Feelings about seeing great drawings - Essay Example

Museum Experience After entering into the exhibition hall I had a number of feelings. My immediate feeling was that the paintings and the surrounding people were very clinical. In this way I felt like I was in a doctor’s office with the people diagnosing the drawings. As I walked around the museum, however, I increasingly became more involved in the specific exhibitions. The first drawing I looked at was called Saber Dance. The artist was Gene Davis. While this work did not incorporate any colors it had a very lively feel.

Notably the artist used a style that seemed to be a hybrid of cubism and abstract expressionism. Viewing this work made me feel a conflicting sense of excitement, but also a foreboding sense of intellectual curiosity. This exhibit had many of this artists’ work so I further experienced these feelings as I made my way throughout the exhibition hall. In other instances, however, I came to appreciate the way that the museum hall itself was able to manipulate my feelings by juxtaposing certain works of art.

For instance, the lively nature of the above mentioned work was contrasted with work that implemented a starkly more minimalist style. I subsequently came to reflect on the ways that my feelings changed as a relation between myself and the drawing. The minimalist drawings made me feel more intellectual, while the abstract drawings were more emotional. These distinct emotions made me recognize that a major purpose of art and artists is to allow us to feel new emotions.