UNtitled, 1968

You’re visiting your cousin in Providence and you have a few hours to kill. There’s not much to do so you decide to check out her school’s art museum. You walk through the galleries, pausing every now and then to listen to the audio guide or to get a closer look at an artwork or a fellow museum goer. You’re drifting. You find yourself in front of a very large, very gray painting with what looks like poorly drawn heart-shaped squiggles all over it. You look for the title of the painting - Untitled, 1968 - not all that helpful.

In fact it reminds you of an old classroom black board from your school. And the squiggles feel like the ephemeral graffiti of a child. You look closer and realize that the squiggles go higher up on the black board than the child you just imagined could possibly reach. You look again under the title. It says the artist is “Cy Twombly (1928-2011)”. You do the math in your head - the artist was forty when he painted this.

Your eyes drift diagonally upward to the top right corner - the hearts rise up like bubbles caught in a breeze. It reminds you of the smell and sound of chalk on black board, of innocent and carefree times, when most experiences still felt brand new, times when you drew on the black board between classes, the twinge of pain when the teacher came in and erased what you had created. It takes you back to a fleeting moment of childhood rebellion and abandon. A self long forgotten but also one that just stirred again inside you. When was the last time you drew hearts unironically? How does a 40-year-old draw upon that innocence? It’s hard enough in your mid-20s. You’ve just had a moment and yet a part of you can’t help but feel a little ticked off that such childishness makes it into a museum.

Is it even art? As Teju Cole said about another work of art - the emotions that accompany the experience of this work — the exasperation, the sense of wonder or inundation, the glimpses of beauty — are true of art. The shoe fits, maddening as it is.