Tate Modern

My life was changed by the Tate Modern Art Museum. Honestly, I didn't expect to have the rich experience that I did. I walked past works by Jackson Pollock, Matisse, Monet, Picasso, and the like and found the experience quite emotionally exhausting. I sat in a room with six large paintings by Gerhard Richter for about thirty minutes, completely enthralled by what I was seeing. My hand started itching for a pen so I pulled out a notebook and let my thoughts spill out onto the page. I'll spare you most of the introspective musings but I will tell you this: I left that gallery with a much greater understanding of what art is but, at the same time, more confused than ever.
Modern art is infuriating. Really, nothing is more frustrating than not "getting it." It's right there, you see what everyone else sees, but you don't understand. Understand...What does that word even mean? It's a picture, what's to "understand?" Well, why did someone paint it? Why is it hanging here? And why can't I seem to get off this bench? But what happens when we really understand it? I suppose it's a meeting of me and the work I'm trying to understand but which one surrenders? Is it an effort to rationally compartmentalize what I'm observing? Does everything have to fit within the framework that I've set up for myself? Is "understanding" that fitting? No wonder I feel like I don't "understand..."
Or is it different? Is it acceptance? Is it a a bending, an adjustment of what I know, what I'm capable of, and the fitting of my own mind to the reality presented in front of me? Do I appreciate art because it speaks to an existing piece of me and reinforces that concept of who I am? Or is it because it is outside of me and I have to reach. Or, perhaps, I don't think I can reach that far. But I stretch, I grow, I become more.
It's absurd for me to assume that I can take everything in, that everything I see will fit into the entity that is Matthew. How arrogant! Understand? How can I? I haven't breathed the artist's breath or been through what brought him to this canvas. So how can I get anything out of what I see? Do I become him, as best I can? Is this why he created this? Is this why I create? Is this why God creates? Did the artist hope I would find a piece of myself in this piece or did he hope that I would find a piece of him? Can I find that, make it a part of myself?
That's it! That's why I go to art museums. That's why I go to the theatre. That's why I love experiencing and creating art! I become more. And when I create, I hopefully share something with the hopeless kids who sit, glued to benches, enraptured by the wonders they behold and infuriated by what is just beyond their grasp.