musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

Atmospheres


I’m certainly not well versed in Art; I know what I like, but I can seldom explain why, or even name the artist, let alone their style. Also, I would usually be just as pleased to have a poster reproduction of some famous work of art on my wall as I would the framed original in its oils or watercolours. I suppose I’m reacting to the effect it has on me, rather than anything else.

Some Art -or should I say some artists- occasionally capture something that is difficult to describe, difficult to name, but which draws me into it nonetheless. Sometimes it is as simple as their treatment of the subject matter -Van Gogh comes to mind, or perhaps J.M.W. Turner and his use of light and often rather imaginative depictions of his marine subject matter; sometimes it is the effect of the message being conveyed, such as Edvard Munch’s The Scream, or the fanciful sketch by Pablo Picasso of Don Quixote sitting on his horse with his side-kick Sancho Panza in the background…

Those works, and many others of course, have drawn me in over the years, but I have seldom tried to understand why. The many paintings of Claude Monet’s water lilies though have continued to puzzle me. On first glance -or maybe second and third, if I’m honest about it- they all seem the same: just multiple colours and shadows of things floating in a pond in a leafy garden somewhere, but entrancing nonetheless. Nothing is happening -no drama is unfolding, no message is being whispered about the why of the seemingly endless depiction of water lilies, except perhaps the magic that after so many years I am still wondering about them.

Often, if I don’t stop to analyse it, I relax and find I am immersed in… well, in something. It’s not the vast territory of a landscape; its more the closeness of chancing upon a small, hidden pond in a forest somewhere, I suppose -a relaxing, peaceful, unexpected find. I am there as an unwitting guest in a secret garden. And, being there, I am no longer conscious of its size, just of being a part of it, without  the need to question its existence. I am not an interloper, but a part of it, somehow -I am in a place where I am meant to be and not question its existence… or mine.

For some reason, Monet’s pond reminds me of happening upon the magical town Brigadoon, a mysterious Scottish village which appears for only one day every 100 years, and made famous by the Lerner and Loewe musical of the same name. To see it, to experience it, is serendipitous; to feel it beckoning to me is irresistible, and yet despite the invitation for me to approach more closely I still suspect I might be trespassing…

There is an ‘atmosphere’ to the pond, a mood that prolonged inspection offers, although I’m not really sure that I can explain it in more detail. I have to thank an article about Monet’s water lilies for the reason I am questioning it at all.[i] Among other things, the author writes that ‘Monet was foreshadowing advances in philosophy that have only recently made it into mainstream discourse. There has been a renewed focus on atmospheres in phenomenology, and this trend has now permeated into geography, anthropology and architecture…  atmospheres are phenomena that characterise spaces (real or imaginary) and are grasped prior to any reflection, through our bodies and our feelings.

‘Atmospheres are ephemeral. And yet, it is a recurring notion that atmospheres are somehow the heart of the place, something that Monet hints at when he says that landscapes come to life only through their atmospheres… This is a radical idea. If anything, most people, when thinking about how they experience a scene, would follow an atomist view: there are small elements that join together to make bigger elements, and bigger elements (a table) combine into even bigger ones (a dining room). And then the atmosphere comes last. The atmosphere of The Water-Lily Pond, for example, would be made out of the bridge, the pond, the trees. But Monet says that it’s the other way around: the bridge, the pond and the trees emerge thanks to the atmosphere.’

If you think about it, ‘atmosphere’ is happening all the time for us as we travel through our day. For example, the worry which may suddenly envelope us as we approach the cash register in a store as to whether we really need the items we are about to purchase. Walking from the darkness of a movie theatre into the full sunshine of a summer afternoon can quickly change our feeling about the day; entering a quaint little store through a door with tiny bells tinkling over it as it opens; the smell of a used bookstore, or the laughter of some little children in a playground can all change our mood. Nothing is static; our days are journeys through different moods. ‘It seems that extracting the gist of a scene (the Gestalt) is often the priority for the perceptual system.’

And as the author puts it in yet another way, ‘As you move from one building to another, from a garden to the street, notice how the changes in light, the opening and closing of vistas, affect your mood, subtly altering your very sense of being. They are hard to notice and easy to forget, but much of what you perceive, of what you think, of what appears possible, is determined by atmospheres.’

Monet’s water lilies do not require an explanation, really; they just create a feeling. There is no doubt what a sunset means to me: it does not require someone to point it out. For that matter, does Love really require a clarification? Is it not also an atmosphere? A gestalt? Surely it is the feeling that defines it. As Hamlet says of his love for Ophelia in Shakespeare’s play: ‘Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.’

Isn’t that also why some Art is… special?

[i] https://psyche.co/ideas/monet-understood-the-elusive-power-of-a-places-atmosphere?

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