A Painting at the Whitney

A Painting at the Whitney

By Dan McDonald

 

 

            I think some of life’s greatest impressions upon me have happened during vacations. Perhaps it is because I have been relieved momentarily from the routines of life to which it is easy to become addicted. In many vacations I have seen or experienced at least one thing that has had a transformational tendency on my life. One such experience happened as I took time to look at a painting this year on display in the Whitney Museum. New York City has become one of my favorite places to visit on vacation. I have come back from my vacations each year having seen a sight or having experienced something that gave me something to think about in relationship to life.

This week was the second year anniversary of my first vacation taken in New York City. The photographs of my visit to the City in the memories on my Facebook page led me to reflect on a couple of brief exchanges. It seems that some of those transformational moments from my trips to the Big Apple have been impressions around a common theme.

In December of 2014 I went to New York expecting to stay in a room with a host in an Airbnb accommodation. When I got there I discovered I wouldn’t really see my Airbnb host for more than a few minutes. I found myself alone in New York City. It was a short vacation. I arrived on a Monday evening and was scheduled to fly back to Oklahoma on Monday morning. I began to wonder if my visit to New York City was to be the experience of three days of loneliness. Maybe this whole trip was just a mistake.

I hadn’t eaten yet, so I walked down 10^th West Avenue and began to look for a place to eat. I guess I wanted something to remind me of home. I was feeling as if the vacation was going to be a horrible experience of a farm kid lost in the big city where he was crazy to imagine he should have ever gone. I saw a pub that reminded me of one where I go in Oklahoma. It reminded me of a pub I would occasionally visit in Tulsa that had some decent food dishes that could be complimented with a really good pint of ale. That was a turning point. The server was the sort of person who would talk small talk and make you feel welcomed. There are many stories about how rude New Yorkers are, but my server was a true people person.

A couple of days later I was headed to the Dumbo area on the Brooklyn side of the East River across from Manhattan. Someone told me I should go there before leaving New York City so that my visit to the city wouldn’t just be a visit to Manhattan. I took a subway to the general vicinity of the area but I was always getting disoriented and going the wrong direction in New York. It was already dark and I wanted to make sure I got to where I was planning on going, and not wandering aimlessly in the dark in Brooklyn. One young tired looking woman with one young energetic looking son got off the train at the same stop as I did. So I asked her if she could tell me how to get to where I was planning on going. She tried giving me directions, speaking of certain landmarks and streets which registered as unknowns in my mind. I guess she could see the vacant expression on my face as I tried to follow her directions. The next part of the conversation astonished and overwhelmed me. She told me that she was headed to her apartment a few blocks away and if I would walk with her for a couple of blocks she could point the way to go and it would be a lot easier that way. It was already dark. The streets we took did not have an abundance of pedestrians but she invited me along to a place where she could give me directions I would more likely be able to follow. I have seldom been so overwhelmed by someone’s kindness in my life. Here was a tired Mom taking her more than energetic son home, taking the time to help a tourist find his way in Brooklyn. From that evening onwards you could never convince me that New Yorkers are rude or only think of themselves. I would borrow some words from a song entitled “In the Cathedrals of New York and Rome” to describe what I found in New Yorkers; “in the cathedrals of New York and Rome there is a feeling that you should just go home and spend a lifetime finding out just where that is.”

With that as background I can tell the story of how this year I was especially moved at the Whitney Museum as I looked into a painting that captured my imagination. At first glance it doesn’t seem like great art. I don’t think it will ever be viewed as a masterpiece. Yet once I saw it, I had to come back to it a half dozen or more times.

 

 

            I noticed how this piece of modern art captured the subjects of the painting in comic book like caricatures. But my attention seemed drawn to the woman on the bottom right. I began noticing things that made her unique. Her hair reflected light. Her eye seemed more as if drawn to be realistic rather than caricature. Her face had more color in comparison with the almost ashen color of the other people in the painting. She wore a necklace and her clothing was more colorful. She seemed to have her focus set on her neighbor to her left. It was as if she was more human and less caricatured than the others in the painting. It was all subtle. Was I only imagining what I saw, or was I seeing what the artist had carefully painted into this piece of art? That is why I kept coming back to this painting that fascinated me. What was it that I was seeing in this piece of art?

            For me this piece of art seemed to be capturing a mystery of human life. When we meet someone, do we see a person as they truly are or merely as caricatures in our minds based on the features we see? When I see a New Yorker walking towards me with their eyes not noticing anyone on the street do I see unfriendliness or is that only a caricature because I have never had the opportunity to hear about their hopes, fears, dreams, enjoyments and sorrows?

            There is mystery I believe in this painting. As a Christian I am moved to realize there I mystery revealed in the pages of Holy Scripture. God is their author. He reveals himself through His Word. But the Scriptures are also for us as people who ponder its message, a mirror that continually reflects us. The Word of God written by God to a people created in His image at once speaks to us of the God who is holy, who is glory, and who is love and we see ourselves in the mirror in our sins but also as the ones loved by God and as the ones intended to bear his image. A painting is often a similar sort of mystery. The author created in the image of God writes in his painting a story expressing something of his own values and convictions or lack of them. We who look at his painting see the same painting and imagine its message to us. The painting has become a mirror in which we seek to view our own lives.

            But what is it about our humanity that brought Jesus to quickly make the connection between the first and greatest commandment and a second commandment that joined to it summarized the entire law? What is it about “Love God with all heart, soul, mind, and strength” and “Love your neighbor as yourself”?  Is it not that God in his creation of our creation has created us to be especially in his image?

            Whether consciously or unconsciously has this artist sought to show how someone focused on a neighbor is by that focus transformed through the experience? Her focus on her neighbor brings softness to her eyes, color to her cheeks, and tenderness to her appearance. She has moved from being absorbed in herself to being focused on another and she has broken from the caricature of our isolated individuality to the beginnings of discovering humanity by engaging with humanity the form of broken, wounded human beings created in the image of God.

            In the cathedrals of New York and Rome we get this feeling that we are meant to go home and find out just where that is. In the face of a neighbor as we refocus from our wounds, our dreams, our lives and become engaged in seeing and hearing another’s life story we are by the experience transformed. For it is impossible for us to love God whom we cannot see while not loving man, created in God’s image whom we can see. Whatever this artist understood about life and theology, the artist seemed to have understood that for us to be transfigured into a more radiant humanity we must become engaged with the humanity of people around us. Perhaps I would have never seen this in this painting in the Whitney except once I had been alone and a server cheered me up, and once I had been wandering in the darkness and a tired mom said “walk with me for a little ways and I can better point you in the direction you need to go.”