(Photo by LR Allen)

“Art is the truest expression of the inner soul.”

That was a favorite refrain of Leah’s art professor, Dr Hicks. He was an old man, quite round and bowed with age but his eyes were always bright and his voice strong whenever he was lecturing.

“I want you all to go out this week to museum,” Dr Hicks went on, “any museum, and bring me back something to show me how the art inspired you. That can be an essay, a piece of art you made, even a photograph, but whatever it is, I want to see you in it. Your own artistic expression. You soul.”

That injunction stuck with Leah, though how she was going to capture herself was a bit of a mystery. She wasn’t the most artistic person in the world and she often felt like she was floundering in Dr Hicks’ classes. She wasn’t an art major and had only picked up this class because it filled a requirement for her generals and she thought it would be an easy ‘A’.

As she left class that day and wondered which museum she should go to she realized she wasn’t even aware of how many museums there were within a reasonable travel distance.

“Let’s see,” Cara, Leah’s study partner from the art class, said as she scrolled through search results on her phone. “There’s a museum of modern art, a museum of natural history, a sciency looking one, children’s museum, one about household plumbing that has the world’s largest working toilet.”

They both gave each other a look of mild disgust.

“I don’t know,” Leah shrugged, “isn’t there a normal art museum?”

“Normal?” Cara asked while raising an eyebrow.

“You know what I mean,” Leah defended herself. “I don’t want to have to worry if the trashcan is a trashcan or some art installation. One with just paintings on the walls by dead people and maybe a few statues or something. ”

Cara scrolled down her phone a bit more before replying.

“There’s a couple of those, I guess. One downtown and another on the north side.”

“North it is since I hate trying to find parking downtown,” Leah stated and they began walking towards the parking lot.

“You know we’ve got a whole week to get this done, right?”

“Yeah,” Leah nodded, “but we have time right now and I don’t want to study anatomy flashcards right now.”

“Fair enough,” Cara agreed with a slight shudder.

She’d helped Leah study in the past and the flashcards, with their illustrations and descriptions, were enough to make her feel queasy.

The drive to the museum itself was uneventful besides the two of them singing out loud to the radio at a red light until they realized they were being stared at by the guys in the truck idling next to them in the other lane.

“Is this it?” Leah asked when they pulled up to the museum.

It was a squat, one story cement structure that looked more industrial than artistic. Old pipe works jutted out of the walls but were cut off and sealed shut. A tall smoke stack rose up from behind the building and strings of lights hung from it, although none of them were lit at the moment.

“I guess it won’t take that long to see everything,” Cara said. “We just have to hope they have something worth seeing.”

They paid their $15 to get in which seemed pretty expensive for the size of the place but they didn’t say that to the young woman at the ticket counter. It wasn’t her fault the prices were so high. There were a few other people in the museum, which surprised Leah. Most of them were elderly couples who walked through the small galleries, hand in hand, and whispered to one another while pointing out various paintings.

“You sure this isn’t all just modern art stuff?” Leah asked as they walked slowly through the first gallery.

It wasn’t that Leah didn’t like modern art, but she often found herself just confused by it. Was it trying to say something? Was it just weird? Was it lazy or actually well thought out? Was it a reaction to the idea that art needed to have a deeper meaning and these artists were rebelling against that principle?

Cara didn’t respond to Leah’s question and instead kept on walking around the gallery, looking at each piece and making notes about them on her phone. Leah decided to follow suit and not complain. She had to admit there were still a number of interesting pieces here. There was a sculpture of a fish made out of lures and hooks, a painting of a horse riding on the back of a cowboy, and several weird landscapes with geometric mountains and trees.

Each gallery was similar to the ones before them. There were a few pieces here and there that Leah would call normal art but by and large they were all more modern and weird. It was probably all that the museum could afford, considering the ridiculous prices on art these days. She’d never paid much attention to art before taking Dr Hicks’ class but now it seemed she was seeing art news everywhere, usually announcing how much a piece of art had sold for.

“Ooh, there’s a basement,” Cara announced when they reached what Leah had hoped was the last gallery.

A sign beside the stairwell pronounced that there was indeed more art downstairs and Leah felt her shoulders sag. She was already planning on going to the museum downtown to look for art she might actually enjoy and she told Cara as much.

“Why do you have to enjoy it?” Cara asked as they began going down the stairs. “Dr Hicks didn’t say anything about finding art you like. Just something that inspired you.”

“Isn’t that the same?” Leah asked.

“I don’t know,” Cara admitted, “but there was one painting back there that inspired me to want to go home and clean my room.”

“Really? Which one?”

“The one with the smile creatures climbing on everything.”

Leah shivered as she remembered that one. She hadn’t spent much time looking at it since it really did look disgusting.

“I think I’ll do a before and after picture of my room for the assignment, along with a picture of the painting.”

“Huh.”

That got Leah thinking. So far nothing here had really stood out to her in a meaningful way, but if she could find just one piece that spoke to her, even if it was like Cara wanting to clean her room, then she could finish the assignment and not have to go downtown and walk through another museum. Not that she didn’t enjoy looking at art, generally speaking, but it was time and money that she’d rather spend elsewhere if she could.

Perhaps it was the different perspective or maybe it was the piece of art itself, but a painting finally jumped out at her. It was so indicative of everything she didn’t understand about modern art that she both hated it and was drawn to it at the same time. A man was standing on a tree stump that was painted like a chess board and there were pieces all around him, but they weren’t chess pieces she recognized. The man himself reminded Leah of a hipster lawyer or something with his suit, long hair, and mustache. The skill of the artist was fine, she supposed, although there were a few elements she thought could be refined. Overall, though, she hated it.

“Uh oh, looks like we’ve found a winner,” Cara chimed in as Leah stepped up to the painting to inspect it further.

Leah chuckled as she pulled out her phone and turned to take a selfie of herself and the painting. It took a few tries to get her expression just right, as a mixture of disgust and confusion, but when she got it she knew it was the right one. Even the framing of the photograph was slightly off and added to the sense of wrongness she wanted to convey.

“Dr Hicks is gonna love this one,” Cara said, patting Leah on the back.

“I sure hope so,” Leah sighed. “You ready to go?”

“Yup, let’s get out of here and grab some lunch.”

There were people who liked this sort of art, Leah was sure, but she just didn’t see it. Some people said the bowls of fruit and other still life’s were just as pointless but at least those had interesting examples of light and shape. This modern art stuff was just weird. Where was the skill? The realism or impressionism. So much of it looked like amateur artwork to her, though she admitted that was probably her own bias speaking and not an accurate critique of the medium as a whole.

And yet, if art is an expression of the soul, what did these pieces say about their creators? That was the real question, she supposed, and perhaps next time she’d look a little closer and see if she could finally find the deeper meaning, the hidden soul behind the art.

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I love art but some times I struggle with the more modern stuff. I felt a real kinship with the woman’s expression in the photo in response to the painting. Big thanks to my patrons who help support me in my creative endeavors. If you’d like to help too, head over to my Patreon and sign up. Even a couple bucks a month make a big difference for me and you get to read the stories before everyone else.