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Displaying Beauty
A few years ago, I was in San Francisco with my
mom.
Amid our day of walking around the city (before my
legs felt ready to snap off) we journeyed into the all-
impressive MOMA—or Museum of Modern Art to
those not brushed up on acronyms. With multiple
stories and massive, monochromatic walls, the
building was clearly meant to display colorful art of
all shapes and sizes. And, as we wandered about, we
saw just that.
The two of us took our time as we gazed up at giant
sculptures and studied small, framed pieces. Artists
ranged from those I’d never heard of to people like
Matisse and Frida Kahlo. And as we did our slow
little museum shuffle past the wide range of
exhibits, I was noting to myself the pieces that I
really liked…and the ones that I absolutely hated.
Straying a bit from my mom’s path, I made my way
to the corner of yet another large room. My eyes
immediately focused in on the display aptly named
“White Painting 3 Panel,” which consisted of—you
guessed it—three tall panels, each painted white. I
stood there, scanning the endless bumps of canvas
for a patch—a speck!—of color…but alas, it was
never to be found.
I was flabbergasted. Enraged. How could this, a piece
that would take me, an 11-year-old, about an hour
to make, be displayed so proudly in a well-respected
museum? How could something so boring even
qualify as art? I viewed (and still view) the “painting”
as an example of sheer laziness.
But why, then, did people care enough to put it up in
the MOMA?
Someone must have seen beauty in those three
panels.
Everyone has his or her own opinion of what makes
something beautiful. In the case of “White Painting,”
it may have been in the extreme understatement of
it all that people found charm, or perhaps its clean,
polished look. Although I personally don’t find it to
be all that eye-appealing, that’s not to say it isn’t.
For me, it’s vibrant colors that do it. I’ll go outside
after it rains, when the sky is still somewhat
overcast, and just stand there noticing the rich green
painted on each leaf, and the fantastic pink
blooming in our flowers. Everything is suddenly
alive. Fresh. Stunning.
To have such different views of something that, let’s
face it, never vacates our minds, is wonderful.
Someone may pick up a rock and think, “What am I
gonna do with this boring thing?” but a geologist
may come up behind him and see something
gorgeous in that piece of stone that took the world
so long to make. Similarly, a pregnant woman may
feel pudgy as her profile widens, but her husband
will see the radiant woman he fell in love with.
We tend to go through life like it’s a museum: we
judge nearly everything we see and leave nothing
without a price tag attached to it. Beauty, though, is
what makes us all just stop. And enjoy. With the
right person, we are able to see the good in even a
speck of dust.
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