These days I go to museums as much to look at people looking at art or photography as to look at works of art. It isn't that I don't love art because I do. If I go too long without standing before a Lucas Cranach, or Rothko, or Beckmann or a photo by Francesca Woodman I feel the absence as a real physical ache.
Watching people encounter a long-cherished work of art is endlessly fascinating. Usually it's just the glance, the quick consultation with a friend and the walk on. But sometimes a person is so struck by a work of art there is a whole unfolding theatric of engagement to observe. They walk up and stare, growing increasingly still, until they stand mesmerized as if trying to dissolve the surface and plunge bodily into the painting.
On occasion you witness some funny visual spectacle of mirroring with clothing, gesture or appearance of the subject of the painting uncannily resembling the observer. The recognition always brings laughter and usually a flurry of selfies.
Other times if you attentive and standing close you will notice someone almost having a lover's response to a painting. They stand staring as their breathing, heart rate and even scent changes. Watch closely and you will see their body language claim possession as if to say "this painting is mine" as they stake out a space before the work oblivious to the desire of other visitors to see the painting.
I recognize this fascination is a bit of an obsession and as with any obsession, however mild, there's always some history behind it. If I am honest about it my fascination with people looking at art is forever entangled with something quite beautiful and strange and unexpected that happened to me a very long time ago. I had just turned eighteen and was earnest and passionate but naïve as they come when my erotic universe was permanently transfigured by a woman more than three times my age.
I had just turned 18 and had skipped out on High School for the day to take the train into New York City. I had just walked from Grand Central to 53th street to explore the wonders of the Museum of Modern Art and was headed to a favorite gallery when I saw her. She was sitting on a gallery bench staring transfixed at Willem de Kooning's painting Woman I.
I was immediately struck by the understated elegance of her poise, her elongated neck, and the simple stylish grace of her clothes. What felt like a burning intellectual and emotional curiosity about the painting at which she gazed seemed to radiate from her in waves. I thought she must have been a Dancer earlier in her life.
As I looked closer I realized she was much older than her bearing and style and fitness hinted. Her beautiful hair, drawn back into a pony tail, was shock white, not by design, but naturally. And her skin, though beautiful and quite pale, bore distinctive marks of age.
What was striking too was the contrast between her cool transfixed poise and the almost violent intensity of the painting. De Kooning's "Woman I" is a powerhouse of expressionist color, form, and raw power. The painting shows a seated woman with a wildly gaping mouth. It is as if in the single image De Kooning fused all the Goddesses from myth and history and dream. Part Marilyn Monroe, part Venus of Willendorf and part half-crazed witch staggering out of the dark places of the mind. She is beautiful, terrifying, sexy in a frenzied and unhinged way, and definitely powerful as if she's the earth mother naked at last and with teeth. I loved it.
Quite deliberately I sat down on the bench next to the woman and quietly drew my breath in deeply to catch her scent. Thinking back on the event these two actions always amazed me because I at the time I was not only young and naïve but a bit awkward and very shy.
Her perfume was so striking it made me tremble inwardly a bit. There in front of one of the wildest and controversial paintings of the 20th century I felt like I was drinking in a scent that was at once lovely and refined and utterly savage and dripping with sex. It was exciting. Then she turned from the painting to face me and in a soft voice with precise diction and the hint of a European accent I did not recognize she said:
"It is the sheer beauty of the paint itself beneath all the frenzy of the subject that has me enthralled. I think she is quite beautiful, don't you?"
It was all too much. Yes, yes, yes, the woman in the painting was beautiful in a monstrous, exciting, demonic, devouring way. And yes, this painting, already a bit infamous for its alleged misogyny, was in truth stunningly beautiful at core. And yes, it spoke of powers of the feminine that don't fit any mold, but are as real as any snapshot or fashion ideal. But none of these ideas that swirled in my mind made it to speech. Instead I simply said quietly:
"Yes, I think she is beautiful."
And that was it. Suddenly it was as if we had been friends for years. We talked easily and openly. I had never in my life been able to talk with someone this way. We talked about the painting. We talked of our love of art. We talked of the scents of New York in the spring. We talked of my skipping school and my college plans.
Helen talked of her work, first as a dancer and then as a sculptor. I liked her. I liked her immensely. I felt a real sense of dread that we would stand up from the bench, go our ways and never see each other again. But as it turns out that isn't what happened at all. Instead she looked at me with a warm unreadable smile and said almost playfully:
