Art, my mom and me
Art, my mom and me T
his issue’s main focus is art. I will tackle the matter at hand by writing a bit about why I like art, what I think about it and how it can be best enjoyed. TEXT: KLARA LARSSON
My mom and I have been to Florence and Paris to look at art. We also ate cheese and drank wine, but yeah, both trips were pretty serious holidays. In Florence we stayed at a hotel with a balcony facing the Duomo but with shared bathrooms. We visited a lot of churches and the Uffizi gallery, a big art museum with a lot of Renaissance art. When we were in Paris we visited the Orsay and Centre Pompidou, the latter being a cultural centre with modern and contemporary art. It may be most known for its architecture, however, with an escalator climbing up the side of the building, offering a pretty awesome view. From the moment my mom put brushes in my hands and genuinely appreciated my red blobs which I apparently thought of as a bee or a self portrait - she taught me not only the worth of self expression and communication through art. But also that not all art has to be appreciated, that people have different tastes. When we got to the modernism section at the Centre Pompidou, we looked at each other and just decided to skip it - there’s a limit to how much art one can process in a day. I don’t like modernism particularly, and mom went to art school when boomers taught their fascination of modernism almost exclusively at all art schools.
my mom almost couldn’t keep herself from laughing. I’ve always been dramatic, and she respects that and waits me out - she even told me I might have got a shock from all the impressions of great art to make me feel better - ”too much art exposure can make you dizzy”. An extravagant explanation instead of just stress and homesickness. A pizza slice and a nap in the hotel room later and I was fit for fight again. Why do I care about art trips? I think I look to learn. Art can truly be a way of getting inside someone’s head, even dead people that lived hundreds of years ago. Being different from, for example, academically written history essays, every feeling is allowed to take place in paintings. On top of that, it can be pretty to look at.That makes my optimistically constructed hence crammed schedule for these tips enjoyable.
Important to remember though, is that some art sucks. It’s okay to be bored by a painting, a sculpture or pretentious video art. With this, I urge you to look at some art and try to let loose of your feelings the same way the artist probably did while creating. Have someone tell you what the context of the creation was and what trains of thoughts were passing through the living worlds at that time. But you may as well look at something and feel nothing, and pass on At one moment in Florence, I got a little stressed out. to the next piece. I said something like “I feel like I’m going to faint” and Västgöta Correspången 5
Picture: ”My mom and me in Greece -98. Me wanting to get away from the ”waves”. Trip for sun, not art but still stressfull for a redhead.” - Klara Larsson
