Art Appreciation

"I think this guy is saying 'uurghr.'" Andrew scrunched up his face and stuck his tongue out. I stifled a laugh, because we were in the Mona Lisa room of the Louvre museum, and any minute laughter was automatically construed as the seedlings of theft attempt ideas. The half dozen guards protecting their princess would no doubt pounce on me; taser me to the ground and take my camera just to show off their two weeks training. The man Andrew was referring to was not any of the two dozen wedding attendees of Paolo Caliari's Wedding Feast at Cana, where Jesus did that ever popular parlor trick of turning water in to wine (the wedding party went wild) that filled the wall opposite Mona, nor Mona herself, who some skeptical critics like to say is rather man-ish herself. Andrew was not a skeptical critic. Our heads were touching as we peered at the piece of art, his thick black coils overpowering my thin blonde strands. We made a dynamic pair.

The painting we were pondering was instead in my hands, in the Louvre Masterpieces book that I'd purchased for the outlandish price of €8. The things I'll do for knowledge. Francois Biard's Four O'clock in the Salon is a busy painting of dozens of 19th century art lovers smooshed together in the Louvre's Grande Galerie, each using his or her own unique method of appreciation. One man appeared to be sneezing. Another, in the process of being appalled by the sneeze. Three women swooned over a piece the way tweens sigh as they flip through teeny bopper magazines. One woman appeared to be so overcome with joy that she flung her arms in the air and completely failed to see the young child pulling frantically at her dress. The child was either terribly bored, or startled by the man next to her, who was calling out loud for everyone to bugger off--the Galerie's a-closing. But our man--the uurghr man--was contorting his neck and baring his teeth in a sort of half-stupid grin that neither Andrew nor I could let slide unharrassed.

"Do you think he's constipated?"

"I think the ridiculously happy lady just broke his arm."

I cocked my head.

"Could be, could be."

I had paid my respects to Her Majesty the Mona. When her face covers every facet of the Louvre, from my €8 booklet to the Mona Lisa mouse pads in the gift shop, how could I not? And I had been genuinely interested in meeting her. So I pushed through the crowd (allowing my bony elbows to come to good use), bowed my head, waved hello, furrowed my brow, and did whatever was expected of me in the presence of pricelessness. I felt mildly underwhelmed. I edged my way back through the crowd of admirers just as a serious looking security man accosted the boy next to me for pulling out his camera phone in a threatening manner.

"I think his name should be Bahnfahrt,” I said as I approached Andrew again.

"What?" He asked, his head snapping down out of Top Row Painting position.

"The dude. Uurghr dude in the picture. He has to be named Bahnfahrt."

Andrew smiled. "What in the hell does that mean?"

"I dunno, I saw it in a German train station."

And we both hurried out, because now we had to laugh. Our exit brought us to our third travel buddy Nick, who was looking concernedly at a piece in front of him. We stood on either side and looked on in a similar manner. I felt like the trio from Ferris Bueller.

"This one has to be a joke." Nick said. "I mean, look at it. Don't you think he probably painted it as a gag gift for one of his buddies?" Nick pointed out the woman in the corner of a colorful painting full of food, livery and a general hedonistic overtone. The woman had breasts the exact size and shape of eggplants and was being carried off by two half man-half monkey guys in hats. The half-human-half-tree things with twig nipples watched helplessly, and so did we. An elderly woman next to us audibly scoffed at his comment and scurried away, probably muttering to herself about appreciation, masterpieces, hoola hoops and MTV. Nick shrugged and took a close-up photo of eggplant-boobed lady.

As I was picking myself up off the ground after a fit of laughter due to the absurd statue I saw of a child wrestling a large angry duck, I realized there was no way in hell I could take this place seriously. I found a much-needed bench and plopped down, well within eyesight of the child/duck battle that I wasn't done laughing at. The Louvre is approximately fifteen miles long and my €3 Diet Coke had dried out hours ago. I flipped open my booklet again to the Grande Galerie scene. Did these people appreciate art more than I did? The woman's obvious ecstasy, the three girl's adoration, Bahnfahrt's odd sort of grin, did they all paint a picture of true appreciation? What is art to the technology generation, anyway? The faces in that painting were eerily reminiscent of mine when I found out that Facebook.com had added a photo album option. Did the World Wide Web and all its whimsical wonders somehow dull my innate human love of all things artsy fartsy? Perhaps my entire generation is doomed to a beautiless life of cubicles and skyscrapers.

An entirely novel idea occurred to me: what if I was only one in a long line of Louvre perusers who gulped down their giggles, suppressed their snickers, held in their haha's at some of the monumentally hilarious things that the human brain could create? How could an 1850's Parisian family not get a kick out of the statue of Milon getting bit in the ass by a lion? Surely flocks of schoolchildren had a riot when they realized they could see Heracles' penis. And rightly so! Andrew, Nick, and I couldn't possibly be the only gullible goons immature enough to point and laugh when we saw something naked. For all the rules, restrictions, queues, bureaucracy and holier-than-thou leering the Louvre employees had been meticulously trained to bombard us with, they couldn't prevent a soul from performing the most devious of acts against their precious museum: Complete humiliation. They can arrest me and perhaps even full perform a full body cavity search after they stop me from sprinting out the front doors with a Greek vase tucked under my arm, but they cannot stop me from pointing out that in the right light, Zeus looks remarkably like Graham Chapman. I giggle with glee--on the inside, of course--as my brain performs the most deviant acts of defiance.

As Andrew, Nick, and I relaxed and let our calves breathe under the shade of the indoor trees and Milon's ass-bitten agony, we proceeded to invent Bahnfahrt's entire life story.

"He's a mustache connoisseur," Andrew stated.

I adopted a nasally, back-of-the-throat mock German accent. "My name iss Bahnfahrt Strudeldorf, Mustache Connoisseur. Herr iss mein card."

Nick chimed in. "I specialize in mustaches of all kinds. Dat iss vat I am sayink!"

Bahnfahrt has two brothers, Einselfahrt and Hanselfahrt, who are butterfly farmers. His other brother is Fisherspoonfahrt, who makes schnitzel. The family dog, Funf, chases monarchs about all day and sometimes runs away. This makes Einselfahrt cry. We flipped open the booklet yet again to look at Bahnfahrt's ridiculous face, as frazzled and confused as the wild white hair it sat below. All three of us burst into laughter, prompting those with audio guides tucked neatly into their ears to pull them down and look about, afraid they'd missed something. They certainly had. We were reprimanded by a besuited man for lying on the twenty year old marble benches beneath our tree. We wondered how they would react if Andrew charged the barrier surrounding Venus de Milo and mounted her from behind.

I entered the Louvre with far-fetched hopes of spotting the Work That Would Change My Life--the piece that would flood my heart with sudden, pure understanding of culture and time and the blood, sweat, tears and agony of art, wring it out and leave it a wriggling, beating lump of forever changed tissue. This is it, I could see me saying to myself. This is the piece that has inspired my life. Then I would quit school and move away to live in a tree in the Alps with a hippie named Willow. My mom would cry as I left, but she'd understand how moved I was. I left the Louvre with the stark realization that the painting I'd gotten the most out of, I hadn't even actually seen, but in print. I felt no less pleased. Granted, seeing Bahnfahrt's face in all its canvas painted glory would have been a bucketful of awesome and no doubt spurred a seriously dangerous bout of the giggles. But just the photo was enough for me to realize that this was my art appreciation. Leave no character unscathed, no portrait dignified, and no statue comfortable with its lack of garments. Brought to you by a member of the generation that can't take shit seriously. All those brush stroke analyzing, genre studying, style categorizing, time period trash talking art snobs can sod off. I--the lowly undergrad with naught but a minor under her belt and a term's worth of Art History on which to brag--will always remember Four O'clock in the Salon. It gave me a laugh, an inside joke, a moment with my friends to recall and reminisce on years later. Remembrance, not worship. Nostalgia, not criticism. Fondness, not an admission price. If that’s not art goddamn appreciation, I don't know what is. I'm sure Bahnfahrt would agree with me.