Feeling Meh about the Met

Who goes to the Met and feels uninspired? Who goes to the Met on a class assignment to choose one piece to talk about, and comes out empty-handed? Who returns to the Met for a second look, for the same assignment, in a desperate attempt to find something, anything, to discuss in front of her class, and still feels the void?

The place only has some 14,000 objects spanning some 5,000 years. How is it possible for anybody but a lame-brain to fail to find one measly thing to muddle through?

During both visits, I couldn't stop thinking about Jerry Saltz's observation on the country's most comprehensive and highly respected museum, which I am going to paraphrase here: The Met gets 5,000 years of art right. It had better stop sucking at the last 70.

Isn't that the truth?

The special exhibitions are what typically draw me to the Met. Ken Price, Impressionism and Fashion, Matisse -- all examples of sublime, world-class excellence within the past year. Right now, though, the special exhibitions are blah blah blah. Balthus? A pedophile with totally uninteresting fantasies. The textile trade, medieval treasures, baseball cards -- these are not for me. Of course, William Kentridge is the bomb. But he is Emily's. Rightfully.

I'm not going to bore you with all the machinations to justify myriad artworks, from Philip Guston to Claude Monet to the Temple of Dendur (no joke I was desperate enough to contemplate a tongue-in-cheek speech on cultural piracy and the Jewish slaves who built ancient Egyptian monuments, which resulted in Passover, the worst holiday ever, and -- and, oh wait, I promised no taking-the-reader-through-my-process filler -- cut).

So who swooped in and saved me? Monsieur Cézanne, bien sûr. As everybody in this class knows, I cannot paint and who is a better painter than Cézanne? Nobody. Maybe I was too stuck seeking out a contemporary, or a mentor, for my own narrative-driven art-making. But maybe it's enough for us to look together at something that simply makes me swoon. Maybe it's enough that my favorite art-history class at Michigan culminated in a comprehensive study of Cézanne. Maybe it's enough that a small Cézanne exhibition at the Palais du Luxembourg inspired my return to school.

And now, here I am.

Merci à vous, M Cézanne.

Gallery 825.