From the second-floor window of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, I can see my childhood church, just across the park. Over the years, both of these buildings have become places of salvation. When work or life get to be too much, I’ll go to the museum and get a new perspective.
Today it starts with a marble sculpture, Kiss of Victory by Sir Alfred Gilbert, a warrior caught in the heat of battle, spurred on by the ethereal wings of victory. My friend Paul Granlund, the sculptor, would say, “A good sculpture is something you want to walk around.” And as I take my first lap around the work I realize that the marble suggests the look and feel of skin, but not real skin, more an attempt at perfection: unreal, beyond real, ideal real, how victory should feel.
“Kiss of Victory” by Sir Alfred Gilbert shows a Roman legionary fallen in battle, on view in Gallery 357.
In the next room, I encounter a Diane Arbus photograph of two nudists at home (shown above), which reminds me of going to church as a kid: every time we drove past a fence over six feet high, my dad would say, “Look kids—a nudist colony!” and we’d stretch to get a glimpse of a real nudist. The folks in this photograph have very different bodies than the ones in Kiss of Victory. They aren’t perfect and they’re wearing shoes. They stare directly at us: confronting, unashamed, the starkness heightened by the black-and-white print.
People are often discomfited by Arbus’s work. But the folks in the photo are at home in their world, their front door open: “Come on in, we don’t care!” The discomfort comes not from the subject but from what we bring to the work, our own perception.
As I look at the work, someone steps in front of me, another favorite aspect of museums: the other people, real flesh and blood, not perfection and not black-and-white. The woman stands between me and the photograph and unwittingly becomes perspective. Though in many ways she is closer in appearance to the Arbus than the Kiss of Victory, I’m reminded of how beautiful humans actually are, a beauty that can be conjured but not captured. Before me stands a woman, beyond her the Arbus nudes stare out from their normal day at home, behind me is the perfection of winged victory, and through the window and across the park is God’s house. Perspective.
Kevin Kling has two new books out in November: the children’s book Big Little Mother (about his older sister) and On Stage With Kevin Kling, a collection of his plays and other writing, both from Minnesota Historical Society Press. He also co-stars in Gulliver Unravels: Kevin Kling & Chastity Brown at the Fitzgerald Theater from November 29 to December 1.