by betsy aaron
Yesterday I went to see Van Gogh And The Colors Of The Night at MOMA. I wanted to be amazed but I was prepared for the possibility that the show would be cornball. I’ve been over-exposed to too many poor quality reproductions of Van Gogh in the course of my life. Recently, I spent hours of sessions drooling in my dentist’s chair, high on gas, contemplating Van Gogh’s sunflowers, the poster, without ever attaining a state of aesthetic bliss. You don’t have to read Walter Benjamin’s essay on art in the age of reproduction to know that a poster got no soul.
Since I am a member, I did not have to wait for a scheduled time but I did have to peer through slivers of rare negative space in a crowd of people who, on a Monday afternoon, were there to seriously look.
I never expected to feel overwhelmed, moved to tears actually, by the paintings: they actually sparkle with star power.
Despite the imminent disappearance of Coney Island as we know it, if you live in NY, the rollercoaster experience will always be part of (inner) daily life. One moment you are a skeptic, the next a sucker, the next a zealot. Then you’re over it. Now you’re on to the next thing. You want the promised experience, yet you half-expect to be duped and that’s because there is a denser population of marketing whizzes here than anywhere else on the planet. (Mea culpa, I am a copywriter.) They (we) know how to steal your attention and inflame you with a desire that must be gratified. If you disregard their efforts, you risk closing yourself off to something that might really enrich your life. Trust me, this show is no museum marketing stunt. Well, it is, of course, but it’s no mere marketing stunt.
I spent the whole night thinking about the word crepuscular. It sounds biological, like crustacean, rather than visual. It sounds ugly like macular but it means magic, the light of transition between day and evening.
As a teenager, eager for re-invention, I gave myself the middle name of Dusk and when I graduated from college, Betsy Dusk Aaron is what was printed on my diploma, a source of embarrassment therafter. But now I remember why I chose that name and how much I love the time of in- between.
The day before I saw Van Gogh’s Starry Night, I saw Morandi’s still-lifes at The Met. It was a meditative experience, the palettes soft and warm, objects without borders from place and space. Repetition, obsession, arrangement, re-arrangement. Morandi was no materialist or collector of objets. Simple forms+paint +his visionary genius= another, a different experience of magic, the antidote to the rollercoaster, a sublime satisfying stillness that exalts the every day.
Last week, Maurice Sendak was honored on the occasion of his 80th but the event was sold out– I blame Meryl Streep for being scheduled to do a reading. I often think of Maurice Sendak when I watch my bedroom curtain blow in and out; I know this is how he spends his insomniac nights. I used to imagine how the experience of his waking nights inspired The Night Kitchen. But now I wonder if The Night Kitchen might also have been inspired by Van Gogh’s Night Cafe.
Go see Van Gogh. You will have an actual, direct, singular, unique, unmediated experience. You will be transformed by Van Gogh’s vision of the crepuscular.
bougainvillea
