A man named Patrick Bringley published a memoir earlier this year: all the beauty of the world. When his brother died of cancer, Mr. Bringley quit his job in the media and became a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, America’s largest art museum. He wanted to stop in the most beautiful place he knew. He stood there still for ten years.
I loved Bringley’s books. It taught me how to get more out of museums, how to pay attention, and how to think about time differently. After reading that (and — revelation — starting dating someone who likes to draw), I started thinking that way. look Better. You start learning about wine and all of a sudden you care about where it comes from, right? I wanted it for art, but also for life. So we started painting. I drew art at the museum. It’s even more fun with kids, so I brought my sister’s kids too. We drove to the Blues Museum in Connecticut, stretched out on the floor with pencils and markers, and drew until it got dark.
At some point, my niece Scarlett set her sights on her boyfriend Larry. They were painting Lois Dodd’s Night Paintings, a peaceful nighttime scene of a barn. “Why are you in such a hurry?” she asked him, steadily filling the barn with dark gray. “Maybe you should take it easy.”
A few months later, I asked Bringley to walk around the Metropolitan Museum of Art and record an episode for the podcast I host, FT Weekend. I was still looking for guidance and I thought he would be able to teach the listeners as well.
His advice was basically the same as Scarlett’s: “Slow down.” We passed through the corridors of tens of thousands of years, and I asked him how not to feel like “I don’t understand.” Like I was walking somewhere, sawbut it actually wasn’t look. He suggested going alone. “Right now you and I are walking through medieval art and talking about things that have nothing to do with medieval art,” he said to me. “But if you and I break up and I say, ‘Watch this for 15 minutes, and I want you to watch this for 15 minutes,’ your soul might be stilled. You’ll sink into it, too.” We might start.”
We ended up in front of Van Gogh in the Impressionist Room, the busiest room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I asked him about his rules when thinking about drawings. His first words are “Do nothing.” Look at the details and then the whole. Don’t decide if it’s good or bad, because that’s not even essential, right? Decide if it affects you in any way. “It all takes time and is done quietly,” he said. Go away from that and do the same with other arts to learn more. “And go back, go back. Go back and keep going.”
A few days later, Larry, his brother, niece Athena, and I returned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Seven-year-old Athena had her one rule. She was drawing something, please Please finish it. ” We agreed to her terms. No one was allowed to rush.
We made little books and handed them out. I painted the head of an Egyptian mummy and a monument in Ghana. We stopped for snacks and drew pictures for each other. I drew a picture of Lee Krasner, Larry drew a picture of Josef Albers, and a little girl asked to draw with us, and Athena looked at her suspiciously.
We went back to the Impressionist room and into the gallery full of Monets. Athena was standing in front of a haystack. I stood in front of his water lilies. I drew. Someone came up from behind us. “Are you painting?” they asked. Yes, I said it. Hey, they said. Athena asked what I noticed. I told her that in water most lines go horizontally, but reflections in trees go vertically. I asked her what she noticed. She said the shadow on the haystack is the same size as the haystack, but upside down.
I looked over and Larry had written down the words, “What did you notice?” Impressed by her concentration, I took a photo of her painting and suddenly noticed the scenery around her. There, Athena was seen cleaning up a haystack, occasionally being shaken by the crowd. There was a steady stream of people walking behind her, taking pictures of the water lilies. They barely looked at the painting itself. Snap, turn. Snap, turn. I realized that I was also guilty of this until recently. I also noticed that some people dress up to match the water lilies. They were taking pictures of influencers with water lilies.
This kid, from the post-Z generation of screen-obsessed and inattentive kids, stood there, silently staring, demanding not to be rushed. Instead, people around her were buzzing in her ears, but that wasn’t the case. Adults forgot.
In September, Larry and I took a month off and traveled through Europe and Turkey. At this stage I was also drawing seriously, but I was humbled by how difficult it was to draw as an adult. My hands seemed to have stopped developing when I was 6 years old, but they were itchy. I’ve been doodling aimlessly for years, but it was just stars, dots, and random shapes. I think this is why coloring books became so popular for a time. Coloring books are difficult for adults.
In the seminal 1979 book draw with the right side of the brain, Betty Edwards teaches that the brain distinguishes between what it assumes things look like and the shape it actually sees. To help people see, she has her students draw recognizable art upside down. When she turned it over, she was surprised to find it almost perfect.
Larry suggested that we try to differentiate between what we see and how we think things should look. After all, wood is unbearable (it’s a texture). So is knowing how much detail to include in a building. The same goes for drawing with a pen. Not because you can’t erase it, but because you need different marks to create different types of shadows. Once I tried to draw a mountain and got really angry. Mountains are tough. They are made up of different shapes and shadows, and it is not easy to know which ones are important. Larry said, laughing and narrowing his eyes at me. I glared at him and narrowed my eyes at him, and it helped.
Right now, I’m following people on Instagram who teach me how to draw trees, mountains, and clouds. I also started annotating my drawings to acknowledge mistakes (like “I got the perspective wrong”), which I somehow considered acceptable, at least in my mind.
I posted it on Instagram. I’m not sure why. they’re not that good. But they’re not bad either. i like them I think everyone also likes their slightly unusual drawings.
I’m starting to see more now too. I’m curious if the shelf is tilted up or down. He noticed that Modigliani only painted eyes occasionally and things like that. Or how Matisse makes her face look sexy with incredibly few strokes. It has made my life more enjoyable.
Toward the end of the trip, my sister sent Larry and me an email. Her children said they wanted to go back to the Bruce Museum and slowly paint. They found some Josef Albers squares they liked and expanded on them. Everyone drew pictures, including the youngest who was 3 years old, and her sister and her husband sat on the floor with them. Next time, I’ll have adults draw it too.
Hosted by Laila Raptopoulos FT Weekend Podcast