Over Spring Break I went with my mother to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and
saw the Picasso exhibit. I paid $15 to see these paintings and sketches and sculptures
from this once in a lifetime painter…and I was completely disappointed. As I walked
through the gallery it was completely packed with hundreds of people. I would only get
to see the individual artwork for about 10 seconds before I was shuffled to the next one.
Everyone was really loud and just ruined part of the experience. I guess it goes back
to what Schopenhauer said; I just wasn’t in the right state to be receptive to the art. It
didn’t have the same effect on me as it could have. One place I did find beauty however
was in the Pablo Picasso quotes that covered all the walls. In some of the rooms I didn’t
even end up looking at the art hanging in frames, rather, I just kept reading his quotes
and thinking about them. My favorite was “art is a lie that makes us realize truth.” I
thought this was perfectly aligned with our class so I scribbled it down on the cover of
my guide. With this quote in mind I started to look at some of his art a little differently,
particularly “Massacre in
minutes, discovering more and more about it as the time passed. Obviously, the picture
is not real, nor is it realistically depicting the scene (the figures are oddly shaped and
distorted) but the meaning behind the painting, what it’s trying to say became more and
more clear. Though the physical art was in a sense a lie, the art made me realize the truth.
I guess this painting and realization was worth the $15.
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