The Manneporte
One of the recent movies I've rented from the evil empire of NetFlix was Baraka; it's a highly visual documentary, largely dominated by ethereal music. I'd seen it years and years ago in some music class. I don't remember a thing about the class itself, but I've remembered this movie since then. I put it in tonight as I was doing random cleanup/dishwashing/general maintenance of apartment.
The images themselves were beautiful; there were these stunning vistas and monasteries and mountains and mist and volcanoes and women at the market. The music itself was soothing and empyrean.
And I turned it off after about twenty minutes.
Because it was too beautiful. Too vibrant, too aesthetic, too agile in the camera shots. It was the perfect view of earth and its people, and something in me found it so disturbing I couldn't watch any more.
I felt similarly about a Monet exhibit that my brother and I took my mother to over Christmas break. The exhibit was packed, and well arranged; Monet's work was displayed chronologically, appropriately, and viewed with rapt attention by the myriad group of visitors.
I hated it. I hated the beautiful water lilies and the beach scenes and the houses, all done in this lovely soft light and bold colors. I don't have the technical know-how to give a more explicitly artistic critique. But what I know was what I felt, and it was deeply unsettling.
My mother, on the other hand, loved it, and that was our gift to her, and I would never detract from her appreciation. So I wandered past landscapes and portraits and I could feel her delight in the way the light hit everything, lit it up with pinks and purples and the occasional bold red.
The single painting that captivated me was called "The Manneporte." I stood there for about twenty minutes, pulled by the power of it. There was light still, but it roughed over the rocks and the sea was more dangerous. The colors themselves churned more, and there were two figures standing beneath the Manneporte, so tiny you could barely make them out. And it was so stunning it took my breath away.
Compared to that Manneporte painting, Baraka was too synthetic, too contrived. The colors were too bright and clean-cut, the people too poised or aware. My life doesn't look like that, and it never has. I don't mean to make this dramatic, as though I have some drastically dark soul or I can't stand things to be warm and soft. I guess I have the opposite of OCD. I want things to be unaligned. I want them to be slightly dingy or chapped by wind. My life is not water lilies. It is not beach scenes with parasols and farmhouses near flowering cliffs.
There is such a thing, I think, as being too beautiful. Mary Oliver calls it a madness born of too much light and I think I understand what that might mean. Beauty, as I see it, should pierce you and hold you and remind you that whether darkness or light, life is made of grief as much as love, and we carry on and carry on in our confusion and our loneliness and our hope.
The images themselves were beautiful; there were these stunning vistas and monasteries and mountains and mist and volcanoes and women at the market. The music itself was soothing and empyrean.
And I turned it off after about twenty minutes.
Because it was too beautiful. Too vibrant, too aesthetic, too agile in the camera shots. It was the perfect view of earth and its people, and something in me found it so disturbing I couldn't watch any more.
I felt similarly about a Monet exhibit that my brother and I took my mother to over Christmas break. The exhibit was packed, and well arranged; Monet's work was displayed chronologically, appropriately, and viewed with rapt attention by the myriad group of visitors.
I hated it. I hated the beautiful water lilies and the beach scenes and the houses, all done in this lovely soft light and bold colors. I don't have the technical know-how to give a more explicitly artistic critique. But what I know was what I felt, and it was deeply unsettling.
My mother, on the other hand, loved it, and that was our gift to her, and I would never detract from her appreciation. So I wandered past landscapes and portraits and I could feel her delight in the way the light hit everything, lit it up with pinks and purples and the occasional bold red.
The single painting that captivated me was called "The Manneporte." I stood there for about twenty minutes, pulled by the power of it. There was light still, but it roughed over the rocks and the sea was more dangerous. The colors themselves churned more, and there were two figures standing beneath the Manneporte, so tiny you could barely make them out. And it was so stunning it took my breath away.
Compared to that Manneporte painting, Baraka was too synthetic, too contrived. The colors were too bright and clean-cut, the people too poised or aware. My life doesn't look like that, and it never has. I don't mean to make this dramatic, as though I have some drastically dark soul or I can't stand things to be warm and soft. I guess I have the opposite of OCD. I want things to be unaligned. I want them to be slightly dingy or chapped by wind. My life is not water lilies. It is not beach scenes with parasols and farmhouses near flowering cliffs.
There is such a thing, I think, as being too beautiful. Mary Oliver calls it a madness born of too much light and I think I understand what that might mean. Beauty, as I see it, should pierce you and hold you and remind you that whether darkness or light, life is made of grief as much as love, and we carry on and carry on in our confusion and our loneliness and our hope.