By Arthur Leggett
If you really want to experience “the spirit” of any city, take a walking tour to explore the city’s people and scenic landscape, also spend as much time as you can in local museums. Recently, while walking around Harmonie Park in downtown Detroit, Michigan I was arrested by the store sign: “Everything is Art.”
This sign got me to thinking about two merely philosophical questions: “Is Everything Art?” and “Is Art Everything?” The assertion that everything can be defined as “art” cheapens the great genius of authentic art. Who would consider garbage, art? Are colors thrown here and there on cotton canvas, art? Art is not everything, and everything is not art.
Art is more than mere expert brush techniques and beautiful illustrations of visions from an artist's mind. Real art brings great meaning to our lives. Let’s not allow charlatans to obfuscate the objective meaning of art, so that they can cash in with faux art.
Although I am not an expert on art--I only took a few art history classes in college--I appreciate great art. Since my college days, my taste in aesthetics has been refined from being a frequent visitor to many of America’s obscure museums.
From getting out and visiting the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico to the Seattle Art Museum in Seattle, WA to the Columbus Museum of Art in Columbus, OH to the American Museum of Natural History, The Cloisters and The Studio Museum in Harlem in New York City and the many fabulous museums in between Mission Street and Madison Avenue, I sharpened my eye for great works of art.
Greatness is rare. That's why I value and appreciate greatness so much. My personal, favorite great piece of art, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat, resides in gallery 201 at The Art Institute of Chicago.
Over the past ten years, I’ve been known to take pilgrimages to Chicago, no matter where I’ve lived in the United States, to marvel and marvel at Seurat’s great masterpiece. Seurat, a neo-impressionist, layered explosive, colored dots on top of one another while allowing the colors from the underneath the layers to show through each layer of dots. This concept is called pointillism. Put simply, Seurat intelligently turned colored dots into a work of art.
The greatness of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is in Seurat’s double vision. Seurat’s beautiful painting combines laser focus on painstaking details with a parallel vision of the big picture. What a rare feat! Often in life, we hear the bromide that “the devil is in the details.” I believe that nothing could be further from the truth. God resides in the details.
Surely, Seurat was brilliant, talented and great, but the greatest and most masterful painter created YOU. YOU were created lovingly and tenderly. To truly understand the magnificence of YOU, I dare YOU to look in a mirror. As YOU marvel at your beautiful reflection, consider the details involved in creating YOU. YOU are unique, an original.
If you are a lover of details, think about the connected nature of the parts and whole of your body. Your body begins at a chemical level, where there are more than 100 different chemical building blocks. Then, there are the tiny, invisible spheres of matter called atoms. Without getting into the scientific details of Anatomy and Physiology, your uniqueness is a result of an organization of atoms, molecules, macromolecules, 100 billion neurons and 55 trillion synapses.
More simply put, honor the most masterful creator by accepting that YOU are a stunning, detailed piece of art, a priceless masterpiece.
If you are ever in Detroit, I highly recommend that you visit the Motown Museum, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, the Detroit Science Center, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Detroit Historical Museum, the Detroit Children’s Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.
After visiting Detroit museums, you might leave Detroit with a dose of life changing inspiration, and you might discover that Pablo Picasso was right. "Every child is born an artist." ~ Picasso
Last, I'm always open to connecting with kindred spirits and to imbibing disparate ideas. If you are close by, let's meet up for coffee or tea, swap stories, and share common interests. If you're around the world, we can be pen pals. Feel free to drop me an email. I respond to all emails within 36 hours.
Or maybe you found something "wrong" or "misspelled" on my blog? Or perhaps you have a suggestion or question? Tell me I'm wrong. Or tell me I'm right.
Thank you for sharing my writings.
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