So maybe you’re an educated and sophisticated connoisseur of the visual arts.  Maybe you grew up in a house full of framed original paintings and etchings and limited-edition prints and sculpture on pedestals, and your parents took you to art galleries and museums from an early age.  You viewed the Mona Lisa at the Louvre when you were 10 and were not impressed, and didn’t like that you had to keep quiet.  You never did learn to speak French.  You no doubt know by now you have lived a life of money and privilege and are quite unlike most of the rest of us.  Money may have blessed you or messed you up at this point, but your love of art is real, and you cherish your long experience with it all the same.

Or maybe you grew up in a house with little on the walls and no sculpture, though there were houseplants everywhere, on pedestals as well as on hangers and tables and shelves.  Perhaps there even was some art here and there, tasteful prints of the mass-produced variety like one finds in hotels or medical offices, landscapes and still lifes of flowers and fruit, or something a bit more distinctive, like clowns or Elvis on velvet, whatever your parents found to be decorative or even beautiful.  Or maybe there even was something original, bought at a gallery or art show or yard sale, where it had caught your parents’ fancy.  Or just maybe there was original art created by family or friends, some of it showing real talent, that for whatever reason had never led to fame or fortune, or maybe it even had, in which case your folks probably had it insured.  And of course there was always art created by you (!), stuck to the fridge with magnets, at least in your early years, or even long after that and you wished Mom would take that stuff down, finally, but she never did.

Maybe you paid little attention to “fine” art while growing up, covered your bedroom with posters of entertainers and fast cars and comic book superheroes at some point in your life, but that was it.  Or just maybe serendipity or some person in your life made you aware of the long history of painting and sculpture, at least in Europe if not the rest of the world, and  you learned who all the important players were, Rembrandt and Michelangelo and Da Vinci and Picasso and all that.  Chances are you heard of the Mona Lisa and how it was a big deal long before you had any idea of why that was so, or maybe you still don’t.  That painting played a major role in a recent popular movie, The Glass Onion, to remind us of how Mona Lisa has unbelievable staying power as the symbol of what fine art is all about, especially as a valuable commodity.   At least that’s how it goes at art’s “highest” levels, according to the auctioneers and all the high rollers who’ve turned art into an “investment.”

Maybe your discovery of this world of human expression led to a real interest, where you learned about all the contributions of the Europeans and later the Americans, or you went even further and became aware of how it all started with cave paintings and the art of early civilizations, the Greeks and Romans and Aztecs and Mayans and ancient China and Japan.  You read books or took art history classes when you finally got to college, where you had posters in your dorm room of paintings by the Impressionists and Picasso’s blue or cubist period and Van Gogh’s sunflowers or starry night, or even some Paul Klee or Hokusai’s wave.  Chances are you didn’t have any Dutch still lifes or Hudson River School on your walls, but anything is possible in this best of all possible worlds, wouldn’t you say?

There’s even a chance you went all the way with this and pursued a career, using your inborn talent for creating fine art with paint or ink or clay or bronze or whatever, or lacking such abilities but still sharing the love, you got a degree in art history.  This brings us to the punchline/answer to the question of what does one say to such people?  The answer of course is “I’ll have the bacon burger with fries and extra ketchup,” which is not especially funny but which expresses brutal honesty about the way the world tends to work.  Never forget that your mom still has every item of your creative self-expression that you ever bestowed upon her, and isn’t that quite enough when all is said and done?

In the end one can only hope that your interest in these things has continued to this day, or then again maybe it hasn’t, or it currently endures only at the most casual or disinterested level.  There is much satisfaction to be found in taking a course on art or art history, or even a studio course where one can delve into the toolbox of techniques and learn ways to express oneself with whatever talent one possesses, or believes one possesses, which is far more important.  For most people nothing can match the experience of visiting an art museum, preferably a good one with varied collections and stellar examples of human expression from different times in history.  People travel the world seeking destinations that harbor such places, and chances are you’ve indulged in this pursuit a time or two, though maybe it was a long time ago but wasn’t it wonderful?  And don’t you still cherish your Wassily Kandinsky sweatshirt and Mary Cassatt tea set that you bought in the gift shops?

Probably the most famous art museum in the world is the Louvre in Paris, the place Mona Lisa calls home, but all the European capitals and major American cities have art museums that aspire to greatness.  There may be a few world-class museums in out of the way places, but for the most part the culture and wealth that creates public venues for the arts tends to align with the culture and wealth found in great cities.  The multitudes that visit cities but who would never live in one usually have the art museums on their bucket lists, right up there with live entertainment and fine dining and visiting the historic sites and catching a game of a name sports team at a famous venue and shopping in the tony shopping district. 

When it comes to big-time art museums, Boston has its Museum of Fine Arts, which is as heavy a hitter as any in this league, but the greater Boston metro area is home to any number of high quality art venues as well as galleries where everything is available for a price, and a heady one it can be (you might be better off simply enjoying those items from the gift shop). One of the great benefits of living in beantown or any major city is the access one has to seeing great art in person throughout the year.  One can go for the current special exhibits, and stay to get another look at whatever part of the permanent collection one hasn’t visited lately.  The MFA is enormous, with such an inventory of art that even the permanent collections get resorted from time to time.  Seeing it on a one-shot as a tourist can be thrilling, but this obviously leaves a whole lot out. Catching the action there is also not a cheap date, but the smart money goes for the yearly membership with the unlimited visits, at least for those smitten with the place who live in the area.  Besides all the art, the available food is pretty good, and “world class” might also describe the people-watching.  Between the locals and the tourists and the college students from all over the world, a special feature is observing the many interpretations on what one should wear to an art museum, especially if one is an “art student.” The place is also the greatest indoor walking venue imaginable in the winter, so much better than a mall.

If you are curious about the breadth and depth of the MFA’s collections, their website is an excellent resource, though the Art in Bloom postings on ravinginbeantown provide a hint of this, albeit in a pathetically meager and oblique way.  A key element of Art in Bloom is that it focuses on highlighting pieces from the permanent collection, a few samples of which are offered here. No apologies will be made for this, because the topic at hand is about to veer away from “great art” in the traditional sense, the stuff of “world-class” art collections, to lesser known or odder or at least more obscure artistic creations, and venues less famous than the MFA. 

It is also likely that “art museum” doesn’t even register on many people’s radar, and the average person might not be able to name a single famous art museum besides the Louvre when asked, if they can even come up with that.  After the Louvre, any further answers might heavily depend on geography.  Amongst Americans you’d likely get the easterners listing New York’s MOMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, midwesterners touting their own Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angelenos the Getty, and lovers of cowboy art probably the Briscoe in San Antonio, which is a marvelous collection of The Best from the West.  Besides all the ranchers & ropers & indigenous people & vast dry colorful landscapes depicted in the many paintings, if you haven’t seen their collection of artistic antique spurs, you haven’t lived.  Next time you’re in San Antone, you might consider skipping the Alamo and just heading there. You won’t get the true history of the Alamo or the Texas Republic by visiting the Alamo anyway, rest assured, especially the real and fascinating histories of Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie and William Travis.  For that you should read a book or at least consult Wikipedia.

The fact is this great country is replete with art museums  –  as are many great countries including yours, most likely  –  wherever one goes.  Cities of all sizes tend to get favored with the most, and the true open-minded less-than-snobby art lover will almost always find some delight in any of them, wherever they are.  Chances are you already know this and could offer up some great treasures from your own memory.  What some of the pictures here offer are personal faves from various venues in the Boston area.  Do they all fit some definition of “fine art?”  Who’s to say, and does it even matter?  The educated and informed art critic or historian may have a more refined and defensible sense of which art is worthy and good, and why that is so, but everybody knows what they like without asking why, and is their joy and delight in their beloved clown art or Elvis-on-velvet or seascape-with-sunset any less real?  So what if it came from a yard sale and not a Christie’s auction? 

Which brings us to the famed past artist whose work is most commonly seen on postcards in the current day.  Maybe you’ve heard of Katsushika Hokusai.  If that’s not the case, it is still extremely likely you’ve seen something (a postcard, perhaps?) inspired by his art, specifically his woodblock print of 1831, The Great Wave Off Kanagawa.  If his print does not spark any recognition, take a look at the ad for Liquor and Wine Outlets from a recent Boston newspaper and think about it some more, or just have The Wave, as its colloquially known, in your head for the next year and be attentive.  It’s bound to turn up somewhere, in some form or other.  There are claims that The Wave is possibly the most reproduced image in the history of art, and if you need a good laugh at Katsushika’s expense, just look up “parodies of The Wave” and figure he’s laughing along with you in whatever spiritual realm dead Japanese artists inhabit on the astral plane.  Or come up with a parody of your own, though chances are it’s already been done.

So here we are back to raving about the greatness of our local little bandbox of an art space, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, as exemplified by this most recent temporary exhibit.  The museum claims to possess the “finest and largest collection of Japanese art outside Japan,” and would they lie about something like that?  Like most of MFA’s grander temporary exhibits, it includes lots of context.  This one gives the expected history of the Ukiyo-e school of Japanese printmaking that prevailed from the 17th to 19th centuries, of which Hokusai was a superstar, along with Utagawa Hiroshoge who came later, though it was a popular medium and money was to be made and there were many practitioners.  The show also gives some colorful personal details, how Hokusai fit the stereotype of the creative artist, looking a bit like an unkempt wild man who moved constantly from house to house as he filled each living space up with a chaos of junk until it was uninhabitable, housekeeping of any kind not being one of his priorities.  Or so the story goes.

Utagawa Hiroshoge, in sharp contrast, was a proper upper class gentleman, polite and well-dressed and somewhat less wild with his compositions. Hokusai’s The Wave is one of Thirty-six Views of Mt Fuji, and Hiroshoge’s best known work comes from his series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido.  Hiroshoge is known as the artist who closed the chapter on Ukiyo-e, which faded from the scene after his death.  Despite his fame, Hiroshoge never got rich, and he became a Buddhist monk in his final years.  There’s a whole lot more on all this if you care to peruse Wikipedia, or get some books or take a course on the subject.  The MFA show provided examples of Ukiyo-e and paintings from both artists as well as others, as any comprehensive show would, and it should be said that a great show offers visual delight as well as information, and at its best inspiration to explore more.  

Ukiyo-e, being the pop medium that it was,  specialized in portraits of female beauties  –  what nowadays one might call cheesecake, though cheesecake in Hokusai’s day might’ve differed from the modern concept  –  as well as famous kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers, landscapes and scenes from history and folk tales (lots of great ghosts and weird spirits!) and of course erotica.  Some things never change.  It also portrayed lots of flowers and birds and insects and fish, the stuff of the natural world, subjects to which this writer is quite partial and some of which is offered here.  If you prefer cheesecake and actors and wrestlers, either get to Boston before the show closes or use your device to do what it does best.  One of Hokusai’s innovations is evident in these pictures, which was the use of Prussian Blue, first concocted in Holland around 1720.  It was a much deeper and more intense and non-fading blue than indigo, the commonly used blue that preceded it.  Ain’t it all quite lovely and visually striking?

So maybe in your fortunate lifetime you’ve made it to the Louvre and the Uffizi gallery and the Picasso museum in Barcelona and the Tate in London and all those NYC bastions of artistic culture, MOMA and others of the same ilk.  Maybe you’ve even been to Boston’s MFA, though in private moments you will admit to people that the Dali Museum in Tampa is your most favorite of all, because surrealism “speaks” to you.  You are probably not alone in this, and perhaps someday you’ll find another of similar persuasion and the rest will be history, all of it a bit surreal.  

Or just maybe you’ve only ever been to one major art museum, the one in the city nearest you, which enhanced your appreciation of the visual fine arts in a meaningful way and some day you plan to get back there when you have more time.  Or you don’t go anywhere near cities, with their hideous traffic and hordes of people, and have fallen in love with the low budget but well-curated art institute of your small town or the bigger town nearby, which sponsors great shows (some of the “art” seen here was being shown at several such places).  Or frankly your last visit to an art museum felt like a waste of time and you just don’t get it, would rather be fishing or hiking or playing paddleball or whatever it says on your bumper sticker;  there are certainly many other joys to be had in this life, thank God, and you know what those are in your case, so go for it.  

But it would be great if you’ve enjoyed what you’ve seen and learned here, an offering that has only enhanced your lifelong love of the visual arts, if only in the tiniest of ways.  Just remember that whatever positive effects this posting may have had on you, it started with a visit to an art museum and for all the inspiration and joy there is to be found in so many places, it’s as good a place to try as any, and better than some.

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