The Slabs: Rome and Art 2

Yesterday, we saw that Rome could not help herself when she got to slab #15 which was the accumulation of all the art history records of man before The Great Dying. In this section of The Ark Lords, Rome had vowed to not stop and look too deeply. There was simply too much information to acquire so she forced herself to delay her studies until all the records were transmitted to the Library OMCOM.

But all that fell apart as some of the most beautiful paintings ever created by man flew by on her screen. This is how it went:

     “There,” Rome said. “Stop there.” She stared at the image for a long time. It was clearly flowers floating on water but painted in a soft stylized way. There was no attempt at rendering it realistically.
     “What is that painting?” she asked.
     “That is entitled ‘Reflections of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond’ by Claude Monet,” OMCOM replied. “But you are only looking at one small piece.”
     “Let me see the whole work,” Rome said.
     The image zoomed out and showed a huge three-part mural, six meters across in total.
     “That is the most beautiful painting I have ever seen,” Rome said, marveling at the image in front of her. “How could someone create something so, so inspiring?”
     “Art, by definition, is all about communication,” OMCOM said. “That this artist communicates with you means he is reaching across the centuries to tell you how he feels. He insisted this painting always be displayed on a curved wall so that the viewer felt encompassed.”
     Rome sat back in her chair and looked out the windshield. “I have had it all wrong,” she said. “I have just tried painting what I see, not what I feel. This…” she looked back down at the screen. “When I go back to painting, this is what I want to do. This is truly art.” She just gazed at the screen, putting her mind into the scene. Finally, she shook her head. “I cannot dwell on this. There is too much work to be done. There will be plenty of time for me to review this later. Go ahead and finish downloading this volume.”

I picked that painting in particular because a) I love it and b) when I finally got to see the original at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, I was blown away by how big it was. This image only gives you a hint of that so try and see it for yourself some day: