Assignment: Response to the Art Museum

 

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Response to the Art Institute

 

I lost my group early on and so, for the next two hours, I wandered alone up and down the sparkling new modern wing. It began as a campaign to find a piece I that liked, one I could write a journal entry about.  But as I wandered up and down the hallways, nothing really spoke to me. And so I continued, covering almost the entire modern wing, liking some but always pressing on.

 

In retrospect, my strategy was completely wrong. I probably could have written about several of the pieces that I quite liked but I had developed a rhythm at that point of moving on after a quick survey. When I got home, I realized that foggy impressions of several paintings remained, but with the memories of only a minute or two of scrutiny, I didn’t have enough substance to write about it.

 

Only one painting stayed in my mind; a familiar friend, one I know well and visit each time I go to the art museum. I first discovered the painting when I was in Chicago for Model United Nations in High School. After seeing it, I sat through a council of African States (I think I was a representative of Mauritania that year) and wrote the best poem I have written in my life.

 

What haunted me first was the correlation between the date (1916) and the subject, a beautiful dancer wrapped in lace. World War I was ravaging Europe when Goncharova painted this. In the caption, I learned she had spent the war in Spain, making costumes for a ballet.

 

On Seeing Spanish Dancer (1916) by Natalia Goncharova at the Chicago Art Institute

 

While Europa was soaking herself in red,

red blood,

she painted white lace.

In a picturesque Spanish villa

she studied lacy intricacies—

woven flowers and

patterns of tiny holes—

the perfection of beautiful texture.

She couldn’t watch Europa tear herself apart in the mud

so she pulled the lacy curtains shut

and instead

watched Spanish dancers

whirl and twirl

whirl and twirl

oblivious.