National_Geographic_Traveller_India_May_2017

Voices | CREW CUT
Down to a
Fine Art
ART ASTONISHES AND ENTERTAINS.
SO DOES TRAVEL. TOGETHER, THEY LEAD
TO SELF-DISCOVERY
Kareena Gianani
is Senior Associate Editor at
National Geographic Traveller
India. She loves stumbling upon
hole-in-the-wall bookshops, old
towns, and owl souvenirs in all
shapes and sizes.
In 2015, I walked into the glass building of Toronto’s Art
Gallery of Ontario only because it coolly curved 600 feet
along a street I happened to pass. It was my first day in the
country, and entering some place that resembled a canoe or a
silvery spaceship seemed like the wise thing to do.
Inside, I looked at the works of Emily Carr, a trailblazing
Canadian artist I’d never heard of. But her dramatic paintings
of moist rainforests, brooding cedar trees, and old brave totem
poles told me stories of a Canada we rarely see: a land of rich but
fast disappearing indigenous cultures, way beyond its first-world
shininess. Carr’s fierce art protested against European settlers
erasing her homeland’s cultures. Slowly, Canada’s newness
slipped away and I didn’t feel as much of a stranger.
Until late last year, I’d travel for unforgettable places and
people. I savoured the getting away, and the arriving at a place
where foreign tongues fill a bistro during breakfast. I travelled
for boisterous cities, camped in wild forests, or followed a lover
to new lands. But things changed last October, when art began
ruling my itineraries in Paris, Barcelona, and Amsterdam.
From being quarter-day plans squished between long spells of
roaming a city, museums became delightful dawn-to-night
affairs in themselves.
I discovered, for instance, that being in the Louvre building
is like being all over the world at once. One never knows what
one might find. My interactive Nintendo guide took me to a
corner of a room where a marble
sculpture of a woman stretched
out on a mattress, a lone flimsy
sheet wrapped around her left leg.
She was dreaming. The eroticism,
her sinuous grace was palpable;
until I walked over to the other
side and realised that “she” wasn’t
a woman. It was the androgynous
figure of Hermaphroditos, carved
as if to half-shock, half-tease a
viewer. It was made between the
third and first centuries B.C., yet
there I was, abashed and amused
by the effect it was having on me.
Someplace else was a painting
of a man dressed in a frilly redand-black
costume. He smiles
mischievously at someone we
cannot see; his eyes are crinkled,
and face flushed. The merriment
exuded by the “Buffoon Holding
a Lute,” by Dutch Golden Age
painter Frans Hals can ward off the greyest of moods.
Paris’s Musée d’Orsay, on the other hand, is a map of what the
city was like at various points in time. The nightlife and show
business of Paris in the 19th century are brought to life by the works
of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Edgar Degas’s “The Ballet Class”
is a window into the moods of Parisian ballerinas once they’re
off the stage. One scratches her back absentmindedly, others
only half-listen to their ballet master. Here, centuries collide and
Paris’s many histories move about freely. In the evening, strains
of waltz filled this railway-station-turned-museum and at least
80 dancers filled the atrium for a spectacular surprise.
Isn’t this what we travel for? To be astonished and entertained;
tickled and thrilled, mostly by people we will never meet? Given
the range of discoveries it entails, art doesn’t feel very different
from travel itself. And while it is a great way to see the world,
it is also a way to see myself. Being in Amsterdam’s Van Gogh
Museum, for instance, had the most cathartic effect on me. I went
chasing a teenage favourite and found myself wrapped in the life
stories of the artist’s hope, tragedy, and great perseverance. In
the Rijksmuseum, watching a local art student sketch Johannes
Vermeer’s “The Milkmaid” calmed me as much as the original
painting itself. I also discovered that artists who hang out in
museums make for great conversation: Louvre turned extra
special after I met a Portland-based artist and we sat on a bench
thumbing through his sketchbooks filled with Michelangelos, da
Vincis, and other works I’d never
have checked out if I were alone.
If you, like me, ever feel slightly
daunted by museums, step into
Room 19 of Rotterdam’s Museum
Boijmans Van Beuningen. There is
a man’s head poking from the floor.
The life-size wax sculpture rises
from a gaping hole in the ground,
looking inquisitively at a roomful
of Dutch Romantics around him.
Fifty-six-year-old Italian artist
Maurizio Cattelan created this
installation because he still feels
like an outsider in the art world.
Yet he breaks new ground, literally.
Travelling for art, above all, is a
reminder of what is most important
to me: to seek beauty and joy, and
to be playful while I can. There is
no such thing as being too happy,
too emotional, or too moved by an
artwork. They are safe places.
PHOTO COURTESY: MAURIZIO CATTELAN, UNTITLED (MANHOLE), MUSEUM BOIJMANS VAN BEUNINGEN
14 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA | MAY 2017