In my guest room, there’s a framed poster from an exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art that happened back in 1992. The exhibit was called “Corot to Monet: The Rise of Landscape Painting in France.”It was a very impressive exhibit that showed how artists begin going out of the studio to paint, and were confronted with the realities of light, sky, trees, flowers, and fields.These artists created an entirely new genre of art: that of the landscape. Among other results, it helped usher in the impressionists and all that came from that.
I don’t have the poster solely because of the quality of the exhibit. I remember I went to this show with my mom and dad. My mom liked it and my dad was ok with it.He himself liked to paint landscapes with trees and fields and creeks, but that’s not the reason that he went. He didn’t go because he had an interest in Corot or Monet or the proto-impressionists or the evolution of landscape painting. He went because he knew I wanted to go.
I think there are a couple of worthwhile things we can take from this.One is that seeing art is a social occasion. I’ve walked through many exhibits by myself through the years at this art museum or that, and when I go solo, I’ve noticed that I’ve often written a column about it or done a show like this about it. When I go see an exhibit with someone, which doesn’t happen very often, I may not write about it as much. But then again, I will have experienced it with someone already.If I go by myself, I have to come back and tell you about it.That’s the communal nature of the arts.It’s not that it’s not fun to go solo, but you miss out on something when you do.
Another thing is that my wanting to go see art in this case was supported by someone who didn’t really want to go see it but was willing to because of our relationship. Again, it underlines the social and communal capacity that art has. Not to get maudlin about it, but the nicest thing about this poster is that it reminds me of my dad and I love it, and I love the memory of the exhibit because of that.
Of all the exhibits I could’ve taken him to, a landscape painting exhibit was probably the safest. Landscapes generally do what my dad thought painting should do.If an impressionist landscape was a touch too abstract, he could squint a little bit, and it would still look like a landscape. My dad was one of the very many people who didn’t have much use for modern art.But he went because I wanted to.I’ll never forget that.
