La visite première.

So my first visit to the High Museum was much like visiting a foreign country. In light of this, I title this post in french because french is a foreign language to me and "la visite première" sounds much cooler than "my first visit". So there you go.

I felt like a foreigner as soon as I stepped into the museum. You see, I am not much of a museum-goer. Artists like going to the museum. People who like art go to the museum. I am neither. So truthfully, I felt extremely out of place when I walked in and was at once surrounded by artsy looking people including a boy maybe nine or ten years old with what appeared to be an extremely professional looking camera with which he was taking pictures, holding out his hand and making an L shape with his fingers before snapping a photo or two. He knew exactly what he was looking at. For me, not so much.

At first, I strolled. I strolled past paintings and ambled past sculptures. My first thirty minutes or so at the museum was leisurely paced, glancing at this and that- until I got to the painting below.

This painting titled Home Power by Edward Ruscha made me stop and think. Much like the study of structuralism in the field of psychology, I saw the painting for it's basic elements such as it's color. For this painting, the contrast between dark and light was overwhelmingly apparent and it was in it's basic elements that I found this particular painting powerful. Albeit the darkness surrounding the house, the light from within the home made me feel safe. There was power in this inner light. Home Power made me feel a bit more at home and a little less like a foreigner.