Hyman Bloom, The Stone, oil on canvas (1947) - now on display at the Boston MFA as part of its exhibition Hyman Bloom: Matters of Life and Death
The difference between looking and seeing is that of perceiving an object and understanding it - or at least communicating with it. Some things can never be fully understood. I was reminded of this today while walking through the MFA and stopping to speak to Edgar, a Mexican immigrant who had become a museum security guard after losing his job as a butcher. He walks miles a day through the museum and today he happened to be stationed in the Hyman Bloom exhibition hall, where I spent the afternoon. Standing alone in front of Bloom's painting The Stone, I asked Edgar, "What do you think of this?"
"I hated this show and that painting when I first got here, but now they're my favorites ones."
"Why? What is it about this painting in particular?"
"A month after the show started,” Edgar replied, “I noticed that the painting looked a little like the [early] Jackson Pollock paintings hanging in the hallway. And I noticed them because they reminded me of the molas I grew up around. They look a little like the Alaskan carvings in one of the other rooms, too."
I was pretty impressed. "Pollock knew pre-Colombian art, and you're right about the mola and Alaska connections."
Edgar went on, "So I stood in front of [The Stone] and looked at it for a long time. I saw jewels and land and light in it - something alive in something that never lived. It changed how I see everything else by this artist"
"Do you think it's true, that non-living things have life?"
"Not life," he replied with a pause, "just souls."
Walking to the next painting, I said to Edgar, "I think Hyman Bloom would like that. You should be a tour guide."
He looked at me. “It would be nice to make people stop and pay attention to more things,”
Jim Kiely
Hyman Bloom: Matters of Life and Death will be running at the MFA through February 23, 2020.