BY JOELLEN COLLINS
“The Third of May,” a painting by Francisco de Goya, hangs alone in a room at the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain. When I saw it as a young woman traveling by myself to Greece and Spain, I was attracted to it enough to visit it several times. The use of light and dark paint, or what some artists may see as “chiaroscuro,” is outstanding. The helpless man about to be the next person brought up in a line awaiting death by a firing squad reveals fear at its most intense. His face and body are brilliantly lit in deep and dark surroundings—enough to reflect on the former victims and those standing behind him bewailing their fates. What if we faced our death knowing it was imminent, perhaps a few seconds away. Seldom has a work of art moved me visually as much as that painting has.
Both Hemingway, in A Farewell to Arms, and Leon Tolstoy, in War and Peace, noted in words this kind of trauma. There is some reason that over the years I have continuously advised my friends traveling in Europe to stand alone in this space in Madrid and feel the power of art.
Lately, however, the concept of chiaroscuro, defined by Webster’s dictionary as “the pictorial representation in terms of light and shade without regard to color,” seems a metaphor regarding the extremes of light and dark in our disunited country. That frightens me almost as much as did the all-encompassing recreation of the third of May in Madrid.
Even when I am occasionally disappointed with some government action, I have had a continuing loyalty to my country and always felt I could have decent conversations with those whose views differed from mine. It is almost unnecessary to point out the troubles caused even among friends and family by extreme and passionate opinions about the behaviors and politics of public figures.
I do believe in passion and one’s faithfulness to strongly held views, and I know I have often been too bland and timid in expressing anything that might stir an argument. (When I was a child) I was always cited as the one in the Biblical Beatitudes who was a peacemaker. I never wanted to argue or confront. I still don’t, but I have learned that, in order to prevent further anguish and division, one must express one’s opinions, although with care, respect and knowledge. That is not easy in a world increasingly appearing as extreme shades of dark and light, contrasts evident every day in the positions we have come to accept in terms of attitudes toward wealth, race, power, character and so many of the issues that affect our lives.
I don’t want a boring, bland, homogeneous society, but perhaps one where we can see that contrasts of dark and light are not the only choices we have, even as we understand that without dark we cannot know the joys of light. Instead, we may choose a more balanced color scheme. Thank god I can be enlightened by art.
