Art and Wonder
9 October 2006
The new Denver Art Museum opened this weekend. I went, as did thousands of other people.
I stood outside with the throngs of opening-day visitors, staring up at Daniel Libeskind’s titanium architectural rendering of the Rocky Mountains and was awe struck, almost speechless. Though I did manage a breathless, “Gawd, get a load of that!”
Inside, there was even more to be breathless about. Lebeskind has designed the museum’s interior walls so that they rise up at unusual angles creating few flat surfaces on which to hang art.
In other words, DAM is a visual feast outside and in.
No surprise this opening weekend attracted thousands. Awe-inspiring beauty will do that, draw people from all walks of life and cause them to mill about and gawk collectively in wonder.
Doesn’t matter that the appreciation of art and beauty is highly subjective; when a total stranger turns to you and says, “Man, that is awesome,” one realizes that our capacity to experience wonder connects us to each other.
Even when our wonder is an expression of total confusion we can still feel connected.
Total Stranger: In a language I can’t understand, says something to me while looking obviously perplexed about an object d’art we’re both staring at.
Me: “Yeah, I don’t get it either. But look, if you sit on this bench, and look up at it from this angle, you can at least see the play of light on the weird baubles.”
TS: Sits next to me on the bench and looks up at the sunlight streaking through one of Libeskind’s few interior windows and appears to notice how it catches the weird baubles.
Me: ”Gawd, this stuff really stretches you, doesn’t it!”
TS: Nods, thereby suggesting that we’re on exactly the same page.
Art will do that, help us bridge gaps and find ways to communicate with one another because it articulates a universal language that speaks to us all.
John Denver did a beaut job singing about the Rocky Mountains.
Now it’s Libeskind’s colossal man-made structure that will encourage strangers to bond over their response to the power and beauty of the natural world made into visual art.
October 10th, 2006 at 8:34 am
October 10th, 2006 at 4:14 pm