BYU Museum of Art visit

I had a good time during the class' visit to the MOA this last Wednesday. I learned a bit about myself...and a bit about religious art.

See, I thought I loathed humanities. It gives me the heebie jeebies when a person starts asking about "what this picture means." This is particlarly true when they proceed to take a bronze relief and invoke the imagery of the cross to carefully come to the conclusion that one figure is representative of divinity while I intrinsically held approximately half of that notion. The figure's position and poise conveyed power and influence on deity scale, while the second figure's positioning conveyed a lesser degre of existence. Why would we reach out blindly, grab some symbol with merely geometric applicability, and proceed to rigorously build these impressions ex nihilo into discrete facts when I already had them well in hand?

(Please please please realize that the above passage makes some attempt to lampoon my former way of thought!)

Heh. So I didn't like that bit. As the conversation progressed, a comment was made: whatever the original artist did or did not intend (which I was handling internally as canonical), we can take what we see and feel in the art and use it as a way to examine ourselves. Self reflection and examination; this process of conversing was a somewhat crude instrument to promote them. I think.

Also, if one wants to absorb much of the available imagery, it helps to start from small quanta and slowly iterate through all of the possible combinations of small interpretations. This eventually turns into the part I really like: the pieces come together into a sort of story or explanation, and as pieces are noticed and interpreted variously the bigger story changes or illumines accordingly.

So, did that last paragraph confuse you? Heh. Me too. That last sentence was way too long. This is the other tidbit I learned about myself. I am too vague. I will stumble all over myself and try to describe the description. Once, during the tour, I volunteered a comment pointing out one specific aspect of a painting. Our guide then asked, "So...what does that mean?" I was caught completely flat-footed. Absolutely astonied. Instead of being the kid that is too good for this, I was suddenly the kid who knows less than half of the game and just tried a move that is 'dumb.'

I notice, now, that the idea of challenging one's self with questions developed from religious art is actual a neat idea. It is similar to reading scriptures: the questions I need to ask are not necessarily inherent in the art, but they are, I think, inherent in my thinking. Thus, analyzing it doesn't evoke what the artist wrought, but instead invokes the process of internalization.

Anyhow, I learned a) that I CAN benefit from introspection from the Dreaded Examination by Humanties Attitude (which isn't so bad after all) and b) that said Examination "Isn't So Bad." I'm glad I went.