Permission to Love What You Love

photo by Johnell Pannell via Unsplash

Ever stand in front of a supposedly great piece of art wishing you understood what was actually so great about it? That would happen to me all the time, usually in the vicinity of Picassos.

Everyone loves Picasso. I think that’s a fact I read chiseled in stone somewhere. Or at least, that’s the message I got based on everything from my grade-school art classes to the appreciative nods of Albertina Museum patrons as they floated through the Viennese galleries wrapped in pashminas and knowing glances.

Back then, I thought I didn’t like art. I just didn’t know how to see it. 

I’d squint at the Mediterranean Landscape on display at the Albertina, trying to make out anything but a frenzied sense of dread. I willed myself to appreciate the one bright spot–a hopeful lemon and some OK-ish pots–hanging among the dreary grays of Sylvette and angular mudscape of L'étagère. 

My forays into art appreciation weren’t really working. “Picasso…” I’d sigh, shuffling through the galleries. I would strain to understand these expert-certified, art-world-approved masterpieces, but they never once moved me.

I don’t know why I kept coming back. Other people would probably take up another hobby, go bowling, maybe. I kept returning to the Albertina and its Picassos.

I think I was waiting to feel something real, or to have an “a-ha!” moment that made it all make sense. Could my tastes really be so unrefined that I couldn’t appreciate true genius when I saw it? Was I the problem? 

Or maybe…just maybe…was something else going on?

Back in the 1950s, a researcher named Solomon Asch ran a series of seemingly simple experiments. He would show people a series of lines and ask them which two were identical. The task was easy. It was next to impossible to make a mistake.

And yet, time after time, people did. In experiment after experiment, study participants chose the wrong answer–even when it was glaringly, obviously wrong.

Why?

The experiments were a masterclass in the power of conformity. In each case, Asch placed one unwitting participant in a roomful of other “study participants” who had secretly been instructed to choose the wrong answers beforehand. The unwitting study participant would then listen as each person before him loudly and confidently selected the same wrong answer, growing more uncomfortable by the minute. By the time it was his turn to respond, he would often abandon his own judgment and simply agree with the group.

“I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t want to look stupid," participants would later admit in the debrief. “I felt uncomfortable going against the group.”

I thought about Asch conformity experiments and I thought about the Mona Lisa paradox. Years ago, I had watched tourists at the Louvre jostling to get a selfie with the famous Da Vinci painting. Clearly, they had gotten the idea that it was important to see the Mona Lisa, and so they did: they saw it up there on the wall, they snapped their trophy photo, and they shuffled away.

Almost nobody stayed long enough to really look.

Maybe that was the key to my Picasso problem. In fact, maybe that was the key to my whole art problem: I was so focused on seeing what everyone else said was worth seeing, that I forgot I had eyes of my own. I needed to trust my own vision.

I turned to Picasso’s Woman with Green Hat. 

“This isn’t working out,” I told her, finally walking away. 

It was only then, when I abandoned Picasso, that I understood what art really was. 

The realization that I could simply trust myself when it came to art was exhilarating. I didn’t have to check in with the experts first: I could just love what I loved. Without secondhand opinions to obscure my view, I could experience art for myself. I could see what was actually there, and not just what I’d been taught to expect.

Now when people tell me they’re “just not into art,” I smile because I get it. I used to feel the same way. But it also makes me laugh, because saying you’re not into art is like saying you’re not really into sunshine, or you’re not a fan of dinner. It’s part of the human experience, and it’s everywhere.

Art isn’t just something stuck to a museum wall, pre-approved for your admiration by some super-cultured art world cabal: it’s all around us, and we can learn to see it–and feel it, and love it–the moment we start experiencing it unfiltered, with our own eyes.

So consider this permission to simply love what you love. Get out there, trust your intuition, and have fun. If you need a little inspiration, here are a few tips for your next gallery or museum adventure:

#1. Don’t just take someone’s word for it: experience it for yourself. 

There’s only one experience you’re here for: yours. That makes you the expert on what moves you. Walk into that gallery and right up to the piece that’s calling you closer. Find the one that feels like the start of a little flirtation. Allow it to reveal itself slowly. See what it tells you when it’s just the two of you, alone. 

STOP! DON’T – DO NOT – read the description on the wall. Not even the title. Not even a little peek. Doing so will immediately put a barrier between you and the art. It will put words–and thoughts–about the art into your mind. These will be someone else’s words and thoughts, not yours. Do not let them intrude for now. Just feel what you feel and see what you see. The time for reading placards is when you’ve already experienced the art firsthand. Then you can go back and check: how much did you already understand before being told what to look for?

#2. Find the one you would steal.

The biggest threat to art isn’t theft; it’s indifference. That’s why I advocate thinking a little more like an art thief, and a little less like a polite patron. If you’re standing in a gallery and asking yourself, “Which piece do I like?” you’re not thinking big enough.

You can “like” a lot of things, moving through the galleries in a pleasant sort of fog that you’ll forget about by lunchtime. Or you can ask yourself, “What would I steal?” And suddenly, the stakes get a lot more interesting, because now you’re forced to think about what would be worth stealing: not just worth admiring there on the museum wall, but worth risking something real for. 

“What would I steal?” takes “What do I like?” and makes it personal. Plus, it’s more fun. The moment you start concocting a scenario in which you rappel through a museum skylight to snag your Pechstein is the moment you start having a personal relationship with it. And that’s what this whole game is about.

#3. Don’t take the whole thing off the wall all at once. A little goes a long way.

Once you find the work you’re willing to run with, it’s best to sneak it out of the museum or gallery a little bit at a time. Not only does this make your thieving impossible to detect, it has the added benefit of being a lot more legal. 

Go ahead: stroll into the Albertina and take a few colors from Monet’s Water Lilies home with you. Notice the unexpected bursts of violet in that olive-green water? Bring those colors into your living room decor or your summertime wardrobe. What about the treasures at the Kunsthistorisches Museum? Next time your kids say they’re bored, sit them in front of Bruegel’s Children’s Games and tell them they’re free to take any of the 90+ great suggestions on offer. Or pop by the mumok, find something modern that makes you think, “Hey, I could’ve done that!” and then go home and do it. Take the idea on display and make it better. Make it yours.

It’s the perfect heist: take a little at a time, here and there, over many years. The art world will be none the wiser as you, meanwhile, become all the richer.

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Irena Ashcraft is a Vienna-based writer and co-host of the Vienna Art Thieves podcast, a joyful plunge into a world of intrigue, adventure, and the art heist that started it all.