Marooned at the Party

Written while sitting alone, in a borrowed house, staring at art while waiting to be settled.

We've all heard it before. Art helps you see the world in wondrous ways, enriching your life beyond measure. Of course, that's if you "get" art. I'm no connoisseur, but I know what I like and don't like. I've never been a fan of recent (much after 1920) art. I always find it too abstract, too cliquish, too snobby. As if the artist is sending messages only to other artists or their sycophants.

I prefer my art to be much more immediate and recognizable. Consequently, I tend to wander through galleries quickly looking for something understandably dramatic, beautiful, or whimsical. It only takes a moment to know if something connects with me or not. It's a rare piece that can do that, but I've been fortunate to find a few.

One of my favorite paintings is Marooned by Howard Pyle.

Is he crying, praying, or pondering?

I remember when I first saw it, hanging in its home at the Delaware Museum of Art. As I strolled through the gallery I remember having to turn a corner before I came upon the Pyle pile. As I turned, my eyes were drawn upward. Centered high above my head, but so large that it dominated its companions, was Marooned. It didn't move me. Not physically anyway. 

Instead it held me, suspended in its orbit. My heart was beating, my breathe was shallow, and I was speechless. That last is a trite phrase in the art world, but it was true this time. I couldn't say anything. It was as if I was strangled by its screaming loneliness. I felt like a toddler who could only point at what he wanted.

Fortunately, the gift shop carried the painting in poster size and I took mine home, framed it, and hung it in my living room. People would comment that it was a depressing piece and ask why would I hang it so prominently in my home. But I loved it. I used to say it was me, or at least it was how I felt much of the time. This of course didn't add to my friends' comfort with it. Only one person thought it wasn't a grim piece, but she was crazy (I didn't know that at the time, but her reaction should have been a clue).

When I went off to grad school I took it with me. Having it up made my temporary apartment feel more like my home. One of my classmates, who had become a close friend during the semester, commented several times on how much she liked it. I told her the story of when I first saw it and we talked about how it seemed to fit our individual experiences. When I packed up to go home for the my distance-learning semesters, I gave it to her. It seemed only right to share.

It was another three years before I made it back to the Delaware and got a new print. It took another three years before I unrolled it, framed it, and hung it up again.

At the same time I rehung Marooned, I unearthed another painting that also arrested me, El Jaleo, by John Singer Sargent. 

I wonder if the empty chair is for me.

El Jaleo is the opposite of Marooned. It's full of people, music, and motion. I first saw it when my grad school class visited the Gardner Museum in Boston. It's huge, taking up an entire wall, which makes the figures seem almost life-size. As we stopped to look, my classmates commented on the colors, the composition, the scale. I hardly noticed what they were saying. I love flamenco and this was the first time something mute had so wonderfully expressed it. When they noticed me staring in rapture and smiling at the painting, they asked what I thought. "What a great party!" I said, stopping myself from playing air guitar in time with the painting. Naturally I came home with the print, which was only poster size but better than nothing (besides what wall could I hang even a half-size print on?).

Unlike Marooned no one commented on El Jaleo. It garnered neither censure nor praise. Most people just passed over it. Perhaps they figured it was part of my fascination with flamenco. Perhaps they didn't see it at all.

Despite their differences, I have always hung both of them in the same room, sometimes together on a wall, sometimes across from each other. It never occurred to me until just now why I did that. No matter where they are, they are the visual bookends of my life: the silent loneliness and the raucous party, my need for solitude and my desire to be expressive. These paintings speak (sing, in one case) to me in ways precious few others have and I get it. Perhaps best of all, I don't need an art history degree or a critic's eye to appreciate that.