At the art exhibition I took the guided tour twice with two different tour guides. The first was a performer, enthusiastically inviting us into the world of the painter, filling in the background, making the connections, all allegories, metaphors, and witty asides - the French Revolution, Prague 1954, and the Salmon of Knowledge all made an appearance. He hammered home the point. This painter was not living in a bubble of abstraction. He was relevant to the events around him, relevant to our lives. It was an inspiring and entertaining performance that earned a sustained round of applause at the end.
The second guide was more rudimentary in his approach. He gave out the facts about the artist; when he was born, where he lived, the date of each painting, the materials used, the techincal aspects of creating the pieces. Often he would look at a painting, perplexed. More than once he shrugged his shoulders and said “Make of it what you will. The artist never explained his work”. In the hanging silence left by these words the knowledge hungry audience could almost hear his unspoken thoughts adding the words, “and I’m not about to attempt it now”. Although he didn’t say it, sometimes he gave the impression that he didn’t care for some of the work, that it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Other times his unspoken enthusiasm for a piece shone through despite his detached approach. At the end of his tour he too received a round of applause, albeit not as sustained and enthusiastic as the one given to the first guide.
So which guide was better? I’m not sure. I guess I needed both. A third would probably have been even more illuminating.
