Observations About Life at a Van Gogh Exhibit

BY ARLENE HARDER, MA, MFT

A visit to a museum shows how easy it is to focus on details and miss the larger picture.

A couple weeks ago, I had the privilege, together with LOTS and LOTS of other people, of seeing "Van Gogh's Van Goghs," an exhibition of masterpieces from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I came away struck by two things I want to share with you.

Focusing on Details and Missing the Larger Picture

The first occurred when I was able to work my way around other people and move to less than a foot from a painting, remembering my manners, of course, and standing at the side so I didn't block the view of others. What I saw was a canvas filled with bold, broad strokes of bold, bright colors. From this viewpoint, there was very little sense of how these individual "ingredients" of the painting fitted within the whole.

The only other time I've experienced anything like this was when I saw an Impressionist exhibit a number of years ago. More recently, I've been to the Getty Art Center, where paintings by the old masters let you know they paid great attention to detail. Seeing a Van Gogh up close is an entirely different experience.

It's like watching a magician challenge you to follow his slight-of-hand as he creates, seemingly out of thin air, the illusions of his craft. I could see the WAY separate strokes of paint had been applied, but I didn't understand how Van Gogh could know, standing next to his canvas, what the effect would be on viewers ten feet away. That was certainly part of his genius.

As I thought about this, I realized that some of us (including me, if truth be told) can become so captivated by the details in our lives and so busily engaged in a hundred separate activities of home and work that we miss the WHOLE scene. It particularly happens when we focus in minute detail on our faults and on our regrets. We fail to recognize their insignificance when compared with all the good we've done and all the blessings we have.

It's more than just not seeing the forest for the trees. We become, at times, like the fanatic who, having lost sight of his primary goal, becomes attached to side issues. Not realizing that these don't relate to what he really wants, but believing them to be terribly important, he redoubles his efforts. In so doing, he stands little chance of reaching his original goal.

And if you're concerned about something that may -- or may not -- happen in the future, you may come under the power of fear, which is a very self-centered emotion. It would have you believe that your sense of well-being, your very quality of life, is defined only by the thing you fear. Of course, from time to time we all feel some anxiety, but fear is stronger. It is like a magnet, trying to rivet your attention only to what might happen. And so, overcoming fear requires you to pull yourself away from it, i.e., to consciously step back from the fear so that your perspective is expanded to include every part of the rich landscape of your life.

You can read more about appreciating your life as a whole in Reviewing the Fabric of Your Life and about preventing fear from taking over your life in Breaking Fear's Hold on the Future.

When the Ego Jumps to Conclusions

The second thing I learned from standing close to Van Gogh's paintings is that we experience the "whole" of life by filing in empty space with details that aren't there. This became apparent to me when I looked at a Van Gogh from a distance and enjoyed "seeing" the branches of small plants next to a road in a winter scene, lace curtains blowing in a window, the texture of a shoe. As I got closer, however, it was clear that my imagination had created these details of form and substance. I had merely projected onto the canvas what I WANTED to see.

This, too, is like life. When our ego needs to believe our opinions are right (in a distorted attempt to have us feel good), we are quite capable of convincing ourselves that our opinions are true, even if there is a total absence of facts behind them. When this happens, we land on the Island of Conclusions, a place Norton Juster writes about in "The Phantom Toll Booth." It's a place to which we unconsciously jump in one easy leap, but from which it's hard to leave without conscious effort.

Therefore, today's second lesson from Van Gogh, ladies and gentlemen, is that life is too short and far too precious to operate from false conclusions. Of course, none of us are free from holding opinions that don't hold water and most of the time it doesn't matter terribly much if we've distorted the truth a little to our advantage. But when our ego's need to be "right" causes disruptions in relationships and in work, it's time to put the ego in its place and look more realistically at what is really true.

So if you've been accused of coming to the wrong conclusions about something important, or if you suspect you've been making some assumptions that could easily be flawed — and if you are willing to be honest with yourself — I recommend you read Preventing Ego From Destroying Love and Unhooking the Velcro Syndromes.

© Copyright 1999, Revised 2002, Arlene Harder, MA, MFT