Making Art Language Easy

A very cheesy love letter to a painting

A lot of the art industry is full of art jargon that is hard for those outside of the industry to understand. So when people go to museums they just usually end up nodding their heads to some flamboyant description of a painting that they don’t really understand at all. For those who aren’t trained to speak the absurdly complex language of art, haughty art critics and historians will jump at every opportunity to make everything they discuss seem grandiose.

So here is a proposal. Let’s make art easy again.

Below is a letter that I wrote to a painting. Yes, I know it’s such a cheesy thing to do. (In my defense it was a school assignment) It is about my first impression of the Corner of a Cafe Concert. It is devoid of any formal art analysis language. Yet you will find that you can learn so much from just looking close.

Dear Corner of a Cafe Concert,

The first time I met you, I misjudged you. The dressed up people in the back watching a fancy ballet dancer on stage resembled the millions of paintings made to please the upper class that I’ve seen in museums. But on my second encounter with you I realized there was more to you than that. If you were what I thought you were, why the waitress in the center, why paint the corner of a cafe rather than the center? You were enigmatic. If you weren’t a painting made to please the rich, then what were you? What is it that you wanted to say? Instantly, you filled me up with questions and I was drawn to you.

Your viewer’s eyes first land upon the waitress in the center. She seems terribly busy juggling two glasses of beer with one hand while she looks over to her next order. By catching her midway in action, you show how this is a record of a fleeting moment. It looks as though someone has paused a video midway. Apart from the task she is doing, she seems completely unaware of the situation around her. The dancer and the audience are a blur to her while the band’s music is like a distant hum. You then reflect her senses by depicting them like misty figures in a fog contrasting them with her saturated colors. You observe her so carefully that even the light shining off of the glasses of beer she is holding is reflected through the red, blue, and green brushstrokes in the beer. Finally, through her perplexed facial expression, she reflects somewhat of an annoyance with this situation. I think you are reflected in that expression, showing your dissatisfaction to the world around you. What is it that drives your discontent?

As I turn my attention away from the waitress, I realize there is a man in front. Though he is in the front, he is somewhat unnoticable for his turned back extinguishes any attention turned towards him. Nonchalantly smoking a pipe, his head is turned to the dancer up front. But I wonder if he is really looking at her. Somehow, there is an air of dissatisfaction that surrounds him too. He sits there like a displeased critic and if I were to see his face, I know he would have empty eyes. There are more people in the back, dressed up with fancy hats all staring at the stage like ghosts. Then I wondered what this place would sound like. The band and the dancer are a blur, as if to reflect the music they are surrounded by. But the people at the tables are strangely still. Dead silence surrounds them. No interaction can be seen, in fact, they aren’t even looking at each other. Their colors are saturated and the depiction of their figures clear, as if to say that this is the reality. The stillness of the crowd scared me with a coldness I cannot describe. I wondered if this was the world you saw.

Meanwhile, the dancer everyone is looking at appears to be in a different world. It’s as if she is part of a dream or a fairytale. The band too seems to be caught in her magical world, as they are a misty blur as she is. The crowd looking at her seems entrapped, as if they believe that the world they live in is the delightful world they see on stage. They are spellbound by the world the stage suggests. The soft brushstrokes of the dancer make her look as if she were in a dream. But the sharp divide that is made between the audience and the people through the wooden barrier and golden wall makes it clear that that is not the case at all. In fact the people you show are disillusioned by the world they think they are in.

You speak of a world of disconnection and disillusionment, in a time where rapid development filled the world. You focus on the corner of the cafe, a place that is usually set aside and forgotten. Stepping away from the center, you peer into the corner of development, where the true face of this time is revealed. The disconnection is apparent through the turned faces of the audience while the world they aspire, the world where the dancer lives is a far away fantasy. But within this disillusion, there is no sense of urgency. No one seems to acknowledge that they are living in a lie. No one except you.

I am afraid I must say that the world hundred years later has not changed very much from then. In fact, I fear that it has grown further apart. I live in a time where connecting to someone 7,000 miles away is possible in less than a millisecond. A thing called technology makes this possible. However, it is this very technology that has eliminated humane interactions for the sake of convenience. Small things like saying hi, stopping to gaze at a painting, and having meaningful conversations are things that I forget to do in my world. In this convenient yet cold time, you remind me of the importance of stepping away from all the hustle, to take a step back and pear into what it is the corner. Thank you for doing that.

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