VIDEOS AT AN EXHIBITION.
by
Dennis Wall
©2020 Dennis J. Wall. All rights reserved.
Fifty years ago I visited the Louvre in person. Richard Nixon was president. I was 18.
I have been feeling lately like I would like to visit a museum. But you can only do that virtually. So I was glad when the prompt of a writer's group I belong to, called this week for writing impressions of a virtual museum visit. It was exactly what I wanted to do.
I chose a virtual visit to the Louvre. I selected videos from a couple of sources. The first two videos I chose were from the Louvre's own YouTube channel. (The Louvre did not have a YouTube channel when I made my reality visit.) The first video I watched was 25 minutes long. I stayed for 21 minutes, which says something I guess about my attention span.
The thing that made the biggest impression was seeing and not feeling the virtual crowds and crush of people.
Every seat on every bench was occupied as far as the camera's eye could see.
The videographer's main interest was clearly to photograph the people. There were so many people on display at the time they were photographed that most walked by the paintings and art on display.
A few people stood or sat and looked for a long time, not at the people although they couldn't help looking at people when people were walking a few inches away from them. No, the few stood in for the many and looked at the museum pieces on display.
I remember seeing the Mona Lisa in person. As through a glass darkly, as it were, I recall my impressions. The Mona Lisa was smaller than I thought it would be. Perhaps that is because lots of times I saw full-page prints of the painting which made it seem really big, as though she were ready to push her frame apart and spring out. I also recall that the Mona Lisa was not as impressive as the publicity surrounding her made her out to be.
On another video, one that was not on the Louvre's own YouTube channel, I saw the virtual Mona Lisa. I suppose I could say that I saw the Mona Lisa again, but that is not what I saw so I will not write that. What I saw in the video was a video of a painting, not the painting itself. Oh, it was a slick video, good photography and all, but it was not the Mona Lisa. Interestingly, it left me with the same two impressions of the Mona Lisa nonetheless: The painting is smaller than I think, and it is not as impressive as the publicity added over 50 years on, would make it out to be.
The virtual experience at an end, I turn my writer's eye now to my back yard. This is not going to be a Thoreau-like elevation of nature over society, or anything like that although I favor nature myself if forced to choose between the two.
When I turn my eyes to my own back yard, I see vibrant, living colors. That is the important point I want to make here, even if my examples may tend to make a crackling, corny sound a trifle: Greens of grass and different hues of green from tree to tree, between and among the trees; blues of sky on a clear day of which we are given many where we live; whites of clouds that turn dark and black most afternoons or evenings; reds and oranges of hibiscus, blues of other plants I sometimes cannot remember the names of like plumbago which always suggest purple to me like a plum I guess, but they are a definite unapologetic blue.
And when I turn my hearing to my own back yard, I hear birds calling to one another, birds singing different songs and even the mockingbirds sing different songs depending on which other birds they are mocking, squirrels raising a ruckus because the hawks have gone after their babies, and cardinals raising their own chirps either because the hawks or the squirrels have invaded their nests today.
These are my impressions. I thought I would contrast my impressions of a virtual visit to a museum displayed in videos filmed months ago, and of a reality visit in person half a century ago, with a reality visit to my back yard today. I have told you the things that struck me the hardest, the things that impressed me most during the time that I thought about what I would say and during the time that I am saying it.
There are probably no morals to these stories, nor were there intended to be. Maybe these thoughts are just diary entries, nothing more. But then, they do not pretend to be anything more and they don't have to be. I like them well enough as they are.
I hope you do too. But if not, there are other things you can read that will serve you better in that department. Better even than a real or virtual visit to a museum even, or even -- perhaps, for the sake of argument -- better even than a reality visit to your own back yard.
©2020 Dennis J. Wall. All rights reserved.