How I Stopped Pretending to Like Art (and Actually Did)
- Stella Beckmann
- Oct 15
- 6 min read
Updated: Oct 20
Paris — My Confession
I used to like the idea of being cultured, but I knew little about history or art. Museums — especially art museums — left me unmoved.
I remember strolling through Musée d’Orsay in Paris, nodding appreciatively at Starry Night Over the Rhône, snapping a perfunctory photo, and moving on. I even bought a journal with The Starry Night on the cover as proof. I liked the idea of liking it, but I didn’t really revere it beyond its fame.
New York — The Melting Cheese Incident
At the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, travelling with classmates, we joined a guided tour about women in modern art (forced by our professor, but I ended up grateful). We stood before Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair. Dressed in a man’s suit, hair shorn, and scissors dangling, she was severing herself from the expectations that once defined her — or so the guide said.
We looked at The Persistence of Memory, which I half-jokingly remembered as “the cheese painting.” I liked the idea that time itself could melt, that our minds dissolve moments until memory replaces reality. But what was with the drooping sideways face? It looked like a flattened rug of cowhide or an overcooked dumpling.
Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon showed five fractured female figures that once scandalized Paris. The guide spoke about how male artists had long dissected the female form. It made me uncomfortable to look at.
Being on the tour with other students was fascinating — learning more about the art rather than just looking without context. I told myself to be curious and to try to remember the facts. I posted pictures of the art I saw on Instagram like stamps of proof that I’d appreciated the stories behind the frames.
Bath — Choosing Curiosity
In Bath, I spontaneously joined a walking tour. The guide was a sixty-something woman in a flowery top, with greying hair and a bright smile. She was a volunteer — passionate, warm, devoted to her city’s story — and as she spoke about Bath’s Georgian history, I found myself drawn in. We wandered past the honey-coloured stone terraces and down the park’s pathways Jane Austen had once strolled. It felt like a history lecture, except this time I’d chosen to be there. I didn’t take the opportunity to learn for granted.
Perhaps this particular fragment of history had struck a chord with me. It set the prelude for my visit to the Roman Baths, where I used the audio guide and went through slowly, genuinely. I imagined history dancing on the walls — people working out, getting massages, wandering between pools. If I could understand the Georgian past, I thought, I could understand a piece of the present — the social hierarchies, the obsession with appearances, even the architecture of privilege that still shapes our cities today. History became a lens revealing how power and beauty intertwine, and how the world came to be the way it is. And I loved that feeling — being able to imagine the past like a movie and sense the lives of people long gone.
After Bath, the curiosity stuck. I started listening to YouTube history lessons while getting ready in the mornings — short videos that made centuries feel alive. I found a channel that broke down famous artworks, revealing the stories and techniques behind them. The videos made me think more deeply, reflect, or sometimes just laugh at an artist’s absurdism.
Amsterdam — Standing Still for Rembrandt
At the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, I wanted to feel what I’d felt in Bath — that spark of genuine curiosity. So I read a bit about Dutch history beforehand, hired an audio guide, and wandered through the museum, determined to understand and appreciate, not just look.
I stood in front of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch — the museum’s crown jewel — for five minutes, trying to see what everyone else seemed to. Slowly, the chaos began to make sense: the captain’s hand frozen mid-command, the drummer about to strike, light pouring through the shadows like a spotlight on a stage. The figures felt alive and caught mid-action.
But then I wondered — I’d seen that in other paintings too, and it had only taken me two minutes. What made this one so special?
What made art extraordinary when you could find a dozen talented painters on the streets of Paris or Florence? What made this man’s work worthy of a museum’s devotion?
As I drifted through the galleries, the answer began to unfold. It wasn’t just about the finished canvas, it was the context and narrative behind it. Rembrandt had dared to paint a group portrait bursting with motion, at a time when such scenes were meant to be stiff and orderly. Other artists hid satire and rebellion in their work — Thomas Gainsborough, for instance, once tucked a dead chicken into a genteel family portrait to mock the wealthy who commissioned it.
We take photos now to remember moments. Back then, a painting was the only way to capture time — to immortalise a battle, a banquet, a gesture. Art wasn’t just decoration; it was documentation — a record of what people once thought mattered.
Amsterdam — Melting Into Van Gogh
Most recently, I went to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Standing before his paintings, I felt myself melt into them. I stopped in front of Glass with Yellow Roses, not one of the famous ones, but it pulled me in. My brow furrowed as I leaned closer, eyes fixed, absorbing it fully. The yellow roses trembled against the dark background, and I could almost smell their fading sweetness. It showed a quiet kind of hope in the darkness: red specks like blood or pain, the roses weak but still surviving. My shoulders softened as I thought, perhaps beauty can live inside suffering. I don’t know if this was the “intended” meaning an art connoisseur might articulate in an essay, but it had transported me, and that was the point, wasn’t it?
Around me, crowds swelled in front of Sunflowers, phones raised like shields. They clicked a photo, checked the screen, and moved on, barely looking at the painting beyond the camera’s eye. I thought of the girl in Paris who’d done the same a few years ago. Now, the scene itself felt like part of the art.
In one room, I stood mesmerized before View Seen Through a Balcony. The loose brushstrokes, the geometry of the black railing, the tiny figures receding in the background — and then the small sign-off at the bottom: “G. Caillebotte.” Oh. Not Van Gogh at all. I chuckled at having projected all that mystery and meaning because I thought I was meant to.
Nevertheless, Van Gogh’s paintings seemed to scratch an itch I didn’t know I had, soothing something deep in my mind. I felt addicted at times, unable to tear my eyes away. The museum walls explained how his colours evolved — from the muddy tones of his early Dutch paintings to the bright contrasts he discovered in Paris. He’d studied colour theory obsessively, learning that complementary colours — red and green, blue and orange, yellow and purple — intensify each other. In The Night Café, he used clashing reds and greens to create unease; in Irises, he paired blue and yellow for joy. He once wrote that some colours “make each other shine… complete each other like man and wife.”
And now I fear sounding like an art history student.
Everywhere — Learning to See
Art has started to feel like a form of communication — a medium through which to explore history, to empathise with the human experience, or to glimpse at truth. It feels as powerful as a film that takes you on a journey, or a song that makes your heart swirl. Just as certain songs or movies touch you more than others, certain paintings reach you in ways you can’t quite explain. Perhaps it wasn’t only about learning to appreciate art, but about finding my art — the pieces, the eras, the fragments of history that spoke to me.
I’m still learning about art, but I think that’s the beauty of it: you never really stop discovering new things once you’ve learned how to look.
I’d love to hear — have you ever had an “aha” moment in an art gallery (or felt bored out of your mind)? Tell me in the comments.
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