A trip to the Museum of Modern Art and I realized my position in terms of appreciating art or rather, modern art. Who wouldn't want to view the great pieces of art by the Picassos, Van Goghs and the like. So was I, all set to experience the beauty of the world famous paintings at this museum.
But something seemed wrong the moment I saw the first piece of art. It was very bright, colorful but somehow I couldn't make out what it was. I tried to read the name of the painting and made a valiant attempt to co-relate the title to the painting. Even then, nothing seemed right. Little did I realize that this was the first to come from among the tens of "modern art" paintings that would flood my day and leave me in a confused state for the next couple of days.
Painting after painting, each one was different, each one was unique in the way the title and the painting were unrelated (or may be related). One of the names said, 'A little girl' and I had to use all my stereoscopic vision only to realize that I am not qualified to find a girl in that picture. Solving fourth degree polynomial equations was lot easier :(. At least now I know I am an illiterate in the subject of "art". I should have known it when I almost failed in my drawing class, but somehow I wasn’t sure then. Now I am.
I could not just accept it and get out of the place. Instead I chose to try and understand. I stood staring for longer times at pieces of art by familiar artists. Picasso kept me standing for long, for one, he had a large number of paintings under his name and the other, because I knew his name the most.
I guess it was for people like me that some of the paintings had an explanation too, besides having a title. But that didn’t help me either. It added to more confusion. One of them said "The blue square in the middle of the painting reflects the human sub-conscious". I said to myself "What?!! how??!! and How did you know??!!!" and all this added to more confusion so I moved along.
The terms "surreal", "abstract expressionism" and "layers of creativity" were found all over on the description plates. How a particular painting was special because the artist spilled over ink on a flat canvas 'uniformly' so that spilled ink created a sense of beauty. ??!!??? Everything pointed to the same words - "Art is not for you" and I had to accept it. :)
But one thing was fascinating. How different objects intercepted each other in some paintings, yet could be clearly distinguished. Even I could appreciate some, I thought ! May be if I tried.
So I kept moving until I came across two kids around four years old looking at one of these paintings and trying to draw them in their own drawing book, with their teacher beside them, guiding. I could not believe my eyes. At that age I would rather be happy trying to draw a frog and ending up drawing a lizard, leave alone attempting to reproduce a modern-art painting. But what were they trying to draw? There were no distinguishable objects in the painting except for a surreal idea flowing between colors of different variety. Guess that's what separates me from budding-artists, I thought, and this time I realized it was time to leave.
After the trip, even chess board seems to be a wonderful painting to me :) May be the designer of the board had something creative in his mind too !!!
5 comments:
oh so you didn't know about the significance behind the chess board's design? you poor soul!!
see it's all in black and white - which in itself represents the entire universe in all its glory [i'm an ardent believer of dichotomy]. so there's no place for any shade of gray.
the next spellbindingly beautiful thing about it is that you don't have all the black squares together and the white squares together. if you did, you would have only one black rectangle and only one white rectangle [it might be a square too but a square IS a rectangle right?] but that's another story. the important thing is that they are mixed up in an extremely symmetric fashion, representing the fact that good and evil in the universe is sooooo intermingled with each other, but if you possess the right vision, you can spot the crisp boundaries between them.
and then, reinforcing the idea of dichotomy (for regular good people), two sides of the board will have a white square on your extreme right and a black one on your extreme left (white=good=right and black=bad=left). of course the other two sides will have a black square on your right and a white one on your left - this is either for south-pawed good people or for regular bad people. see the beauty of it all? the first arrangement also doubles for south-pawed bad people. innt it amazing?
moving along, the board by itself holds such deep meaning. however, that is not the main purpose of the board. it is essentially a place (universe) for a game (life). and when you get engrossed in this game called life, you sometimes tend to forget the black and white squares and treat them all as squares. this represents the phases of life where you judgement isn't sound. you can only win the game by knowing exactly which pieces are on black and which are on white - just the way in which you can gain an upper hand in the life game.
so the next time you look at a chessboard, adoooooooooooore it!!
arey somavaram prodduna proddunne nene dorikinna bey neeku !! ee vidhamga kuda raayochu ani naaku ippude telisindhi.
Well, clearly I am a pour soul. If only I could understand all this and similar things mentioned on the explanation boards, I would as well have spent the rest of my weekend admiring and adoring all those creative paintings too. Guess some people are meant to be that way, poor souls.
But for all I know, the designer was clearly color blind, if not dichotomic, because there are not only shades of gray in this 'real' world, but lots of colors as well. Colors, as varied and vibrant as they can be. Guess he too was a poor soul incapable of understanding the significance of all these colors. Guess some people were meant to be that way too.
After all, like white squares exist, so do black squares. Don't they.
Well said, Mr. -w.
I think -W (white) has irresistible penchant for demeaning Black.He has shown it by correlating black with evil,bad etc.
I wonder why some ppl always black given stepmother treatment over white???????
My assesment is that everyone who relates with white is weak and is always under the constant apprehension of being overwhelmed by black.Mix black with white ...what happens...black simply engulfs white...So white always tries to winover black by mudslinging it.
Longlive black..
here goes nothing . . . . . :)
it is not i who has correlated black with evil and bad. every single culture that has ever existed on the planet that we tread on has had this custom of associating black with evil and white with good [on a side note, i'm pretty sure it wasn't racism]. if you search realllllly hard, you might find a couple that maybe did the opposite but they're probably satanic cults anyway, so this is a good thing because whatever they do holds the opposite meaning in the 'righteous world', again making white the good color and black the evil one.
even when you take the science behind colors, white represents the presence of all colors while black represents the absence of anything at all . . . void . . . nothingness!! so basically, there is no such thing as 'black' - it is just a name given to the absence of substance. you talk about being overwhelmed by black? you can't overwhelm anything with emptiness.
when you mix black and white, the outcome understandably depends on the quantities involved, but assuming they're in equal quantities, you will end up with gray. this is because white sacrifices its purity in order to bring black out of its eternally doomed destitution - a task so unthinkably impossible, and yet made possible solely due to the utterly impeccable virtue of white.
even when you say that white always tries to mudsling black, the true intention is to give it some color, any color. short-sighted people tend to miss grasping that.
your malinformed association of white with weakness is not uncommon. history has mistaken kindness, forgiveness and sacrificing qualities for weakness many a time and has paid the price on every single occasion. learn from history before it's too late. respect white, or else you too will be lost in the sands of time . . . . . . the black sands of time.
black will certainly live long - eternally long
On a completely different note, I think this topic has various angles to it - science, philosophy and belief. :)
Talking about beliefs -
I guess most of the assumptions attaching black to evil is based on beliefs establised by earlier generations. Just because some night-fearing individual told their kids that "nights are dangerous, black is evil" and it continued onto generations and generations, may be, it does not mean that black should always be the word for 'evil'. How many assumptions so far done by earlier generations have been disproved by science or vetoed as meaningless??
Talking about sacrifice -
If what we mean by sacrificing is giving away some of your original properties, wouldn't turning gray mean black has sacrificed its "no color" property and acquired some color thus sacrificing what it represents?
All I want to say is, if only colors could speak, [now I am considering the philosophical sense, where black is a color, though its not scientifically a color ;) ], wouldn't they fight for equal rights. :) May be this also shows how the culture-makers have always thought in one direction. That is not uncommon in this world, where people would happily believe that the earth was flat for centuries together and finally stone the guy who wanted to tell the truth. Beliefs are so strong !!
It is the existence of the opposite that makes the entity more worthy :)
Post a Comment