I Saw The Work of The Masters Up Close

For about a two year span, I made an effort to travel to some of the most popular art galleries, and monuments in the world. I went to the Louvre in Paris, France, the Uffizi Gallery & The Academy Galleria in Florence, Italy. I went to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, The National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C., and galleries in San Francisco, Dallas, Kansas City, Bentonville, etc. I also saw visited the Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, Lincoln Memorial, etc.

I probably saw 10’s of billions of dollars worth of art up close, in person, including some of the world’s most famous and most beautiful works.

And you know what I learned? There were flaws. There were noticeable ‘errors’ in all of them.

For instance, ‘The Mona Lisa,’ widely considered to be the greatest work of art in the world (estimated to be worth $750 million), is much smaller than you’d think. It also has cracks all throughout it, yet millions of visitors still come to see it every year.

‘Starry Night’, considered one of Vincent Van Gogh’s greatest masterpieces is featured at the MOMA in New York City, and it has sections of canvas that aren’t even covered in paint. Look closely and you’ll see, he didn’t even cover the whole entire thing with paint! There’re gaps where the canvas shows through! Everything I was taught in school growing up was to cover the canvas well, and fill in all the lines neatly.

I’ve seen many Jackson Pollock abstract splatter paintings up close, and he used regular old car paint for paintings rather than fancy oils, sticks in place of brushes, and even left cigarette buds in some of his canvases.

The Eiffel Tower in Paris is rusty and dirty looking. They don’t even have a clean lawn with solid areas of grass. The whole lawn is patchy.

The Statue of Liberty is much smaller than portrayed in pictures and movies.

The point is this; we all see flaws in our own lives and in our work because we know ourselves so well. Some of us, we nitpick, and critique our lives on a daily basis. Then, we compare our current lives with our ideas of perfection, or at least the ideas of perfection that we’ve been sold. We think about where we’re at now, and get frustrated that’s it’s not where we could be.

The truth, however, is that there is no perfection. The greatest works of art and architectural pieces in history have noticeable flaws and people still love them. They’re not perfect, yet they’re rich with stories and history that people relate to.

Our actual lives will never look as good as our highlight reels, and they definitely won’t look as good as other people’s highlight reels, but that doesn’t mean because we’re ‘flawed’, we can’t find contentment. We can. We are totally capable of it. But it starts with taking off the mask, and letting go of the act. Your life couldn’t be perfect, even if you tried. Accept that, move on, and feel the freedom to create your best work, not someone else’s, but your own.