The Nut Gatherers: A Lesson in Intimacy

If any of you have been to the Detroit Institute of Art, you may have seen a portrait called The Nut Gatherers. This beautiful portrait was done by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, a French painter who did classical pieces in a modern, stylized manner. The portraits tended to come out life like, and almost of photo quality. They seem to come alive in front of you. This portrait, The Nut Gatherers, had that effect on me.

I went to the DIA about a year ago, and a friend of mine took me to the portrait. He was searching for the room, telling me how I just had to see the picture, how I would see why he loved it once we got there. And believe me, I did. The portrait is of two girls, young, sitting on the ground in the woods. One girl is holding a handful of what looks like hazelnuts, but that detail is beside the point of the picture - it simply adds to the realistic nature. What really comes a live in the portrait is the look on the girls' faces. The girl holding the nuts has a life-like look of insecurity, possibly sadness. But buried in to her face is a feeling of love for the other girl, joy and thankfulness that she is there with her. It's almost reassuring. The other girl lays on the ground to her left, watching her. Her face houses a small smile, not of joy, but understanding. She is silently encouraging her friend, listening to her, sharing with her. There is a sense of intimacy there. And only Bouguereau knows what the girls in his minds eye were thinking and saying before and after this moment in time, and all we know is that the result is beautiful. And he captured this secret moment wonderfully.

Now of course, while at the DIA, the tour guide who happened to be in the room with another group of people tried to explain away the beauty of the portrait with artistic technicalities. She discussed the angle of the picture and the location, the direction of the girls' eyes, etc. She specifically asked my friend what he was thinking and tried to tie it in to her discussion on the lines in the pictures, but my friend was left floundering. His connection to the picture was not through the lines or the angles. Although these are important aspects of the art, and I am sure Bouguereau used them, whether intentionally or naturally, they, like the nuts, are not the focus and intent of the portrait. The point is the result. When the portrait was painted, Bouguereau was not thinking about how we, in the future, would analyze his work and look for certain techniques and qualities. he was looking for a reaction. He saw the picture in his head and he wanted a certain emotion, and the picture is not done until that emotion is achieved. He used techniques and then filled them in with details that made the emotion bloom. Each face was real and beautiful and full of life and longing and we are drawn to it. We connect with their eyes more than the lines on the ground.

I believe that this portrait, in all of its beauty, can teach us a few life lessons.

The first is in intimacy. I have already said that the moment shared between the girls in the portrait is beautiful. And if Bouguereau painted realistic portraits, why can't we have moments like these in real life? I think many people are drawn to this picture because they long to have a moment like this with someone. They long to be able to share and to be understood, and to be loved and accepted. So why haven't as many people actually felt that? I think that we need to look deeply into the faces of the girls and fill their minds with thoughts of our own, fill their mouths with our words. What is your deepest secret, deepest pain, or deepest joy? How would you put that to words? Why do you want to share it so badly? And most of all, who do you want to share it with, and how do you want them to respond? Like the girls in the portrait? Do you want that beautiful moment to be yours? Deep down, I think we all do. I think we all long for it in our own way. Maybe our moment does not look like that, but the emotions are still there.

Placing ourselves in the other girl's shoes, the listener, how can we bring about this moment with the people around us when we don't have anything to share? We always seem to be so busy and so caught up, that we miss out when people want to be with us, share with us, and connect. What if the listener in the portrait decided that it was more important to gather nuts than to listen to her friend? What if she avoided the connection? Then there would be not portrait, not beauty. So why do we do this in our daily life? "I'm sorry, I'm late to the office, can this wait until I get home?" "I'm sorry, someone's on the other line, can you wait for a moment?" If we all just stopped and listened, everyone could share and everyone could listen and we wouldn't have so much baggage. We wouldn't have so much anxiety - while other is waiting, did you ever think that maybe they were re-thinking their decision to talk to you? That that they were re-working their story? The truth becomes warped when we wait.

We try to explain away this intimacy with technicalities and words because we are so unused to these emotions. We don't connect like this with the people around us in everyday life, and so the emotions we get from the portrait are unfamiliar. We can't explain the girls' emotions or understand why we feel a connection, so we look for technique - what was the artist doing to make us feel this way. And we miss what is important.

Moments like the one in Bouguereau's portrait can, and should, happen everyday. We should be intimate with one another. We need to be intimate with one another.

Be real today.