Thanks to “Winter,” a book by Val McDermid that I wrote about last week, I learned about a tradition in McDermid’s native Scotland that helps locals avoid the winter blues.
Every January, the National Gallery of Scotland brings out 38 brilliant watercolors by William Turner for everyone to see. Henry Vaughan, a wealthy patron who donated the pictures long ago, made the January show a condition of his bequest. He thought showing the masterpieces in weak winter light would be the best way to preserve them.
Vaughan’s idea had another pleasing result.
During Scotland’s gray winters, Turner’s vivid images give visitors to Edinburgh’s premier art venue a redeeming splash of color. McDermid’s story about Vaughan and those Turner watercolors really resonated with me because every winter, I find myself especially drawn to the dazzling palettes in art museums, too. My birthday falls in January, when the holidays are gone and the weeks can fall prey to post-Yuletide blahs.
For the past few years now, I’ve answered that challenge by giving myself the gift of an art museum visit. Previous itineraries have included the Dallas Museum of Art, home to a stellar Van Gogh exhibition in 2022, and the LSU Museum of Art, which staged an exhibit of American Impressionist paintings last winter.
This year, my wife and I flipped the script a bit by visiting an art show to celebrate Valentine’s Day rather than my birthday. The LSU Museum of Art obliged with an evening of champagne, desserts and fellowship to open its new exhibit of Marc Chagall lithographs, which runs through May 24.
Chagall’s lyrical sense of humor and vivid embrace of color make his pictures blaze like a festive hearth, and opening night visitors to the exhibit almost seemed to warm their hands around his masterworks.
“I need this now,” the museum’s executive director, Mark Tullos, said of the exhibit. “This puts me at peace. I’m glad you’re here to enjoy this with us.”
Chagall, who died at 97 in 1985, lived in several places throughout his life, but his most formative years were in France. In a nod to Chagall’s artistic roots, Rudolphe Sambou, consul general of France in New Orleans, was on hand to offer remarks, too.
“Culture is not an ornament for prosperous times,” Sambou told listeners.
To the contrary, Sambou pointed out, it’s a sustaining part of our shared humanity.
I thought about Sambou’s words as patrons sipped bubbly from plastic cups and milled around the lithographs, which were mostly conceived to explore romantic love. In a season of grim headlines, it was comforting to see so many people gathered at an event that joyously celebrated matters of the heart.
For Chagall, who had suffered in life but answered its pain with beautiful images of soaring spirituality, art wasn’t merely an escape. It was a way to summon the best in us, something we all need now more than ever.
Email Danny Heitman at [email protected].
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.nola.com ’
