Wisecracking Across America - 37. Chapter 37

Friday, June 18, 1999

The wonder of the National Gallery is it's free---once you find a place to park. For some reason, despite other steady improvements, Washington's so far declined to build a National Garage.

We could have taken the subway. But from the friend's where we were staying, we'd have to take a bus to reach that, so it seemed easier to drive. And we found parking soon enough, for only twelve bucks, all day, cheap. Though for twenty minutes we'd stupidly hunted a nearer space on the street, running into dozens of Reserved for Federal Employees signs. Yeah, well, I guess they have to work.

Still, the short walk from the lot took us close to the Washington Monument, always fun to see. Especially when it's sheathed in blue mesh for renovation, and looks like a giant ad for planned parenthood. After also glancing into a rustic Romanian church being mocked-up on the Mall for the Folklife Festival, we ate lunch in the Hirschorn Sculpture Garden. That makes it sound like we dined with Muses. Actually, we had Big Macs. And because school was out, and it was still before the July 4th summer crowds, the garden was almost empty. As were the museums: where just weeks earlier local folks couldn't get tickets for the Sargent exhibit, we walked right in to shows by Ingres and Cassat.

Though even if we'd missed them, the place would have been great. It's hard to imagine how good till you've lived without it. L.A. has the Getty, and that's neat architecture, but far less of a collection.

Even if you don't like certain kinds of art---and multiple crucifixions, and bloody impalings of St. Sebastian only ruin my lunch---there's so much else: A red hat would get my attention. A doge's nose. An elfin face. Or a name on a plaque: Tinteretto. Canaletto. Turner. Homer. Vandyke. Renoir. The National Gallery has the only DaVinci on American public display, and it wasn't even mobbed

"It just pulls you in," I heard a woman say behind me. "It's not like any other painting I've seen." But when I turned to see what she admired, she and her friend were already scouring a map of the museum, making sure they hadn't missed anything.

"The peasant represents loyalty," another voice announced. "The pear, sterility. Look at the gleam in her eye. Notice the splinter on that oar. See how the canvas was originally oval, but now is square."

A docent, perhaps a volunteer. And while I didn't really need art explained, it was great knowing that if other people did, the information was there.

"I've always hated that painting," a teenaged girl muttered. And when I looked, the picture was particularly grotesque. But it wasn't hated that caught me. It was always. She'd seen it again and again, and maybe would never like it. But she felt intensely enough about it to distract her friend, who was trying to read its inscription.

In addition to what was written on the walls and in brochures, there were taped lectures you could carry around, listening through headphones. I skipped them too: Fear of academia. Plus, it was more fun overhearing folks.

And watching them. People just stood, their focus and the light on their faces, almost as interesting as what they studied. They created images just for me, as long as I held my gaze. Some were even trying to copy the paintings. And watching them work, you could see how talented the original artists were. Something was always off in the newer versions---scale, color, tone---and the student-artists seemed to know it. Yet they wouldn't give up.

Sometimes artists had duplicated their own work, and there'd be several versions of the same painting: Multiple Gilbert Stuart heads. An expanded Cassat. A royal portrait Ingres had lengthened as a memorial. And though details might have been traced, and in one case there was the added credit, artist's workshop---meaning Ingres' students had helped---there was still the feeling of an original.

It was also great being in a room of Cassats, or having a painting by Ingres everywhere you looked. I could imagine the logistics---and politics---it took to assemble fifty-six Cassats, over a hundred works by Ingres. But I couldn't have guessed the impact.

And maybe there's a different kind of person attracted to art galleries, rather than the Air and Space Museum or the Hall of Inventions. They might dress the same---T-shirts and jeans---but they moved more quietly on the planked wooden floors, spoke more softly in the echoing marble corridors, even lined up and paid without protest in the numerous gift shops. Scanning the fifty-cent postcards, or the far more expensive reproductions, they seem to understand that art was hard.

There was certainly enough proof: Hundreds of sketches for paintings. Dozens of notebooks. Discarded versions that just wouldn't go. And evidence of risks taken: Ingres was devastated when his dynamic portrait of Napoleon was critically trounced. Cassat was so angry at something her teacher---no less than Degas---had said, she defied him with another painting.

Did it make me want to run out and Create Art? Nope. Draw. Nah. Paint? No. Doodle? Not even that. But I did buy some postcards. Great to send friends. And cheaper than Sotheby's.

Why didn't I need to be creative? Why just look? I was too astonished by every cracked brushstroke I squinted at. Yeah, I know---you're not supposed to look at art that close. But how amazing to know that "gleam in an eye" was just a blob of bright paint. A smile, just a turn of a brush. A shimmering overlay of fabric just a... Damn, I stared at something Ingres had done, so close I'm surprised a guard didn't come up and stop me. And I still couldn't figure out how he did it.

57 miles