the Art of a Bungalow

Venue: Singapore Art Museum

I was admiring someone's art collection today. "You seem to like art?" my friend said in his usual charming smile. I nodded. "Why don't you take an art class?" As he walked away without an answer, my glance still drifting from the brush strokes to the frame, I answered quite absent-mindedly. "Sometimes it's nice to appreciate something you're not good at."

I think a lot of our awe and appreciation for something like a painting comes to some extent from the impossibility of it. To watch a dancer twist her nimble body through space and light, and understanding the impossibility of your stiff self to bend like that, you nod in appreciation at the effort, time and dedication required to muster and master such a move.

But I think, more than that, is knowing what it means to appreciate. It is an acute awareness of the painter, the dancer, the poet. It is to enjoy both the work and understand the work. It is to look at the work and look into it. Appreciation speaks with the artist, speaks through the art, and speaks to the art-ee. And if one is able to appreciate, one is able to breathe and feel the art.

Her wonderful eyes, teased by that auburn curl falling from the sides of her head dress, sparkled with a sort of clarity I've never come across before. I was entranced, and with a little smile, I moved away from the painting keeping our little secret exchange.