Sorry for not using question marks in the title, but blogging from a tablet seems to have a ton of disadvantages. One is trying to upload pictures and videos. I should have bought a laptop.
Anyway, I've been needing to blog this for a while. Make no mistake that the impetus for my journey was the Walt Whitman tomb. I've felt connected to Whitman for over 20 years in ways that are hard to describe. I know Whitman the way I know the Gospels, or the book of Genesis. Particular passages are easy to find in my mind & quickly spotted in the pages - that comes from year's of reading him. I'm going to blog more specifically on Whitman, probably when I get home. Seems necessary to do so for many reasons, not least of which is his egotism which wanders a cusp between beauty and tragedy. But most specifically as it relates the faith arena, is Whitman's fascination with the human body - no, scratch that - Whitman's celebration of the human body in all it's sinews, fluids, mysteries, beauties, and stench. This is in stark contrast with the Christian tradition, which has an unmistakable disdain for the human body... but more on this later.
Whitman drew me out on my journey, but I never expected to see my favorite Paul Gauguin painting on display in the Philly art museum. Truthfully, this is my second favorite painting of all time - the first belonging to Salvador Dali entitled, "The Metamorphosis of Narcissus." But this particular painting and I also have a 20-year history with each other. I remember the first time I saw a Gauguin painting - it was "The Yellow Christ." I thought it was brilliant - he was able to communicate more with less in ways that other artists I'd see could not.
A few years after that, I read Sommerset Maughm's "Moon and Sixpence." I apologize for misspellings and failure to use italics, etc. This tablet can only do so much... Anyway, I read this novel and to be honest with you, suffered through it on my first read. It did pick up, but I left the book with a sense of revulsion for the primary character, who I later learned was solely based on Gauguin. My revulsion for the character became a pre-occupation of sorts and I could not help but eventually re-read it. On the second reading, I started to pity him. Little windows into his soul started to crack open. So, of course I had to read it again. By the third reading, I was hooked.
The tragedy of Paul Gauguin is probably what made him great - and it's something I think I've discovered runs in the veins of all artists. More on that later. But Gauguin was not in the pursuit of the perfect painting - I think it is much more accurate to say that the perfect painting was constantly in pursuit of Gauguin. He knew it too, that's why he ran - abandoned everything - fled to Tahiti - buried himself in all the wrong things - and kept running until the very end. That perfect painting was "Where Did We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" There's a calm acceptance of the tragedy of not knowing in this painting, but more than that - a picture into the places that Gauguin finally had to settle.
I never dreamed I would see this painting my lifetime. I suppose at one time I knew it was housed in Boston - but this is the kind of painting that doesn't stay in one place too long. It travels, you get used to it - you know it's out there and that if you really wanted to schedule your life around it, you might catch a glimpse of it sometime. What you don't expect is to turn a corner and see it. At first, I thought it was a replica but then it hit me that it was here... the painting that has haunted my nights, the man who had preoccupied my mind for years, the subject of late nights - questions - agitations - rhapsodies --- that work was sitting right in front of me.
I had no choice but to cry. Fifteen minutes later I was finally able to raise my camera and snap a picture -- just as the security guard walked over to wag a finger. I don't care. It was 15 minutes of overwhelming joy in the presence of one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.
