Upon reading Joseph Campbell’s explanation of the “the trick for the artist,” I learned the reason for a familiar pattern of mine that, pattern or not, I had questioned. He writes, “Now the trick for the artist is to present his material so that it doesn’t put a ring around itself and stand there as separate from you, the observer. And that Aha! that you get when you see an artwork that really hits you is, ‘I am that.’ I am the radiance and the energy that is talking to me through this painting. … It’s identification.”*
In the summer of 1979, I took a daily early morning Amtrak train from western Massachusetts to New York City to two classes at the HB Studio* in Greenwich Village. Afterwards, in my free time, I went uptown to visit museums. My favorite was the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)* on West 53rd Street. After my first visit, when I had discovered that only two paintings deeply affected me, I went straight to those then left (for other activities on my excursion). Climbing MoMA’s broad stairs to the second floor, I made my way to an impressionist* painting, vertical in shape, the approximate size of a person’s height and width, of an open window with a chair to the right and a bureau to the left where a vase on top held rosy pink flowers. Through the window was a greenery of trees and a bush with splashes of more rosy pink flowers. As I stood gazing for long moments, I felt as if at any one of those moments, I would decide to go out into the cool greenery. Next, I went up to the third floor to a big room of pale walls suffused with window light, where, seated on a padded bench, I faced a triad of very large watercolor canvasses of Claude Monet’s* “Water Lilies.”
In the summer of 1979, I took a daily early morning Amtrak train from western Massachusetts to New York City to two classes at the HB Studio* in Greenwich Village. Afterwards, in my free time, I went uptown to visit museums. My favorite was the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)* on West 53rd Street. After my first visit, when I had discovered that only two paintings deeply affected me, I went straight to those then left (for other activities on my excursion). Climbing MoMA’s broad stairs to the second floor, I made my way to an impressionist* painting, vertical in shape, the approximate size of a person’s height and width, of an open window with a chair to the right and a bureau to the left where a vase on top held rosy pink flowers. Through the window was a greenery of trees and a bush with splashes of more rosy pink flowers. As I stood gazing for long moments, I felt as if at any one of those moments, I would decide to go out into the cool greenery. Next, I went up to the third floor to a big room of pale walls suffused with window light, where, seated on a padded bench, I faced a triad of very large watercolor canvasses of Claude Monet’s* “Water Lilies.”
MONET’S WATER LILIES
After
viewing Brancusi and Picasso,
I
climb to MoMA’s third floor. Manhattan
is at
my back. I am a suburban fish
come
to visit great art. Sounds of car
horns,
accelerating buses, and strange
voices
are the cost of the trip.
I put
notebook aside and step into an aqua
boat
in the dappled light of Giverny.
I
listen to water plap, hear bee hum,
watch
insects skitter over the palish pond.
I lean
toward the liquid, lucent pastels
and
become one with the approachable
calm of water lilies.
My realization is, “At times we are transported into another reality, as if invited.”
* Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Word, (Novato, CA: New
World), 48.
* HB Studio, the Herbert Berghof Studio, in Greenwich Village, New York, offers professional
training in the performing arts.
* The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) opened in New York City in 1929. Designed by Japanese
architect, Yoshio Taniguchi, it is one of the most influential museums of modern art in the world.
* Claude Monet, 1840–1926, is considered to be one of the founders of French Impressionism,
which expresses the painter’s own perceptions of nature in the moment rather than rendering an
actual depiction of it.
My realization is, “At times we are transported into another reality, as if invited.”
* Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Word, (Novato, CA: New
World), 48.
* HB Studio, the Herbert Berghof Studio, in Greenwich Village, New York, offers professional
training in the performing arts.
* The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) opened in New York City in 1929. Designed by Japanese
architect, Yoshio Taniguchi, it is one of the most influential museums of modern art in the world.
* Claude Monet, 1840–1926, is considered to be one of the founders of French Impressionism,
which expresses the painter’s own perceptions of nature in the moment rather than rendering an
actual depiction of it.