Random Exhibits

Braving the chill of this December afternoon, with both my hands stuffed deep in my pea coat pockets, I climbed the steps of the art museum with the words of van Gogh on my mind: "I have nature and art and poetry, and if that’s not enough, what is enough?"

I noticed these words on a website last night, and they are what finally encouraged me to revisit the art museum today. I guess I needed a decent persuasion; it had been much too long since my previous visit, and I’m such that if I don’t get around art sooner or later, something inside me begins to deteriorate. I need art to keep from hearing my inner sorrow too loudly. To quote van Gogh once again, the goal of art is “to console those who are broken by life.” Astute words, but then, van Gogh was living in a reality without radio and rock music and Netflix, so his heart was pure enough to be touched by art, sans all those other diversions. I wonder if we today, being the preoccupied, sidetracked people we are, still possess the same capacity to be stirred or even consoled by a work of art. I’m not speaking for myself, obviously, since I know I possess the capacity (at least somewhat). No, I mean the general rabble, the “everyone else” of the population. The commoners.

Judging by the healthy crowd at the art museum today—a weekday, no less—it would seem that art and the casual viewing of it still ranks near the top of people’s lists of things to do on their day off. It’s possible that many of them were tourists and visiting the St. Louis Art Museum was little more to them than checking an item off the agenda of “places you must visit whenever you find yourself in [fill in the blank].” After all, not everyone who goes to the art museum is an art lover, or even a curious student of it. It could be that the museum itself is the main attraction, and you go just to say you went.

Or perhaps I’m being rather highbrow, as though I’m part of some elite group of loftier-educated literati whose soaring intellects tower over that general rabble I was talking about. I don’t really believe that, no; but I can say that when I visit the art museum, I come for the art, and I found myself wondering today, not for the first time, if everyone else had come for the same reason. In the end, I suppose it doesn’t really matter why people visit a museum, as long as they go.

The building that currently houses the St. Louis Art Museum was erected for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, otherwise known as the 1904 World’s Fair at St. Louis. For that event, it was called the Palace of Fine Arts, and it was just one among a host of other mammoth buildings similarly named (there was the Palace of Agriculture, the Palace of Electricity, the Palace of Manufactures, etc.). By 1905, after the fair ended, nearly all of the structures built for the exposition were dismantled, but the Palace of Fine Arts remained standing. At that time, a gallery already existed called the ST. LOUIS SCHOOL AND MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, housed in a small building downtown. Founded in 1879 under the aegis of Washington University, it relocated to the Palace of Fine Arts in the aftermath of the fair, where it has remained ever since.

I don’t really have much use for the top floor, although the newbie will definitely want to explore it. It’s home to primarily contemporary art, which is by no means void of meaning, content, or intrinsic value—it just doesn’t appeal to me personally. The exception to the top floor is a narrow slice of space tucked away in the back. It houses relics from ancient Egypt and one can find some well-preserved mummies there. The basement is mostly just a collection of goblets, pots and furniture, which is fine, if that’s your bent. But for me, it’s the main floor where most of the best treasures are kept.

Among these are my previously mentioned favorite pieces found within the art museum, as well as several lesser known but excellent works by Rembrandt, Matisse, Gauguin, Monet, Picasso, and van Gogh. The planet’s greatest collection of Max Beckmann works is also kept here, for those who know of him. Several fine medieval (mostly Gothic and Romanesque) pieces are also kept on the main floor, including some exquisite religious triptychs (to which I am partial) and many renderings of the life and death of Jesus Christ (which, even for the atheist, can be wholly appreciated for their historic significance). One can also find a few Baroque and Mannerist paintings as well, if one knows what to look for.

When I arrived at the museum with Vincent van Gogh’s words still in my mind, I went right over to his painting, "Stairway at Auvers," found in the European wing. Painted in July 1890, the same month van Gogh killed himself, this work, though maybe not among his best, is nevertheless worth a viewing for those who visit. Being a lifelong lover of van Gogh (I fell in love with his work long before I knew it was deemed “classy” to do so), I had hitherto adorned my house with some reprints of his best paintings, including "Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers," "The Night Café," and "Café Terrace at Night," the latter being by far my favorite. I could stare at this painting all day and never tire of its romantic pull.

The thing about "Stairway at Auvers" that always grabs my attention is the way all the lines, swirling though they may be, converge at the center, guiding the eye to where an old man is hobbling down some stairs on a cane. I also find it interesting that van Gogh, who was otherwise known for painting the sky, scarcely makes the sky visible here, as though he felt the land itself was closing in on him. I cannot speak to whether anyone else senses this upon seeing "Stairway at Auvers," but I always detect a weighty depression mixed up in this scene. Something about it, to me, is beyond troubling. It’s worth noting that van Gogh was still staying at Auvers-sur-Oise (in northwest Paris) when, on July 27, not long after creating this, he went out into a wheat field (or a barn in that wheat field; details are sketchy) he had recently begun painting and shot himself in the chest with a revolver. The wound itself did little damage, but he died two days later of an ensuing infection. I have not yet been able to confirm whether "Stairway at Auvers" was his absolute last painting, but it was certainly painted in the days leading up to his death. Perhaps I’m projecting (I probably am), but I sense something of that imminent suicide in this painting.

From there, I drifted over to gallery 202, where Giovanni Paolo Panini’s enormous 1731 painting, "Interior of St. Peter’s, Rome," is kept. This work is one of my mandatory stops when I visit the museum, and each time I view it I’m stunned anew by the sheer breadth of vacuous space produced by Panini in this fantastic creation. The painting measures 57 by 89 inches, but the sense of space generated by Panini’s expert use of shadows and converging lines deceives a viewer into believing the scene is thirty times that size; one can almost hear echoes reverberating off the arched chambers that look as though they stretch a mile into the background, where the eye is insistently drawn to the chancel. On the sides, we see marble columns of a burnt red hue, the veins of that stone clearly visible through Panini’s use of differing colors. The effect is absolutely breathtaking. I don’t believe in God, but I understand why some might manufacture a sense of his presence whilst standing in the midst of this basilica, and I say that as one who has never been there. I don’t really need to go there, do I? I have this painting… which I suspect is an equal substitute.

Since I was already in gallery 202, I opted to visit another favorite piece housed in this section: Joseph Wright of Derby’s 1787 work, "Lake with Castle on a Hill." This dark painting has always been somewhat of a mystery to me, primarily because I can’t tell whether Wright was delightedly happy or desperately sad when he painted it. To be sure, the scene depicted doesn’t look happy; it’s murky and brooding and even rather ghostly, and there’s something of Edgar Allan Poe about it. It’s a rather Spartan painting, showing a lone tower overlooking a moonlit lake at night. A meandering tree cuts through the center of the scene, almost eclipsing the moon, and the storm clouds, barely visible in the moonlight, suggest angst and grungy foreboding indicative of the Sturm und Drang school. And yet this Gothic image, somber to the core, and which should otherwise drown the viewer in waves of deep melancholy, betrays a hint of what I suspect was glee in the heart of the painter. I don’t know too much about this Joseph Wright of Derby, but I wouldn’t at all be shocked to learn he was of the pluviophile sort; the entities among the populace who favor the darkness and whose inner equanimity is brought to its deepest expression when they are surrounded by the elegant aesthetic of gloom—a questionable breed of eccentrics among which I proudly belong.

Just then, a quote from Paul Klee (the ambiguous German artist who was friends with Kandinsky) danced into my head, pregnant with Promethean possibilities: "One eye sees, the other feels."

I was particularly stirred in that moment by this dualistic thought, that perception involves the mechanics of seeing and feeling working in tandem. I looked back at "Lake with Castle on a Hill," closing my left eye (just for the sport of it) to see the image, then closing my right, to feel the image. I was expecting some sort of grand epiphany, but the moment fizzled out and nothing profound happened.

With my thoughts still on Paul Klee, an abstruse artist I’ve known about for only a short time, I realized that I wasn’t sure whether the St. Louis Art Museum had any of Klee’s paintings in its collection; I had never thought to inquire until now. So I flagged the nearest docent who told me that, yes, the museum has many Klee works in storage, but only two are actually on display. Only two? I thought. Still, that was two more than I’d known about just a few minutes hitherto, so I was nonetheless thrilled. She directed me to gallery 212, a small room near the back of the museum where the two Klee works can be found.

These two paintings both date to the 1930s. The first one I examined is called "Aviatic Evolution" (1934). At first glance, I wasn’t sure if I liked it. The eye is passively drawn to the avian face at the center, its phallic beak suggesting weakness to me. The birdlike creature depicted here, whatever it is, seems to be looking back at the viewer, an effect that was at first somewhat disconcerting to me, though the more I stared back at the face, the more I began to feel it was a comforting gaze. Magnificent yet muted wings spread out behind the creature, and their flat earthen tone reminded me of primitive cave paintings. Then I remembered my reading of Klee’s journals. He associated the movements of birds with the feverish motions of 20th-century humanity. I began to wonder if the bird’s legs, which are really arrows, were meant to convey that sentiment. On the whole, I determined that I very much liked "Aviatic Evolution." There’s a soothing property to it that speaks to the anxious man in me.

The other painting, "The Man of Confusion" (1939, one year before Klee died of scleroderma), did not speak to me. At all. I have loved nearly every Klee painting I’ve ever seen, but something about this one turned me off. I know Klee was in terrible pain toward the end of his life, and one definitely feels that in The Man of Confusion. But his use of color in this one doesn’t work. And the man in the painting doesn’t appear confused to me, he seems dismembered—the overall effect of the image, to me, suggests a sorrow so great and so deep you almost have to look away before it overtakes you. No, I didn’t like "The Man of Confusion."

I walked away after only a few moments.

After that, I just moseyed around the museum with no agenda in mind. I shuffled by "St. Francis Contemplating a Skull," and I nodded to it as I passed. Then I wandered toward the central atrium and marveled, as I typically do, at the dimensions and scope of this Edwardian building, and I reminded myself that I was treading where fellow St. Louisans of the not-so-distant past once explored what for them was the Palace of Fine Arts at the 1904 World’s Fair. And one certainly gets a sense when standing in that grand atrium that something of historical import occurred there. It’s just a feeling in the air, an impression still written invisibly on the walls, that there was a time, back in 1904, when this building stood at what was, for that year, at least, the center of the world. And then I recalled some words William Faulkner wrote:

"The past is never dead. It’s not even past."

This notion gave me an interesting idea, so I moved to the center of the atrium. If people nearby thought I was displaying odd behavior, I didn’t care. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine I was back in 1904, and that the World’s Fair was going on right outside. The clicking and clattering of hoofbeats could be heard in the distance. The fragrance of ice cream and hot dogs was wafting in from an open door. And all about me, straight-backed men and women—the mustached men wearing four-piece woolen suits, the puritanical women holding parasols to ward off the heat—were sauntering to and fro in the confident, relaxed manner of the past, the men leading the women by the arms, their strides betraying no hint of a rush.

I wondered if those people knew how lucky they were, how incredibly fortunate they were to be alive during such a simple and romantic period in our city’s history. It’s true that the very air they breathed was killing them, and the drinking water was brown with rust and dirt, and there was no air conditioning to soothe them during the brutal St. Louis summers, but they did not have to make room in their reality for social media, or the latest binge-able show from Netflix, or television commercials that just never fucking go away, or terrorist organizations like ISIS. They had it harder in many ways, but they had it simpler in others, and I occasionally find myself thinking that I’d take that trade-off if I could, exchanging what I have for what they didn’t, and vice versa.

I opened my eyes and looked around to see if anyone was watching me. To my relief, no one was. Excellent, I thought, it is perhaps best that no one takes note of my peculiar ways.

For many years, there was a stone fountain standing in the center of this atrium, and it dated back to the Italian Renaissance. I have no idea when it was moved, why it was moved, or where it is now, but I found myself wishing it was still around. Sometimes, the soul needs a good fountain at hand, especially if it’s made of stone. There’s something therapeutic about the sound of water running along stone. It’s one of the few natural songs that existence sings on its own. Shaking my head at the silliness of my thoughts, I made for the nearest stairwell.

There is one painting on the top floor I always try to stroll by when I visit the museum, and that is Paul Cornoyer’s 1908 treasure, "Plaza After the Rain. Cornoyer," a St. Louisan, is one of the most underrated, overlooked artists of the last two hundred years. A master at creating the impression of recent rain, most of his paintings ("After the Rain, Gloucester," particularly) evoke the greatest sense of exquisite melancholy a work of art could possibly elicit. One of his paintings, "A View of St. Louis: A Triptych," shows a small portion of downtown St. Louis and the Eads Bridge from the Illinois side of the Mississippi River in 1898, but as this work is kept in a private collection, I have never had the pleasure of viewing it in person.

"Plaza After the Rain," displayed on the third floor of the art museum, is by far his finest work (though I know that verdict is subject to debate). It depicts the Grand Army Plaza and the southeast corner of Central Park in Manhattan. As I stood and viewed it today, for the hundredth time, I was moved again, as I always am, by the romantic and paradoxical sense of beautiful despondency captured by the simple brush strokes and the restricted use of color, a feature common to Cornoyer’s work. I found myself desperately wishing, not for the first time, that I could climb through the painting and enter into the caliginous world it depicts. I could almost smell the petrichor wafting up from the wet sidewalks, and sense the moisture in the cool air, and hear the rattle of the trolley faintly visible in the distance. The notorious statue of Civil War general William T. Sherman, which still stands on this precise spot today, can be seen to the right of the trolley, for those who know what they are looking at. And the dead trees in the foreground, indicative of winter, stand still and alone like forgotten monoliths, their bony and lifeless branches twisting toward the bleak sky with what looks to me like painful longing.

Since I was already on the third floor, I decided to wrap up my visit with a tour of the ancient Egyptian section. For those who love a good mummy, the St. Louis Art Museum has a few. I will concede that the Field Museum in Chicago has a greater number, and who the hell knows what sort of treasures lurk in the galleries in Cairo, but I am still very proud of the few dead Egyptians who are spending this part of eternity as exhibits in St. Louis’s modest museum.

One of these mummies is Amen-Nestawy-Nakht (yes, that is his full name), a priest who died between 715 and 945 BCE. According to the exhibit data, this mummy was discovered in Luxor, Egypt. His sarcophagus is exquisitely detailed, and for those who get into that sort of thing, it’s a tremendous experience to study it up close. For me, the real magic happens when I position myself at the mummy’s feet. Here is the only spot in the sarcophagus where an opening actually allows you to look into the interior, and though we cannot see the priest’s actual body, we see his feet wrapped in linen. I sometimes just stare at that piece of linen, trying to wrap my mind around the fact that it’s almost 3,000 years old. I remind myself that someone back then, some Egyptian who may have had a personality like mine, took the time to weave this linen and cover Mr. Nakht’s dead body with it. These are absurd thoughts, I know, but they fill me with childlike wonder all the same.

There are also some canopic jars on display here, and they actually still contain the mummified organs of the dead. Think about that for just a moment. Some spleen or liver or heart or who knows what else that was once inside a living body 3,000 years ago still exists and is just hanging out in a jar on a shelf at the St. Louis Art Museum. If I worked there, I’d be tempted to open the jar up, dump the contents under a lamp, and give them a careful inspection. It is perhaps fortuitous, then, that I don’t work there (though it’s not for lack of trying).

After a while, I was ready to go home, so I headed for the door, humming the theme song to Curb Your Enthusiasm as I went. Once outside, I defied the frosty afternoon and walked over to where the Apotheosis of Saint Louis (erected in 1906) stands atop Art Hill. This massive statue of our city’s patron saint and namesake, King Louis IX of France, looks out at the sprawling city beyond, almost like its great protector, his arm raised with a sword in hand, telling everyone that those who live here are his people. I stood beneath that statue and leaned against the retaining wall that overlooks Art Hill and the tidal pool below. From this vantage point, with the art museum behind me, my eyes looked past the tops of the trees toward the horizon, and I reached down inside myself to pull out something profound. But again, the moment faded to nothing, and no philosophical thoughts came to me. That was okay. In the end, I concluded with a comfortable smile that, if nothing else, at least this day had been well spent.