Hope
Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies (1899) by Claude Monet (above)
Monet's painting is one of the most popular works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This is worrying to many people of taste and sophistication, who take a taste for "prettiness" as a symptom of sentimentality, even stupidity.The worry might be that the fondness for this kind of art is a delusion: those who love pretty gardens are in danger of forgetting the actual conditions of life, which include war, disease and political error and immorality. Audiences need art constantly to remind them of this kind of material, sophisticated types will propose, or they might end up deluded as to what life is actually like.
But this is to locate the problem in completely the wrong place. For most of us, the greatest risk we face is not complacency; few of us are likely to forget the evils of existence. The real risk is that we are going to fall into fury, depression and despair; the danger is that we will lose all hope in the human project.
It is this kind of despair that art is well suited to correct and that explains the well-founded popular enthusiasm for prettiness. Flowers in spring, blue skies, children running on the beach ... these are the visual symbols of hope. Cheerfulness is an achievement and hope is something to celebrate.
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