out the actual or metaphorical sand from the suitcases, and I’m doing the same. This substack page has been quiet, but my summer has been full of adventures and thoughts about friends, maybe friends like you?

I see it every time: a smart, curious traveler sets off to spend the day in a world-class museum. As she walks in the door, she does feel a nag that perhaps she should have done more research—or perhaps even had her children, who are in tow, write papers on Assyrian relief sculpture? Italian painting? Chinese calligraphy?

Our intrepid visitor, though still quite jet-lagged and spun about after navigating the morning metro will not be deterred! She has gotten this far and follows the throngs, hoping that she (and possible spouse/brood) can pick the right escalator to see the right artworks that will help them have the right cultural experiences that will give them the right memories forever. No pressure!

The guards bark directions in French, then perhaps English, but <relief>, she sees a placard with a picture of the Mona Lisa and an arrow leading her on! A clue! She flows into the large stream of tourists, making her way through the corridors, wondering if any of the paintings she is flying by in the Grand Galerie are worthy of her attention (and notes 2 other paintings in by Leonardo da Vinci that cry out to be seen…)

And then! The moment!

True, our visitor and her crew have to elbow their way to the front, but our courageous family does get a good look at the Mona Lisa (“Smaller than I thought” she thinks to herself). She pays homage by raising her cell phone and blindly snapping a photo, only to be scurried away by the full police force guarding this roped-off, bulletproof-glass- protected icon.

And then, our heroine blinks as her traveling party looks at her and asks, “Where should we go now?”

Maybe this next part goes well—I know that some of you are very happy to wander and discover whatever artwork pulls you in next. But, for many, having 30,000 objects on display and no one around to help you know what you are looking at—it can be daunting.

Perhaps you have the help of an audio guide that you vigilantly listen to, maybe you are an A+ student at reading the labels…but there comes a point where all of this information starts to blend, and your pace that began with stops in front of every painting or sculpture and accelerates into an overwhelmed stroll through the galleries towards the exit sign!

I’ve been thinking that maybe you’ve had this experience this summer? Or maybe you are going to have it soon? I’m here for you these coming weeks! I made us a Louvre guide for my family this summer that took us from Mona Lisa to the pinnacle of Greek sculpture, Egyptian mummies, the first written law code, the regal court of Assyrian emperors, the quiet (but worthy!) celebration of Dutch home life, and the painting that ignited the French Revolution. I also gave the fam some tried-and-true tips about how they might make meaning out of any art object, for when they are itching to go off-piste and have their own adventure.

I’m happily sending my rough-and-ready guide off with various friends in the coming weeks to try out with needed revisions, oof! Email me back if you care to be a guinea pig, dear friend, I’d love to send you one to try! If you are reading this, I count you as part of my inner-art-history-loving squad!

And I’m excited to keep posting ideas from my guide here, hoping that they might help you either in the Louvre or at any cultural spot you seek out. I’m your friend in the museum, let’s go experience the good stuff.

On the surface, art might become famous as it consistently emerges in pop culture (Leonardo forever!), or is renowned by an eye-popping auction sale price. There might be juicy gossip about a scandal surrounding an artwork. The celebrity of an object’s artist or patron creates name recognition. Curators, art critics, and art historians love to cull together their favorite “bests” based on their own perspectives and exposure to the art world—my students’ introductory art history textbook has its own “greatest hits” collection, a canon of objects to know.

These criteria are but a few of the many reasons art is valuable, but to me, there are 2 ideas that help me determine the deep value of an art object:

1. An artwork’s timeliness: A great art object is like a time machine, an artifact that takes us back into its context. A timely objects unlocks its past in its form, the stories it tells, the symbols that reveal deep beliefs, the way in which people related to it and integrated it in their relational life.

   

   We learn about the sophisticated intercontinental trade network in Egypt when we see the lapis lazuli earrings on Egyptian Queen Tiye’s portrait bust. We learn about the deep devotion to science during the Age of Enlightenment when we look at Joseph Wright of Derby’s painting of an Orrey. We see the deep desire to restore order and healing after World War I in the abstract painting of Piet Mondrian.

   

2. An artwork’s timelessness: A great art object is like a mirror, an object that reaches through time and resonates on a deeply human level. It reveals our foibles and revels in our strengths as a human family; our experience rhymes through time, no matter the years between us.

   

   These timeless artworks help us learn to be human and reassure us that even though all may not be well now, all will be well in the end.

There are many worthy reasons to love a piece of art, but to me, a good artwork is timely or timeless. And the best art is both.

Friends, as part of my Louvre guide, I’m putting together a few recorded lectures on a Vimeo channel to help my kids (and you!) feel comfortable at the museum, to lean on sturdy meaning-making strategies for a deeper experience, and more expanded teaching on what I find to be timely and timeless art objects. This is new and fun for me! I’m posting video #1 below and if you’d like, you can find the vimeo channel here. xo

We approach the table as if we are a customer in line, seeing clearly the vast array of things before us. Metsys paints in the Northern Renaissance style, using oil paints that create a complex material world in all its vast textures, surfaces, and details. The crisp pages of the Book of Hours, the furry cuffs and hoods of our financiers, the glossy, reflective surfaces of the glass chalice all feel touchably real. Like any good Northern artist, Massys includes a mirror, not only as a bit of an artistic flex, but also to extend the visual borders of the scene–along with the window that extends the background, the mirror also pushes our own visual space, now showing us a jaunty northerner behind us in line.

The artist of this painting, Quentin Massys, was working in Flanders, modern-day Belgium, a mercantile economy exploding with wealth through trade and a flurry of valuable exports. This region, on the brink of the Protestant Reformation, also became increasingly disenfranchised with the Catholic Church, rejecting traditional visual culture and instead looking to a personal worship. These folks were still quite religious, and the art market shifted from the enormous altarpieces to home-appropriate paintings that had moralizing overtones for the up-and-coming middle class.

We approach the worktable of a money changer. While traditional banking, with loans and interest, was considered sinful, many savvy businessmen made their millions dealing in currencies, assigning value to the large variety of coins that passed through the hands of this cosmopolitan economy. While this practice was above-board, there was still high religious disapproval of being money minded. This disapproval is most obvious in the wife of the money changer, who vacantly flips through the pages of her book of hours, her gaze fixed on the piles of coins.

The phrase “attention economy” is in the air these days, as we are increasingly distracted, but we know that money is made wherever our eyeballs look. The theme of this painting was relevant in the bustling 16th-century marketplace, but never more than now, when the marketplace lives on a screen that comes with us wherever we go. I’m taking the moralizing message imbued here, to think intentionally about where I send my gaze and to choose to devote my attention to the riches beyond our material world.

There is a bronze equestrian portrait of Charlemagne at the Louvre that follows the formula of “the greats” from the Classical past: A crowned man sits firmly upon his trusty steed, his gaze looking over his kingdom. But as much as Charlemagne would like us to mistake this likeness to that of the Roman Emperors, we can see that this is no Marcus Aurelius.

Where the sculpture of Marcus Aurelius shows a carefully articulated superman, with perfected musculature, harmonious, believable weight distribution, and a sensitive face rendered with feeling and intellect, this likeness of Charlemagne is just…cute.

True, he has a sense of proportion and scale atop his horse, but the abstract contours of his body are rounded–I particularly love his feet, which seemed to be shod in baby booties rather than the shoes of a warrior. There is an abstraction to his anatomical features underneath a decorative cloak that puts him more in the doll category, less in the mighty emperor category. We get that he’s a man, but not a real man (sorry!). He’s cute!

The true Charlemagne was many things, I don’t think cute was his leading feature. He grew as a mighty military leader, seeking to reclaim a new, Christian version of the Roman empire through relentless, bloody campaigns that shaped many borders throughout Western Europe.

His leadership in conquest was matched by his determination to create order and expand literacy in the Christian West–he sponsored monasteries as robust academic centers. Here, monks were taught to read and learn the narratives from the Bible through more uniform translations, to send monk-scholars abroad to libraries outside the Christian borders to collect a wide range of texts to bring home, and to fund a boom of illuminated manuscript production that encouraged books to be more available.

Charlemagne was so devoted to the value of literacy, it is said that he was often found with a small writing tablet atop his pillow; I love that image of mighty Charlemagne practicing his letters as he was drifting off to sleep.

Charlemagne lamented, “I cannot read and write well enough,” and it was documented that this fact was the source of his life’s greatest frustration.

When we look at this equestrian portrait of Charlemagne, we can see a conqueror and a politician, but to me, the greatest legacy of this first Holy Roman Emperor is his commitment to the written word. As a proclaimed bibliophile, I savor his zest for reading, and our access to vast libraries of books would boggle the minds of our ancestors. That being said, I recently went to a community meeting for our school district, and learned that literacy is dropping among kids, one reason attributed to the lack of books that everyday families are keeping in their homes. So, in that spirit, maybe this weekend warrants a trip to the library (for free-ish* books) or even drop into our favorite local bookshop to luxuriously flip through new titles and find a few new treasures to take home.

*I gave myself the gift of library fines to be part of the library experience

This icon was made in the late-Hellenistic era of Greek sculpture and is in a type of “venus pudica” posture. The earlier traditions of heroic Greek male nude sculptures stood loud and proud with no clothing, celebrating the greatness and potential of humankind. While this figure carries the values of the earlier Classical era in Greek sculpture, the subject, the female nude goddess, was created in a later Hellenistic era of Greek art.Greek female sculptures, however, take on a type of sexualization–a cloth draped loosely and destined to land shortly on the floor creates a type of intrigue, with a tension of desired modesty and exposure.

Found on the island of Milos, the Venus de Milo was excavated by a local farmer; British explorer in 1820 and sold to French Royalty shortly after. Experts speculate that this sculpture stood on display in a Greek theatre or gymnasium. I can only imagine what the full sculptural program was for the space, when this Venus was but one of many beautiful figures on display.

The Venus de Milo can be found in tiny paperweight replicas, on umbrellas and t-shirts, crafted into resin candles. This sculpture is culturally known; this is an artwork I point people to when they say they want to see “the most famous art,” along with the Mona Lisa of course. The sheer beauty of Venus’s human likeness is definitely worth appreciating. And while I do appreciate the skill and elegance of the figure, as a woman, I feel like we are stepping beyond the appreciation stage of viewership and moving into an unhealthy gaze.

Guys, as a woman looking at an art object of a woman made by men for men, I’m uncomfortable about poor Venus here, spending eternity trying and failing to keep herself dressed in front of so many gazing eyes. It’s a bit disheartening to see such an early objectification of women (from 150 BC); however, it can be argued that the Greeks objectified men as well. Nevertheless, when walking through a collection of Greek figural sculpture, there is a natural grace and a monumental beauty in Greek marble figures that captures the very best of our species. And in a world that feels extremely casual, sometimes devoid of grace and beauty, the Greeks invite us to rise to our best, most naturally beautiful selves.

Upon first look, we are tumbled into the daily life of the Dutch, crowded with small objects that are tangled together like knotted yarn in the knitting basket. Then begins the work of teasing out what we are seeing, and it is pure delight. Is that woman in red placing a large cloak over a man’s body and face? Is there a man shaving a pig with a razor? Oh my, am I seeing two bare bottoms poking out of that window?

This ancestor of the modern “Where’s Waldo” phenomenon is meant for the masses, a painting for everyday Dutch men and women to identify and laugh (yes! LAUGH!) at our shared human folly. This painting is made to entertain, to bring inside jokes into a visual language. This is art for the masses, not above potty humor, like 100 memes made in 1559, all put together on the same visual frame.

Pieter Brueghel painted images representing over 100 idioms, the wise words and wisecracks that describe everyday human life. Idioms and proverbs were very popular at this time, beginning in outrageously luxe Books of Hours, then flowing into painting and prints made for all social classes.

Netherlandish culture relished their middle-class society–ordinary people working hard, playing hard, laughing hard, and deeply valued the wonders of living together in tight-knit communities that we see here on display. But, make no mistake, there is collateral damage here: a beauty hoodwinking her husband*, a greedy man taking too much of the pie. Again and again, this painting pokes at human foibles,

the weaknesses and flaws:

the dogged loyalties we have to each other:

the adaptability and pivots in tricky situations:

and the humbling awakenings that come when we are made aware:

All of these things are played out in proverbs where we see ourselves, even today; we laugh in recognition of our recognition of our similar misbehaviors!

With Brueghel’s encyclopedia of idioms, we laugh with judgement and with grace—the reason these proverbs are so funny is that we see ourselves in them. In a world that seems full of judgemental fingers pointing every which way, today, might we all take a break, see the folly of others in ourselves, and LAUGH! It feels good!

I feel this! The head-against-the-wall is timeless, haha—sob!

*This idiom was so popular it was widely known as “The Blue Cloak” and was once the title of this painting.

A sarcophagus is a decorated coffin meant to be housed in a protected space. This travertine sarcophagus from the Etruscan era is carved on every surface. We can see rough marks, almost like graffiti, that span across the perimeter of the box. Other panels hold scenes of cultural intrigue, such as the horse being devoured alive by two sea monsters.

It’s the lid of the sarcophagus that pulls us through time–there, two lovers gaze into each others’ eyes, their arms relaxed in a loving embrace. This is not the flurry of a frantic young love, but here we see love that has a rich, deep vintage. These two lovers gaze into a lifetime of a shared past, they settle into a comfort of an eternal embrace; they sleep in death with the one that loves the best

This sarcophagus holds the remains of our portrait couple, Larth Tetnies and Thanchvil Tarnai. They lived as Etruscans on the Italian peninsula in the late 4th century BC. Etruscans ruled the region prior to the Romans, and like the Egyptians, obsessively prepared for a comfortable afterlife.

Etruscans built necropoli on the outskirts of town, entire cities dedicated to post-mortem societies, neighborhoods lined with houses built to hold the sarchophagi, yes, but also had rooms fully stocked with sculpted replicas of home goods–pans, chairs, tools, even sculpted pets were nestled in these homes for the dead, in efforts to keep the beloved things of the world intact for the great beyond.

On this Valentine’s Day, I honor mature romantic love. To me, this love is the ultimate romance—the spark and fire of the initial attraction is intoxicating, but after the honeymoon is over and two people are left to grapple with the humanity of the other, each bringing the quirks, the hurts, the traumas of the generations that preceded them, and to surrender their lives in the merging of two parts to create a beautiful whole…well, I don’t know any enterprise more daring than that.

The room is divided into clear segments, divided by bands that are meant to create boundaries and borders. As a whole, there is coherence, but when we look at each partition in the room, there is great diversity in patterns and motifs. And when we really look, then comes the shock: the ceiling isn’t merely wallpaper, but the designs within the paneled squares are all hand-painted. In fact, all of the papered designs are stenciled and painted by hand.

The aesthetic of the painted walls is deeply rooted in the natural world: olive branches, eagles’ wings, sun bursts and sun beams animate every surface. The register just below the ceiling playfully features hounds chasing rabbits along the perimeter of the room.

[Note: I’m convinced that this must have been the inspiration for Beth Brower’s iconic scene between Emma Lion and the Duke of Islington in his hound-and-rabbit room.]

A lower register acts as a type of Byzantine iconostasis, a framework for scenes reminiscent of ancient, gold-leafed icon panel painting, made new here with subjects of plant life and women representing the different astrological signs.

William Morris grew up in the shadow of the Industrial Revolution. Put off by the racing pace of machine technology, Morris looked to the deep past, the medieval era, and saw the Arthurian stories as the antidote to the contemporary technological boom.

Rather than joining the attention of the modern public to what was new and disposable, Morris was inspired by the values of the Middle Ages. There was something holy about the workshops of artisans devoted to creating something that might not be finished in their lifetime, let alone be functional now. These craftsmen valued that which was durable, and dedicated their material goods as a prayer to God rather than a gee-whiz, new-fangled invention that would push society to move even faster.

As a student at Oxford, Morris grew into his vision of creating a collaborative brotherhood who designed spaces built to last. He recruited fellow painters, who all expanded their skill sets to craft stained-glass, furniture, tapestries, embroidery, carpets and beyond. In the spirit of medieval artisan guilds, Morris and his friends called themselves “The Firm.” The group eventually grew to a thriving company known through the early 20th-century as “Morris & Co,” and contributed to the beginnings of the gorgeous British fabric maker and department store, Liberty of London.

It is of great value to inhabit spaces that are built to last. There’s an integrity in choosing solid materials that bring good bones, to putting those materials in the hands of artisans and artists to give them function and heart, to having fewer, better things that kindly support us through the days. For these are the very places where our reality unfolds!

After deciding we wanted a garden shed, and after me requesting that it looked “like one of those adorable cottages in Cape Cod”, this is what our garden tools are neatly tucked into. If you were wondering if my husband really loves me, here is his love letter, written to me with every nailed shingle, which will most likely outlive us all.

Beyond the spaces and things built to last, it seems that building deep, long-lasting relationships is one of life’s greatest riches. I’ve been soaking in some in-real-life time with an old friend who shared an important phase of my life. The deep integrity of our friendship, held with sturdy foundations from years of care, makes for a rich life indeed. Imagine if we approached every relationship with quality time, quality presence, and quality attention, just as William Morris and his fellow craftsmen—what a sturdy, loving foundation that would be to build up our broader world.

This painting, now hanging in The Getty Art Museum in Los Angeles, gives us a display of these funny, overflowing petals with weirdly fuzzy beards, with delicately blue-green sword-shaped stalks. In Vincent’s summer scene, the irises grow in wild abundance; colors are vivid– the deep periwinkle, the brazen orange, and the single white bloom. As Vincent takes us down the sunny path, we notice what we take for granted–of course the irises are here. They loll their heads like rare birds, they loudly whisper the gossip, they always brighten the way, they are always here.

Vincent finished this painting in the late 1880s, along with his iconic Starry Night while living in Southern France at the mental hospital at St Remy. Irises were in bloom, everywhere at the grounds of St Remy. This was a time of relative peace in his unstable life. He did want commercial success–he felt that painting flowers was a way to reach a middle-class clientele.

Much has been made of Vincent van Gogh–his life, his mental illness, his lack of success, his death. Vincent was socially crippled, unable to be with others, even though he dreamed of working collaboratively with other artists. He was a difficult man, apathetic towards most parts of his life, but painting caught his whole being:

“It is his duty, his mission, perhaps even his therapy.” (Helvey, Irises, p. 11)

For Vincent, painting was more than a way for him to work through his emotions. Van Gogh was deeply interested in color theories and the ongoing experimentation of his contemporaries. As we can see in this painting of Irises, Vincent plays with the interaction of complementary colors, and his vibrant use of color draws us in.

By getting our attention with color, Vincent fully shares his expressive lines–these are flowers, yes, but Van Gogh’s trademark of loose, painterly brushstroke adds layers of emotion to the surface. A photograph of irises would show our eyes the visual definition of irises,but with Vincent’s loose application of paint, we feel the warmth, the joy, the carefree quality of summer.

During these dark days of January, all the colors and life of summertime is gone. Where I live in Utah, we’ve had a winter of very little snow; our brown, dead world does without even a soft snowy coat to cover the dead surfaces.

To see a budding, blossoming world is to see a world of hope of what still could be. The hope of Spring is hard to conjure but could not be more needed than it is right now. Whether the winter doldrums extend to your current natural landscape, to a season of dreariness at home, at work, or soul-deep, or if you are feeling a loss of hope in the world at large, may we take Vincent’s summer warmth with us. Here’s to employing active hope to remembering sunny days gone by and imagining so many more in the days to come.

While this scene of systemized murder is difficult for anyone to see, my older siblings had learned of the terrors of the holocaust before watching this movie, and had greater context within the movie and from their own years of sensitive education. For me, seeing that 2-minute display shook me to the core, especially after finding out afterwards that this did happen, not just once, but over and over again. I don’t have a special reason to carry the fear from the holocaust; there are millions of others with closer proximity to this and other acts of genocide, whether by personal, familial, cultural, or religious connection, who deserve all of our special care and respect in this regard.

That being said, in that short exposure to this most atrocious event, my girl self could not take a shower for the next two years. I had recurring nightmares of being sent to concentration camps all through my childhood. Like my siblings, I later learned more context about World War II and the mass murder of 6 million Jews, through history lessons, independent reading, and touring the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. This additional education informed what I saw earlier on the tv screen, but the feeling of terror in my body remained and remains today. I am shaking as I write now.

My husband Shane and I had the great privilege to travel to Germany two weeks ago. Our quick stay left us full to brimming, with eye-popping art collections, Bavarian mountain vistas, and a Shane’s Berlin marathon finish.* We also spent some sacred hours visiting the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial, just 18 miles outside of Munich. This site is known as the earliest concentration camp and the model for the other camps throughout Eastern Europe, particularly remembered for imprisoning and killing political opponents to the Nazis. As we walked through the gates of the camp, my entire body trembled with panic, loudly asking, “WHAT ARE WE EVEN DOING??”

However, with the help of a very knowledgeable and sensitive guide, I was able to face the truth of this place and of the events that truly mark a deep failure of one group to see the humanity of their brothers and sisters, to fail to see the humanity in themselves. The sound of gravel under our feet scraped the silence, as we toured through the bleak barracks, the gas chambers, and the crematoria where thousands of human lives were turned to ash.

A powerful sculpture stands just outside the crematoria, and this art object that teaches much, if we have the heart to learn from it.

Here, we see a figure that represents the souls who perished just steps away, this bronze man memorialized forever. Here, he is remembered as a man of dignity and independence–he holds his head high, he chooses to look where he will, his hands comfortably placed in the pockets of his warm coat. These details are wishes of simple comfort for those who were deprived of any comforts–those imprisoned were forced to bend down, look down always in submission, they had no warm clothing in the cold weather, and never had pockets or places to put their hands out of sight.

Beneath the figure in this sculpture is an epitaph:

“Den Toten zur Ehr den Lebenden zur Mahnung”

The English translation, “In honor of the dead and a warning for the living.”

As we made our way through the memorial, our guide helped us understand the answer to the question that burned within me even as a 7 year-old child:

how could this ever have happened?

While the rise and fall of the Nazis is a complex topic worthy of the comprehensive scholarship that has followed it, this was a time when people’s hearts grew cold to one another. The political opponents critical of increasing acts of dehumanization were bullied and ultimately silenced. There was a disintegration of checks and balances of power. There were limits placed on free speech, on rule of law, on due process that were gradually squeezed shut. There were threats to all Germans from a small group of authoritarian rulers that kept everyday people afraid and silent.

Today, all 8th-grade local students tour the grounds at Dachau and there is a robust educational program in German schools to teach German students the reality of what happened here. In the words of a good friend of mine from Berlin, “We learned what happened nearly every day of when the Nazis were in power.” There is an adamant desire by German educators to teach their people what happened so that it will never, never happen again.

There is great power in history, and we can learn so much from it if we have the courage to look and to not look away. The words from this placard placed on a wall that we passed as we left the memorial are still ringing in my ears, written in multiple languages to be clearly understood:

“May the examples of those exterminated here between 1933-1945 because they resisted Nazism help to unite the living for the defense of peace and freedom in respect to their fellow men.”

*Hoping to share more about this in upcoming newsletters

This week, let’s look at Georgia O’Keeffe’s painting, Jack-in-the-Pulpit IV from 1930.

We have the ability to zoom in on any image with the pinch on a screen, and many photographers dazzle us with the microscopic details that they can capture with the help of a good lens.

However, Georgia O’Keeffe boldly stepped away from her traditional painting education to paint flowers into near abstraction. Here, the saturated colors give firm borders to the flowers anatomy: the deep blue petals layer on green petals, which layer on black petals, all to protect the fragile stigma of the flower, the whispy white line in the middle.

The brilliant colors and delicate, diverse shapes show mastery of the artist—O’Keeffe knew how to craft a painting that is easy on the eyes. Georgia O’Keeffe proclaims here that there is value in giving our eyes and minds pure forms and colors as a rest stop for our eyes. However, as viewers, we are not left adrift to a painting that is completely abstracted. O’Keeffe tethers us to nature—here, we recognize that this is part of a plant. We can find safety in the fact that this painting is of “something” and then let our minds rest, fully taking in the visual field as a type of meditation.

Georgia O’Keeffe grew up in Wisconsin and moved to New York City in the late 1920s. While there, she found a cohort of like-minded artists who wanted to move beyond the norms of their standardized art education—beyond painting a “likeness”, a recreation of a scene that looks “so real”, modernist artists were experimenting with how art might achieve goals beyond “looking like the real thing.” There’s a camera that can instantly create a perfect likeness of a scene, and artists of the 20th century were tired of this goal. In the modern world, when life was moving so quickly, painting Greek mythological scenes felt worn out. Artists felt the itch to paint modern paintings for a modern world.

Georgia O’Keeffe became friendly with a band of American modern artists who exhibited together at the acclaimed Gallery 291. Photographer Alfred Stieglitz used his influence to promote O’Keeffe’s work, giving her an unlikely break as the premiere female abstractionist in a very male-centric industry. O’Keeffe and Stieglitz married, but O’Keeffe maintained her interests and independence, buying multiple homes (that are fabulous to visit!) in New Mexico, where she spent the rest of her life painting, riding horseback, making her own clothes, and cooking up a storm!

Cultural Riches: Take Time to Really Look.

Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings invite us to do what is the most cliché. Oh my goodness, am I really going to write “Stop and Smell the Roses”?? I know, the worst!

We know what flowers look like. We know the world we see, must we really contemplate the leaves on a tree when there is laundry to be folded?!

I wonder if the riches in looking closely is more about what happens to me, the one looking, than any rich discovery of nature. The surrender of knowing what to expect, of being in charge of what is real, of control—letting all of it go as I look and let these natural forms help me settle down—it is really a very rich exercise. O’Keeffe’s paintings give us a beautiful reminder of how to be in nature, how to look at the world with reverence, with wonder, and how to give our full attention to these living things while letting the rest fall away. In this digital world that draws my eyes further and further from the ridges of a flower petal, I’m going to step into the garden today and give it a try.

Today, let’s look at Archibald Motley’s Portrait of My Grandmother from 1922.

Just like this grandma, this portrait is no fuss. A simple background frames the 80 year-old sitter in neutral colors, a spot of red on the pinned brooch. Grandmother is not posed, but rather sits directly in front of us with an unblinking gaze. The hands are placed at the edge of the foreground, distorted slightly to look extra long.

Archibald Motley enjoyed fame for his paintings of the Jazz Age; as an African-American artist, Motley recreated the buzzing nighttime scenes in the black communities of Chicago and New York. This painting, Portrait of My Grandmother, was completed in an earlier phase of Motley’s career, just after finishing his art education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Motley painted a faithful portrait here, but also used his subject’s body to tell her story: gnarled hands tell of the decades of hard labor. Grandmother’s stare does not suffer fools. Her wrinkled forehead, heavy eyelids, set mouth also speak to one who has carried sorrow and loss, perhaps for the entire family. And yet, her ramrod straight posture is one of dignity. This women has loved and lost—and this woman has survived!

Archibald Motley’s grandmother, Emily Sims Motley, was born into slavery in Kentucky. She moved to the south side of Chicago in the Great Migration at the turn of the 20th century. Emily lived the rest of her life in an intergenerational home, her bedroom next to Motley’s painting studio in their shared row house. Art Historians speculate on the intentional shadow behind Emily—it is a reasonable detail to include, but is the shadow a lingering presence of the enslaved life that Emily tried to leave behind? This individual, with her life so directly tied to slavery, helps us see a face to the institution of slavery and our nation’s fraught past. This grandma, with apron tied and brooch fastened, is a grandma relatable to all, but the shadow and pained eyes reflects unique hurts from the past that come from a shared, troubled history.

Cultural Riches: How this painting makes us rich

Are there any better American treasures than our grandmothers? What could be better than running into grandma’s house, with it’s special grandma smell, the old-fashioned toys in the basement, the mysterious jars of fruit in the mysterious fruit room, and the roast coming out of the oven? To get a hug from a wise lady, whose love is available in spades!

I hear about older women feeling invisible in public life—maybe there is something there. But in my mind, I can’t imagine more powerful and influential people in my younger years than the monumental grandmothers! They are the kinkeepers of our clans. They make the magic, they do the hard work of gathering, connecting, and tradition-keeping, and in my formative early adulthood, they were the cheerleaders; always listening, always encouraging, never judging.

I invite all of you to hug your grandmas who are still with us, and for those, like me, whose grandmas have shed their physical frames, I invite you to welcome them into your hearts—talk about them, send love to them, honor them. They will always be cheering for you!

Many of the artworks I’ve shared in this newsletter were based in the European tradition, with a strict protocol of skills and subjects that artists were expected to follow. Education in the visual arts for 19th-century American artists was less structured—Many successful artists were self-trained, including the painter-illustrator from Cambridge, Massachusetts, Winslow Homer.

In Breezing Up, Homer gives us a chance to experience the sheer scale of the American landscape—the sky takes 3/4 of the canvas. Can’t you imagine your full peripheral view filled by the traveling clouds? The sea, churning with its full range of colors, meets us in the foreground and takes our eyes back into oblivion! With a crew of young boys, the small sailboat tilts diagonally, a compositional choice that enhances the sense of adventure and action. It’s as if Homer explains here, “In America, our untouched, pristine natural spaces surround us in every direction. We may not have the sophistication of a European city, but even our children can easily access lives full of the limitless riches of nature.”

Winslow Homer worked in his early life as an illustrator, designing covers of periodicals and advertisements, and after his sensational success in painting scenes from the Civil War in the 1860s, worked full time as a painter.

While Winslow Homer did eventually travel to France in the 1870s to see the works of such French artists as Courbet, Manet, and Monet, Homer adhered to painting scenes that set Americans apart—the pristine scenes of nature in the United States. Painted American landscapes grabbed the attention of the art-loving public on both the American and European continents.

Homer said it himself:

“Artists should never look at pictures, but should stutter in a language of their own.”

Cultural Riches:

Amidst all the noise of our American conversation right now, when I see Breezing Up, I feel peace. It’s perhaps my best reminder of what makes the United States, with its majestic, diverse natural spaces, so special to me. I live in a beautiful mountain town with access to hiking, biking, and skiing trails steps from my front door. Truly, if you are born in Utah, I don’t think it’s an option to be afraid of heights. Our babies are tucked into hiking backpacks and strapped into skis before they know to be afraid. My views out of the windows of my home reflect Homer’s expansive landscapes (with mountains, not ocean): we see nature overflowing in every direction.

Today, I’m stepping away from the digital world, with enticements and distractions galore, and firmly looking to the natural world that is waiting to give me all that I’ve ever wanted. Here’s to an after-dinner walk on a dirt path, a long exhale while watching the hummingbirds in the backyard, and a look at the stars in the night sky. Serenity now!

For those in the US, wishing you a July 4th spent in spectacular natural spaces!

(Other great objects to see at the Louvre: The Mona Lisa, Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana, Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin, and Oath of the Horatii by Jacques-Louis David.)

This is a difficult, beautiful painting.

Thèodore Gericault was a French painter, trained in the academic style in the early 1800s. The man knew how to craft a scene well—the anatomy of the bodies is exquisite, the perspective is exact. The skill of the artist draws us in, and what we see is horrifying.

Gericault was trained to paint the noble scenes from history (Greco-Roman history please! Heavy on the stoic virtues and light on the contemporary political criticisms!)

However, in this wall-sized canvas, we are given a churning ocean scene with a makeshift raft splayed with shipwrecked survivors, mixed with corpses who are in various states of death and decay. The jumble of body parts and wooden beams composed in striking diagonal lines shoot our eyes in every direction, creating the chaos and disorder that defined this controversial current event, truly ripped from the headlines!

The subject is the political catastrophe of Gericault’s time—King Louis XVIII, installed after the fall of Napoleon, appointed an unprepared and incompetent viscount to captain the ship, Medusé, around the African continent. When the ship hit a sandbar off the coast of Africa, the unprepared leaders fled to the few lifeboats on deck, leaving 150 souls adrift on a makeshift raft. After 13 days of terror, only 15 remaining survivors were saved by another ship, the Argus, that happened to be passing by.

Prior to painting the scene, Gericault immersed himself in the survival experience, interviewing survivors, creating a replica of the raft, and visiting a local morgue with the intent to study, sketch, and recreate the ghastly body fragments, as witnessed on the raft.

When Gericault exhibited The Raft of the Medusa in 1819, the painting became a lightning rod among the viewers—sympathizers applauded Gericault’s determination to spotlight the political missteps of their king, others felt that this uncensored display of carnage strayed too starkly from the traditional norms of the painting exhibitions, not to mention the discomfort many felt from criticizing those in power.

In the end, regardless of its controversy, The Raft of the Medusa became the quintessential example of French Romantic-era painting.

Cultural Riches

Everything went wrong on this raft. This is where all notions of shared humanity broke down.

However, if we let our eyes follow the upward swell from the bottom lefthand corner, we see an incredibly hopeful climax:

Despite it all, there is a man waving his shirt to a boat in the distance in hopes of rescue.

Josef, an African man who was Gericault’s model for the Medusa painting, became the personification of hope in this most bleak scene. Despite IT ALL, the brink of what could be humanly survivable, the artist shows us a few men on board who stubbornly stick with it, clinging to the chance of rescue.

That stubborn will to get through the impossible is not pretty. Surviving requires us to quiet our fears, to patiently put up with discomfort, to imagine a world different than what surrounds us, to pivot and change plans, and to hold to hope and calm when all others cannot.

I love the words of Rudyard Kipling,

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:...

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man [and a woman, of course!], my son!

I hope that your life is free from fears and discomforts, but if you do find yourself surviving, might I send this example of unfaltering hope to you, with the promise that rescue and better days are coming! xo

I’m continuing my series of must-see paintings in the Louvre in hopes that you can orient yourself to a few artworks that many of us art history instructors find the most historically impactful and timeless in its human connections.

The Oath of the Horatii could be chiseled in stone. Artist Jacques-Louis David adopted the techniques of the Greeks and Romans, reincarnating the symmetry in the architectural backdrop, use of restrained colors and posed figures, and tight photo finish to give a sense of classical balance, harmony, and veracity–because this story seems so rational and lifelike, surely, it must be true!

David chose to paint the Roman legend of the Horatii family: the Horatii men have been charged by Roman authorities fight an enemy family, the Curattii men, in a final battle–the victor of this military showdown will claim victory of the war and military authority. In this moment, the brothers pledge their loyalty to the State, placing their patriotism over their personal comforts, their familial ties, even their lives.

The men’s stoic commitment to the good of the state is foiled by the women on the right–their bodies curve into themselves, into each other, as they collapse into an inferior emotive state. The men’s crystallized focus contrasts with the women, who are flooded with anticipatory grief. The women recognize the costs of battle and watch their brothers and husbands put aside their personal peace as a sacrifice for the public good.

This cultural value of patriotic sacrifice was so ripe in France at this time that we art historians point to this painting as the calling card of the French Revolution.

Decades earlier, the Enlightenment clearly pointed out the flaws in the current system of monarchy and the power of the Catholic Church and championed a democratic rule tied to the classical world. The French public saw this type of government successfully implemented in the American colonies and a growing class of educated upper-Middle class French revolutionaries saw the values of the classical era as a path beyond the unjust structures of the ruling aristocratic class in France.

The Oath of the Horatii represented everything that the young revolutionary wanted to be: superhero warriors who were willing to give it all for the greater good of the State. When David unveiled this painting at the Salon in 1785, it was like a stick of dynamite, the revolutionary message was so keenly picked up by the public. That being said, this painting was commissioned by a member of the Royal family. The royals weren’t opposed to the painting, and missed the subtext laden within. David was the master of walking the fine line–propelling propaganda for whatever cause might benefit him the most.

David gives us a visual display of a family deciding that their comforts, their stability, their relative ease was now more uncomfortable than doing nothing. In this moment of commitment, we see the shift in individual hearts that, when done in numbers, shifts governments, culture, and society. It’s worth saying that there were grave moral compromises in the French Revolution, and the early commitments to justice and democracy crumbled over time. However, the initial impulses to commit to the greater good inspire me.

I, too, am feeling a mismatch of my personal values and what I’m seeing play out in the public square. I love my small, cozy life, and yet I’m feeling more and more uncomfortable watching treasured values and norms vanish before my eyes. In the spirit of the Horatii brothers, I’m calling my senators, I’m showing up to organized events that represent my heart, and I’m looking out for those fellow humans who are vulnerable right now. I might also take breaks, turning inward to fully feel and mourn like the Horatii sisters–we all need a turn to feel our feelings. Perhaps the revolutionary brothers would have fared better if they had looked to their sisters in this regard…

1 Famous Artwork from 1 Museum: Death of the Virgin by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.

Caravaggio was painting under the patronage of the Catholic Church at the close of the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic Church was undergoing a time of reflection and identity-building–Caravaggio’s new charge was to make devotional art, as was ever the church’s priority, but in this rebuilding time, Caravaggio was to paint simple stories from the Bible that prioritized the drama and conversion of people like you and me; Counter-Reformation paintings were meant to ignite the dwindling faith of church members and to spark new faith for people seeking God.

When we look at The Death of the Virgin, we see how Caravaggio used the tools learned in the Renaissance and activated them to serve the goals of Counter-Reformation art: beyond correct anatomy and perspective, Caravaggio inserts incredible contrasts of light and dark to create a theatrical climax of emotions. If you look at the composition of the figures, the body of the Virgin Mary is a series of diagonals, while the stooped woman below her, the bald heads of the apostles, and the gorgeous red cloth of honor above the Virgin all act as a compositional guide that circles our eyes back to the Virgin, over and over. Caravaggio famously found his models on the streets of Rome, and here we can see the drab clothing, the dirty fingernails, the wrinkled faces, the overall musty room that hosted this moment of deep sorrow for the early followers of Christ. Renaissance painters presented this scene from a distance, with serenity and grace. In this different historical moment, Caravaggio thrusts us into the room, to be at the Virgin’s dead feet, to stand in shock, to weep, and to have our hearts break with the rest of the figures in the scene.

Cultural Riches:

In Death of the Virgin, Caravaggio teaches us to care. Looking from one figure to the next, we see outward expressions of deep sorrow. These people are both caught in their internal sense of shock, but also looking to each other to bear the weight of the great loss of Mary. Caravaggio leaves room for us to enter into this little huddle of mourning–we are to mourn, yes, but we are also to be comforted.

Mourning in community is a beautiful practice among us humans. To show up at any hour for a forlorn friend, to perhaps not know the right words, but to have a hug and soft heart, to care together is a hard but an exquisitely power part of our human journeying. During darker days, I have received comfort from my web of support; they witnessed my pain and let it move through their own hearts. This community of mourning created a glow in the darkness.

In our separate, online, non-confrontational, indifferent world, I’m going to follow Caravaggio on this thread–I’m going to let out the ugly cry. I’m going to let my heart be touched. I’m going to give a long hug rather than try and say something that can’t possibly help. I’m going to be tender, to be shocked, to be heart-broken with the grieving humans around me. By grieving together, we heal all hearts with love.

After you trek to the see the Mona Lisa in the Salle des États gallery, turn 180 degrees, and you will find a massive, gorgeous painting by the Venetian mannerist superstar, Veronese. This painting is swirling with gorgeous, sumptuous color, full of 130 figures talking, peering, eating, playing, serving, posturing, and literally climbing the walls. If you ever wondered, in a post-MonaLisa-panic, what do we see next, I’m here to say this is the perfect (and easiest!) next “famous painting” for your tour of the Louvre.

1 Famous Artwork from 1 Museum: The Wedding Feast at Cana by Veronese

Veronese was painting in an era just a beat after the Italian Renaissance masters. Unlike the calm restraint of the High Renaissance painting, The Last Supper, Veronese ditches the strict protocols of perfect balance and restraint. Veronese’s holy feast is raucous—he takes what he learned from his Renaissance mentors, painting human figures with anatomical accuracy, showing the Greco-Roman setting with perfected one-point perspective, but rather than giving the Biblical scene the hum of stoic serenity, Veronese gives us a PARTY—the mood is jubilant, and even Jesus, Mary, and the apostles seem a bit rattled by the high vibes at the dinner table.

The subject comes from the famous New Testament story; Christ performs his first public miracle by changing water into wine while attending a wedding feast for a family friend. In Veronese’s version, all but the most holy figures are dressed in clothing that match his own cultural fashions, leaning towards trendy Turkish costumes.

As the water-wine miracle plays out, Veronese shows us the unfolding reactions of the bride’s family: on the left side of the table, a couple seem to be passing tense whispers about the wine shortage party foul, the bride stares into space, puzzling out next steps, the father of the bride directs his servants to pour the replenished kraters of wine with a sense of delirious satisfaction that it’s working out.

And on the right side, we see the wine flow!

The painting itself has a juicy past, taken from its original home in the cafeteria of a Venetian monastery.

Cultural Riches

The title tells us that this painting is about a bible story, the real story is about FEASTING. Veronese gives us a lesson on how the best 16th-century Venetians feasted—he includes an all-star cast at the table, with portraits of royal, political, intellectual, and entertainment celebrities of his time, perhaps it would be the equivalent of Bill Gates, Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Fallon, and the Kardashians at the dinner table.

The focus on full-flavored food was top priority, and the hallowed cuisine traditions from France and Italy were greatly shaped by the elaborate feasts such as the one we see here. However, the illustrious tradition of the feast in 17th-century Europe was foundational to the Italian social fabric, and more than just a delicious dinner. During the hours-long meal, members of society would reinforce partnerships, mend unsteady alliances, create new collaborations, and showcase wealth and power. Feasts became such a social display, we have records of families setting up complicated stage sets throughout the city of Florence, with theatrical productions prepared and full orchestra scores written to support the night’s supper.

I cannot say I have ever attended an event like this, but I have had a few standout meals, with a variety of beautiful courses that supported hours of relaxed, delightful conversation. To experience this spacious time and soulful food is to feel such care that can be so rare these days. I wish I could take you to Venice and we could sit at this table envisioned by Veronese, but tonight, I’ll start by making a dinner with ingredients that support and nurture, pull out a table cloth, light a candle, and show up with a smile to the people I love most.

And please let me know if you want to share an evening feasting with me and let’s get it on the calendar. I feel like we could all use it! xo

Let’s be clear–the museum curators are not hiding the good stuff amidst junky, substandard art. Anything you come upon in the Louvre is first-rate art and worthy of your time.

And!

I understand the impulse to see really recognizable (“famous”) art objects with your limited time–No shame in that! You can look for 4 artworks from the newsletters in May to tuck away for your next trip to Paris.

1 Famous Artwork from 1 Museum:

Let’s begin with the one and only: this week, we are looking at the Mona Lisa.

Honestly, your best view of the Mona Lisa is here on the computer screen. This painting has top celebrity status and has weathered the life of a hunted starlet: stolen at one point, mocked, loved, commercialized, appeared in major motion pictures, and interpreted ad nauseum. The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci is on display in bulletproof glass, behind a sea of selfie-taking tourists who are checking this painting off the list. Yes, we did it! We saw the Mona Lisa!

I get it, seeing the Mona Lisa can give us a boost–we become part of the club that has done this cultural rite of passage. Cheers!

Beyond “seeing it” in the way it can be seen in the Louvre, I’d love to really look at this painting with you here. This is a portrait by Leonardo da Vinci. Vinci is a small town in Tuscany, not far from the European mainland. In this painting, we can see how Leonardo was influenced by his home at the crossroads of Italy and Northern Europe.

Leonardo is an Italian painter first: the background in the Mona Lisa makes spatial sense–the perspective is structured and scaled beautifully. While the skin of Mona Lisa is a bit abstracted and soft, the proportionality of her anatomy is exquisite and particularly her face feels alive and believable. Leonardo’s mastery of perspective and anatomy reveal his Italian training.

However, we often first think of this painting by its mystery, its moodiness. That Mona Lisa smile, right? By using layers of oil paint, a type of paint developed in Northern Europe, Leonardo is able to give the face of Mona Lisa dimension, personality, and yes, an enigmatic expression.

Leonardo also adopted a new kind of portrait from Northern art–the Italian portrait was always the profile view, but Mona Lisa is painted in the Northern Way, facing us with her face in the ¾ view.

Mona Lisa is seated in front of 2 cropped columns, placing her in a covered porch space. Behind her is a winding, wild landscape that looks more martian than Tuscan, and Leonardo adds his signature “sfumato”, again, the layering of oil paint to give the scene moody, atmospheric haze.

So, sure, this painting shows us an interesting stew of Italian and Northern European influences. But the reason we particularly care about the Mona Lisa is because Leonardo does all of this masterfully, while also capturing in her posture and expression what she is willing and not willing to reveal. THAT is what has made this painted woman iconic.

Art Historians have identified Mona Lisa as a woman named Lisa Gherandini del Giocondo, sitting for a portrait commissioned by her wealthy merchant husband in anticipation of the birth of one of their five children. In the end, Mona Lisa never got her portrait–we think that Leonardo loved this painting too much to let it go and it stayed in his possession. Leonardo lived under the patronage of the French royal family during his final years, and ultimately the Mona Lisa painting was purchased by King Francis I in France after Leonardo’s death in 1518. Interestingly, Napoleon Bonaparte hung this painting in his bedroom for a stretch, the painting went on permanent public display in the Louvre in 1797.

Cultural Riches

In the past, I’ve rolled my eyes at the incredible level of celebrity surrounding the Mona Lisa–there are many artworks in that very gallery that are equally worthy of our attention. The art snob in me points out that this painting is great, but not Leonardo’s best.

As I’ve grown wiser, I see the draw of this painting to be quite wonderful. What thing in the world has the same power to motivate people from all the world to pay the money, take the time, navigate the travel, and go into the heart of an art museum, just to be near a thing– the real thing! Bulletproof glass and all!

As humans, it is grounding to know that there are shared known entities that we can count on, familiar faces, familiar voices, written words that connect our hearts. While I don’t closely follow the royal family in England, I was a bit unmoored when Queen Elizabeth II died. She was a global fixture for decades, it felt as if she had always been in the mix.

Perhaps you have noticed the yellow hue to Mona Lisa’s skin tone–this color was not original to the painting, but rather, the experimental varnish used by Leonardo caused an evolving color change on her skin. There is a second Mona Lisa, a copy painted by a student who went brushstroke for brushstroke, simultaneously painting alongside Leonardo, albeit without the varnish. We see what must have been the original color on this copied painting and it is jarring–the pink of her skin is much too pink! In fact, it all feels too garish. Conservators have opted not to clean the original painting and reverse the discoloration, because they know that we all like to see the version we know. We celebrate what is most familiar.

As I think about the famous things, faces, voices, words in the world, I’m committing to support the celebrities that bring out our best. Thanks, Taylor Swift, the Statue of Liberty, the Muppets, Harry Potter, and all the whole-hearted cultural phenomena that bring us humans together in a big way. We’ll try to not freak out too much if we see you in person.

*The Louvre recently had a virtual-reality exhibit of the Mona Lisa—it is an amazing concept!