Walt had just finished a three-day conference on education theory in Anaheim that was long on theory and short on substance, but this didn’t really matter to him. The only reason he attended was to get away from home for awhile and take in L.A. culture. He wanted to look around a little and see what the town had to offer.
On Saturday morning after most of the other conference attendees had already packed up and left, Walt visited the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His first stop was in the modern art collection. He stood in front of some Picasso, Lichtenstein, and Miró paintings and thought about the presentations he had suffered through at the conference that were already being roundly forgotten. And there he was a day later, surrounded by timeless masterpieces, works that triggered strong impressions drawn from inner experience.
An hour into his visit, he discovered a section of Ahmanson Building, Level 3 that featured some of the older works of the European masters. He rounded one corner and strolled into a room dominated by a square central pillar. Hanging on the pillar wall directly in front of him was Rembrandt’s The Raising of Lazarus. Three or four people strolled from one painting to the next. A guard stood by the wall next to the entryway, smiling at Walt’s astonishment.
He walked to within five feet of the painting and stood alone before the canvas. There was no railing or glass to impede his view. Walt noticed that Rembrandt had interpreted the scene unconventionally. The chamber was a grim chiaroscuro, mostly dark, but Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Lazarus were illuminated by off lighting, presumably from an open doorway. The painting exploded with energy, due mainly to the shocked, even traumatized, expressions on every face the artist had chosen to make clearly visible. Jesus stood at the apex of the scene with his hand raised while Lazarus rose from the tomb like a marionette being pulled up by a puppeteer, his face a pale mask expressing the dull awareness of someone being forced to wake up although he would have preferred a timeless sleep. Jesus looked surprised, isolated, and weary, perhaps even doubtful. Walt felt sorry for him.
He studied the painting’s texture, imagining how the young Rembrandt must have felt as each stroke brought the painting into clearer focus. The brush strokes swirled like waves across an ocean so deep and mysterious that Walt nearly swooned at the thought. He stepped away for a moment, looked around the room, and saw that he was alone. Even the guard had left. He scanned the ceiling corners for security cameras and noticed there weren’t any. No one would ever know if he reached out and touched the painting. Of course that would never happen. He understood that touching the canvas even slightly would do permanent damage.
Walt stepped back a few paces, took one final look at The Raising of Lazarus, and left, his mind racing. How would he translate that moment into a lecture? How would his students respond, especially after examining a picture of the painting on their computers? Some of them would frame questions he hadn’t considered. Others would listen pensively, waiting for something to be revealed. Walt lived for moments like these, when everyone was conscious and connected.
