This is Old, but I Found it in a File

I have two friends who paint and each of them has done her best to explain Abstract Expressionism to me. I think what keeps me from getting it is that my idea of “getting it” doesn’t exist. What I want is something definitive. Something objective. When I look at a painting of a man riding a bicycle down a street away from me I understand it. I could say to you, “Look, there’s a man riding a bicycle down a street,” and you’d say, “Well what do you know, there sure is.“ And you might not like it, or you might not care, but we’d agree on what we were looking at. We’d have something objective to talk about. We’d be on the same page. But when I look for that in places where it was never intended to be and don’t find it I get a little frustrated.

Several weeks ago I spent a night at the Comet looking up at a new piece of art that they had displayed above our table. I don’t know if it was Abstract Expressionistic or not, but it was compelling. There were three heads outlined in black on a blue field. The faces didn’t have any features except for eyes, which they shared. The faces overlapped in such a way that although there the artist had only painted four eyes each face had the usual two. So I spent the better part of three hours contemplating this picture and thinking deep things about how true it is that we’re all way more connected than we realize and how we really do share eyes. (This is a major theme in my life these days--the timing seemed Providential.) It also occurred to me that for what I believe to be the first time in my life I “got” a piece of non-literal art. Sitting there in the bar I connected with an artist I’d never met--understood what he was trying to communicate--felt a bit of what he’d felt when he poured himself onto his canvas. By the time I had to leave I had talked myself into buying this picture. I mean, I’d never connected with a painting in my life. So I stopped by the information flyer hanging on the wall to see how much my picture (#4) was selling for and get a phone number I could call. This information flyer also provided the titles of all the artwork that was on display. The title of my picture? Of the first oil on canvas that had ever moved me? Of this painting that spoke so deeply to my appreciation for how In This Together we all are?

“Multiple Personality Disorder”