In the summer of 2024, my first time in Paris, I hated a painting at the Musée d’Orsay. Emile Bernard’s Autoportrait symbolique from 1891 includes Bernard himself, a bunch of reddish nudes, and a sad or angry Jesus Christ. Looking at it, I felt an immediate revulsion.
Why? Bernard wasn’t ugly, I have no problem with religious art, and I’m not offended by naked people. But it was all just too obvious, its apparent depiction of sexual desire and shame too blatant. The painting was beating me over the head with itself; it hardly seemed symbolique at all. It lacked, I decided, subtlety.
