The Water Lilies
Header: Maddy Baird
The strokes of those reflections feel uplifting, the depth of blue is decadent and inviting, the contrasting symmetry looks playful, the choice of greens is provocative. Art, and the way we talk about it, sounds like discombobulated nonsense. Modern art especially, makes me question why my grade one sculptures and explorations with acrylic paint aren’t worth millions. You may disagree with this take, or you may agree, but it makes me neither right nor wrong, because art, by nature, is completely subjective.
My first run-in with the three-letter word was at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA). At the age of twelve I bit the insides of my cheeks as I wandered through the phallic exhibits, holding back prepubescent rhetoric, while being taunted by works that resembled diagrams from my health class. Bolded in my memories of MoMA was being scolded for swatting at a fishing line that had been taped to the ceiling, which I was later told had been worth millions, and reaching to play with a pile of sand on the floor, another big no-no, considered an act of vandalism.
I could finally release the grip my teeth had imprinted on the insides of my cheeks when arriving at Claude Monet’s ‘Water Lilies’. The painting declared the entirety of a wall, extending corner to corner. I thought it was a complete mess, brush strokes of dirty browns and greens, with white blobs smeared annoyingly on top. The whole thing gave me a headache. I crunched my face and angled my head from left to right, trying to make out a single lily, let alone the water they belonged to, but nothing but fuzzy dapples of greens and blues appeared. I searched for my mom’s ear to voice my critiques. I spotted her standing with her back against the wall opposite the painting.
She gestured me over. I stiffly shuffled over, and within just a couple paces backwards, I understood the reason for her distance. It was eclectic. A beautiful ballet of lilies, delicately existing on a serene body of water. Calm and quiet colours, that didn’t need louder saturation to ask for attention. Somehow Monet had succeeded in capturing the feeling of hearing morning birds’ chit-chat, or the determined beams of sunlight that warm your forehead after escaping the tangled foliage above damp forest settings. If I hadn’t retreated, I would’ve missed out on the acclaimed tranquility of that infamous work of art.
This was a phenomenon already known by you and me. You might have learned it as a child, by putting your face up to the TV, watching cartoons disappear into the thousands of red, green, and blue boxes; when you repeat one word too many times until it doesn't sound like it belongs in your vocabulary anymore; or trying to determine a puzzle’s end result from just a singular piece. Focusing too closely on just one part of anything sours a lot of bigger pictures. Perspective changes those three repeated colours into movies, and dapples of turquoise into a world-famous painting.
Think of your biggest problem from this time last year, last month, or yesterday. More often than not, last year’s struggles are not shared with today, last month’s struggles have fallen asleep, and yesterday’s seem far away. The past cannot change, our problems cannot be moved or reconfigured from the moment they belong to on our timelines, existing only as specialized recollections. WE are the ones that change, move, and alter what we remember, experience, feel and think.. We stepped back and rested our backs on the wall opposite to the one in our mind that displays the problem.
Adverse events decorate the halls of our minds like those of MoMA. New exhibits establish themselves, and works of art rotate, with more attention going to the significant and notorious works, rather than roaming trivial halls. We frequent blobs of paint we’ve spent hours spectating, desperately obsessing over details that feel large from where we stand. We look for rights and wrongs in each new smear and stipple that aligns with our sight, searching for a plaque on the wall titling what it is we are seeing, bringing other critics in for their opinion, fervently trying to find reason.
A common companion to the issues we wrestle with are the words ‘Why is this happening to me?’, coddling our feelings of turmoil, disarray, and pandemonium, insisting things are going not as they were supposed to, as if our futures were fixed, as if we knew the way our lives were supposed to go. Just as art has no rights and wrongs, our issues too are non-binary. In moments, such as these, we are simply too close. The rest of the canvas hasn’t yet been primed and painted, the walls of our exhibit room haven’t yet been renovated, to make room for a proper, distant viewing. Our perspective is too intimate.
Now that the time has elapsed from yesterday’s problems, I better understand them. I understand the reason layers of pink were incorporated to hints of navy, I no longer crunch my face at smudges of green that gifted me headaches. I am accompanied by questions such as, ‘What can I learn from this?’, ‘What has this taught me?’ or ‘What did this bring me?’. Retrospective reflections to which I am always pleased with, only after maturing in my mind. The ugly colours of my past have become a Monet I hang proudly in my mind, reflecting on regularly for inspiration to carry with me as I roam new installations and galleries.
We see things not as they are, but as we are. A cliche saying Pinterest has beaten to death, but is true. Proximity to our issues will never bring clarity. Where you are standing must change. Step back and revisit, gain distance, and ask new questions. The paint must have time to dry. The water lilies must be given space before they appear. New experiences must be gained, and new lessons must be learned to complete the lenses of the prescription in which you see the world through. Of course, you don’t understand it now, you are too close. Step back.
