Departure

In 1980 I found myself in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

I strolled into a large gallery where Max Beckmann’s first triptych, Departure, dominated one wall. I sat on a bench and took in this monumental painting for what seemed like an hour.

I had been familiar with Beckmann and his work. He had taught at Washington University, my undergraduate school, and a friend and former professor owned one of Beckmann’s easels. But on this day I saw this painting....really saw it....and it changed my way of working.

Now, decades later, I am of mixed feelings about the whole business of art-making, still in love with it but not sure where it fits in a culture of constant shifts. Beckmann was changed by the trauma of experiencing the first world war on the battlefield. He was changed by Matisse and Picasso and the onset of new artistic horizons. He was changed by the second world war and his move to the United States.

Culture moves and expands, adjusts and changes. Fashion is fashion.

I maintain the we humans have not changed so much. Departure still moves me today as it did thirty-one years ago. Art gets shoved into History. It gets written about one too many times. Then it gets digitized and experienced through headphones while stepping sideways in long, cramped lines of people trying to pick up aesthetic philosophy like a lint brush.

At some point in every life, one finds the ‘departure’ to freedom.