A Beginner's Guide to Appreciating Art (Becoming Artsy 104: APPRECIATING ART)

How to experience art with Jessie. These steps are based on limited observation and should not be taken as genuine advice by anyone. Step one, walk very slowly in the galleries. Step two, stay quiet. Step three, look at the art, cock your head to the side, and try not to think about lunch. Hi, I'm Jessie. I'm a science-y, math-y kind of person, and yet I work at the Getty, famous for its art and culture. Ooh, Hercules. So I decided to go on a quest to learn about art and discover all I can about becoming artsy. Now that I've gotten to know the Getty and a little about museums, I'm really ready to go inside and spend some quality time with some artwork and really learn how to experience it. From gallery educator, William Zaleski. Here I go. I'm super ready. No hesitation at all. The thing is, I'm a little bit afraid that I'm not going to know how to really appreciate the art I'm looking at. Like I'm going to see it, and I'm just not going to get it. And I'm going to think, like, why am I even here? I know I've talked a lot about belonging and connection and all of that, but now that it comes down to it, I'm just, I'm a little bit nervous. And I'm especially nervous because I actually have seen this work of art before. My very first week of work here, conservators were observing it. Van Gogh's irises. I got to see it as it was 3D scanned and also while it was being analyzed for chemical elements from the periodic table that made up its pigments. True to brand, the science absolutely delighted me, but I still didn't understand the piece artistically. But that's what I'm here for, right? I'm here to learn. Let's go. You and I, together, we're going to go experience Getty's most famous painting, Van Gogh's irises. Hype time! When I look at this work, I feel both excited and I feel calm. I feel joyful. I feel just a sense of wonder at the space of this place Van Gogh has painted. For me, the excitement is seeing this famous work of art in person and this up close. Yeah, it's exciting to be in a gallery and be able to see this work, which was world renowned when it reached highest paid sum for a single artwork in the late 1980s. I think it was a shock to many, but I think that even in its own day, Vincent Van Gogh's irises were one of his more famous and praised works. Okay, just how much are we talking here? Okay, I don't think I'm going to make $$$ painting right now, but I do think that painting in the garden as Van Gogh did might help me appreciate the painting itself, because right now it still feels like I'm just supposed to like it because it's super famous. When you're used to seeing it reproduced in many places and then you see the real thing, you're like, oh, it's the real thing. What do you think is special about knowing it's the real thing versus a reproduction? I think looking at the qualities of the work firsthand, so to be able to see in great detail the way in which the paint is applied to the canvas, I think is really quite exciting. So you get to see how the paint is dragged, and at times it's laid very thickly. There is a beauty in the detail of this work. Looking closer and experiencing just how difficult painting is firsthand, even with my groundbreaking two-brush technique, I do feel like I'm starting to appreciate the colors and composition of Van Gogh's work. When he looks at the garden, he's looking through his own lens. Here he closes the composition to not have a horizon, that it's really as if he's seated inside the garden, so bringing his canvas there and working from the irises that he saw in Bloom. The frame itself is kind of creating its own space, its own world. It probably has its own logic in some ways as well, that here the way that you move through it, the way that you experience it. Yeah, I never thought about it like that. But here you're forced to focus in on what's right in front of you. Ooh, that's kind of deep. Excellent insight, if I do say so myself. But in all seriousness, I can't guess what Van Gogh's intentions were when he was painting the irises during his first week in an asylum. However, I do know that for myself, when my mental health doesn't feel like it's at its strongest, there is a sense of safety in focusing on one bit of the world at a time. So in that sense, I think that putting the art in the context of the artist has really helped add another layer of appreciation to this piece of artwork for me. Not my artwork, the irises. When we think about him gaining fame after his death, I think it's partly because he had such a short career. He'd been drawing his entire life, but moving to become a painter, he'd only been working for about 10 years. And the evolution of his work was really quite great, from working in the kind of dark manner of the Dutch predecessors of his, like Rembrandt. If we think about the way in which the color in a Rembrandt painting begins with something with a tonal quality, that what you're moving from is that tonal quality of the browns, and then the pushing to get the highlights, or pulling into the shadow. That instead, Van Gogh is painting in a way that suggests that he's painting using pure color, using light. And the light and the color that here touch this work is different than most every other work that you can find, even in this gallery. It has a power. Sometimes with kindergarten students, I might invite them to embody a butterfly, and flit and float about the space, and land on different places, or explore this place that they're seeing. I'm definitely not picturing myself as a beautiful butterfly flitting through this space. Ha! Who am I kidding? Of course I am! Come on, let's make this happen. I think that this world is one that is really quite lush. It's exciting. I can sense a sense of wind and movement. I know I'm just starting in my journey of art appreciation, but I do think that even after this one episode, I can revise my opening suggestions on how to appreciate a work of art. Now when I approach a work of art, first I try to notice how I feel. Then I like to look at the details of the art. The color, light, composition, technique, and more. And although I will inevitably think about my own relationship with a work of art when I see it, I will also try to place an artwork in the context of its own history, and maybe even the artist himself. Monet. Oh, and pretending you're a butterfly doesn't hurt either. Sometimes I think if we just change our identity in some ways, and we get to embody something outside of ourselves, we can come and view an artwork fresh. Thank you so much for watching. Hey, what are some ways that you appreciate art? We would love to hear from you, and I would genuinely love your advice. I'm Jessie, and we will catch you on the next episode of Becoming Artsy. Art for sale. Only $54 million. $54 million, sir.