I love art. I love how when you look at a photo or a painting you get a sense of who the person making it is, of what they were feeling at the time they made it, and at the same time it strikes a chord in you and makes you think of how you yourself respond to what you are seeing. Over the years, whenever I've had the privilege of traveling to someplace else, instead of the usual knickknacks I find myself bringing home art from wherever I've come from. It makes so much more sense than keychains or t-shirts to me.
My room isn't that big, so it can't house a lot of "art" (the reproduced inexpensive kind actually), but it started with these 3 important works of art that I got from my trip to New York many years ago.
The first piece I bought was this reproduction of Van Gogh's Cafe Terrace at Night. I was twenty two at the time, and when I saw this painting somewhere inside one of the many Warehouse stores we visited, and seeing it stirred a feeling in me; a restlessness. I wanted to live someplace where I could come down to this every night. To be part of something beautiful and strange and dark, something that I chose for myself. I promised myself that one day I would live in a place like this, even if only for a short period of my life, where walking down the street always reminds you of how festive the world is.
The second one, I acquired (ala an art collector) from the gift shop at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. This is a piece called "Man Ray" by an American artist named Emmanuel Rudnitzky. What is interesting about this piece is that it is a "photo" taken without actually using a camera. It was done by triple exposing the same photo paper with different stencils on top of it, at different lengths of time. When I saw it, I liked that it captured a kiss with a perspective that you never get to see. You don't see the expressions, there is no swell of music when it happens, but the hands on the faces captures the hunger with which these two approach their kiss. It can be any two people really. The image of the smoke also made me wonder if they were causing it. Kissing has always fascinated me, much more than sex ever has. It seems more personal somehow. You have to really be in the moment to be doing it.
The third one is this piece that I got, also from the gift shop at MoMa. It is an oil on canvas titled "New York Movie" by an American artist named Edward Hopper. While I loved the colors and the style the artist used, the reason why I got this particular one was because I related very much with the girl in the painting, standing alone thinking while everyone else is having fun inside. Who is she waiting for? What is she thinking of? It reminded me of myself - how I often end up caught up in my thoughts when everyone else is living in the moment, then before I know it, everything has ended and the important bits have passed by. I read somewhere (in a Chicken Soup I think) that it's bad karma to be surrounding yourself with sad paintings, because it reinforces your negative thoughts onto your present perceptions. But I was hoping the kissing photo and the thinking photo cancel each other out, at the very least. Or that maybe one time I look at the photo there will be someone standing by the sidelines with the girl, because he prefers talking to her over watching the movie. Maybe one day.
Like I said, you gotta love art.
