Five Words To Navigate The Horrifying Museum Date Experience
A survival kit for the art-clueless
Do you think Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese home appliances brand? Ever confused Ai Weiwei with that Chinese smartphone you got at work? You are in the right place.
Everybody knows that museum dates are garbage. The light is too bright to do that unflattering forehead pimple any favours, and besides, the idea of standing eight minutes in front of that Francis Bacon just because someone else finds it remarkably cathartic is unbearable.
Now, if the arts aren’t your forte but you aren’t reasonable enough to suggest a movie instead, here are five words to rescue you from charmless remarks such as ‘yeah, cool’ and ‘oh, interesting’ that make you sound like a dreary broken record.
1. Evocative
This is your ultimate wild card. It implies that the piece elicits powerful emotions from you and one simply can’t go wrong with that.
While gazing at Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son (below), for instance, you might not want to mention it is — hypothetically of course — grossing you out. Using evocative might be your more graceful and diplomatic choice of word.
2. Texture
Commenting on the texture — which is fancy for surface quality — of the artwork will immediately upgrade your charlatan art knowledge.
A painting’s texture can be flat, rough, incised, shiny, silky, and far more.
You get bonus points if you discuss the brushwork, which you can describe as quick, bold, layered, vigorous, irregular, etc.
If you are feeling particularly exuberant, try and challenge your eye to identify the other tools the artist used to apply paint such as knives, sponges, hair combs, even credit cards!
3. Eclectic
If you end up in front of a chaotic, multi-layered, disjointed canvas and you don’t find ‘what the hell is this mess’ your most seducing shot, then eclectic is your emergency exit from unsophisticated rhetorical disaster.
And while you’re at it, now that you are almost having fun, start by inspecting one detail and then zoom out again, exploring how the detail relates to the ensemble.
4. Avant-garde
Ahh, so avant-garde! Let’s say the object of your attention is— literally — a pissoir, like Marcel Duchamp’s infamous Fountain (I know you know that one!). You struggle to find it anything else than..freaky? You know what to do.
..Look at you, you almost had me at that one!
5. Juxtaposition
In art, nothing is banal or ordinary. Not even putting two things next to each other. On that account — observing the Markus Lüpertz below, you will express how deeply bewildered you are by the juxtaposition of the revisited classical nude to the skull figure.
Et voilà! That being said, you’ll at least stand a chance of landing a second romantic rendezvous. And I hope that maybe — maybe — halfway through your attempt to impress your date, you even got to genuinely enjoy some of the art.
Also, next time, perhaps stick to drinks and tapas.
