A Sudden Oasis
I was in Pasadena recently and visited the Norton Simon Museum, tucked into a modest park just off the freeway. I went from whizzing along at 65 to veering off sharply and arriving in a lovely green space adorned with famous bronze sculptures. A sudden oasis.
As I walked to the museum entrance I was greeted by Barbara Hepworth’s monumental bronze sculpture, Four Square (Walk Through) (1966).
A visionary English artist (1903-1975), Hepworth “redefined sculpture in 1931 when she first pierced a hole through an abstract work of stone,” according to the museum’s literature. “ To Hepworth, the incorporation of negative space into a composition was a way to negate any perceived hierarchy between mass and space, and to establish a more balanced, intimate relationship between these two elements.”
I love that! “To negate any perceived hierarchy between mass and space.” Makes me think of contemporary dance, where the shapes dancers form in space are in concert with the bodies carving the space. Of her work, Hepworth said, “Could I, at one and the same time, be the outside as well as the form within?”
This question turns out to be an apt description of my attempt at mindfulness while viewing a painting in the museum’s lobby. Mindfulness and art is a practice I am developing as well as an area of research and writing for me. I wanted to do a little practice that afternoon despite the 90 degree heat and a harried state of mind.
The museum lobby was buzzing. People of all ages cruising around at different speeds through the space, not unlike impromptu dancers. Some mulled over the works they encountered; others streamed by, absorbed in their conversations not the art. I remember a group of teenagers taking photos of one another in front of another Hepworth sculpture, amused by capturing their friends’ disembodied heads as seen through the carved out spaces in the bronze.
Barbara Hepworth, Rock Form (Porthcurno) before the teenagers arrived. You can see the Billy Al Bengston painting I’m about to describe in the background, along with the bench where I gently wrestled myself into mindfulness.
It was not an ideal place for mindfulness, I thought. Oh well. I just plunked down on a bench and took in the painting that happened to be in front of me. Billy Al Bengston’s Punta Tintorera Dracula (1974) is 9.6 feet square acrylic on canvas abstract painting of an iris. As the museum literature describes, “In this painting, Bengston deconstructs one of his most established motifs: the iris. The delicate flower, whose outline was originally lifted from the logo on a sugar packet, has been fragmented into abstracted petals and leaves.”
When I first sat down I saw none of that. I didn’t read the placard. I simply gazed. Immediately I was annoyed by all the noise and movement around me. The jumbled shapes in the painting confused me. This isn’t going to work, I thought. But I tried anyway. Taking a cue from forest bathing and from guided mindfulness sessions led by Louise Thompson, I prompted myself to observe the colors. Neutrally. Just describe to myself what colors I saw. Guide my eyes around the entire surface of the painting, so I would take in every color and shape I could see.
This is just an image I found on Pinterest. The image from the Norton Simon museum isn’t sharable but I hope you’ll go check it out because it’s amazing and you can zoom in on parts of the painting!
Simply doing this was no simple task. A voice in my head wanted to narrate. “These colors seem dated.” “What are these shapes?” “Has something exploded?” “Is that an intestine?”
I gently wrestled my mind back to just naming colors. (Gently wrestling is admittedly an oxymoron, but “gently guiding” was beyond me.) I tried not to like or dislike any colors. Purple, salmon, gauzy white. Deep teal, pools of orange, streaks of gold.
Inhale. Exhale.
Okay, I thought, listen to the noise. Just let it be here. Describe to myself what I hear. This is an element of mindfulness, to allow what is to be present. To not try to shove away unwanted feelings, sensations, stimuli, but instead to simply observe. The practice enables us to quiet ourselves, regulate our emotions, and simultaneously notice details and the bigger picture around us. This can be practiced in a forest, in a museum, in a living room. Anywhere a person finds themselves is a place to practice mindfulness.
Maybe I sat still in front of Punta Tintorera Dracula for five minutes. Probably less. At the time I thought I’d failed my own mindfulness test. (First rule of mindfulness: the mind wanders. That’s what it does. There is no failure.)
Surprisingly, as days passed, I returned again and again to the painting in my mind. I looked up more information about it and learned that it was Bengston’s attempt to desconstruct an image of a Tall Bearded Iris, or Dracula’s Kiss Iris. I thought of the fragmented petals and leaves, the velvety deep purple, the layers of geometric forms. I realized the painting did a pretty good job of portraying my inner world that day. Clarity and confusion, levity and depth.
I was discovering, quite by chance, that mindfulness with art wasn’t an ephemeral experience. My brain continued to digest and decipher the image long after it was in front of me. In my case, that led to wanting to learn more about the artist. Check this dude out!
His obituary in the New York Times said, “Billy Al Bengston, a Kansas-born California painter who drew inspiration from the car and surf culture of midcentury Los Angeles and was part of a 1960s movement, known as L.A. Cool School, that helped transform the city from an art-world afterthought into a hub of contemporary art.”
Next I looked up an image of the variety of iris he painted. Look at that fuzzy tongue inviting pollinators. Bengston made that orange the dominant feature of his painting, flipping the showiness from the petals to the sexy insides of the flower.
Now I have even more to muse on and carry with me. Five minutes of patchy mindfulness with a painting I didn’t even love. Hours of rich discovery and reflection about art mirroring and refracting life. Being the outside as well as the form within.
“My soft stuff is a lot more serious than it looks, and my serious stuff is a lot more whimsical.” – Billy Al Bengston