Ouch.
or
Bouguereau Revisited...Again*
Some people like the paintings of Bouguereau. Others don’t. I understand that. (I finished my BA in art history under the advisorship of a professor who held Bouguereau in the type of esteem that translated to 2005 terms would be - Thomas Kinkade!) But I had another one of “those” moments at work today. A woman came in for a Mass card. I find myself grabbing for The Pieta cards first. Not just because I ordered them and feel a responsibility to ‘move’ them. After I had filled out the card, closed the Mass book and was on my way to deposit the stipend, she stood in the doorway studying the card and asked if I had anything else. The Pieta was “sad.”

Being personally invested in the procurement of the Bourguereau cards, I felt a strange obligation to give her a different card and not try to reason with her. (Nor to give in to the urge to ask if she wanted a Happy Face/Don't Worry Be Happy card.) Not to try to explain why some would find The Pieta was powerful - sorrowful but not without consolation.

I acknowledge the Bouguereau detractors. But I think that the ladies who shy away from The Pieta would be quite pleased to lap up some of his more treacly works (not that I don’t like those, too...) such as Innocence or The First Kiss. I don’t think this is about Bouguereau. And I don’t think it is really about me and my “artistic differences” with co-workers and some of the public at large.

* In the interest of full disclosure: I often hang a reprint of The Flagellation of Christ in our dining room during Lent. I think the artist’s talents achieve their fullest flowering in the service of religious subjects.