What does art do to you?

She's staring at you, isn't she? She does that to me all the time. Go ahead. Order a drink. She can mix you a great Shirley Temple. Don't take an orange, though. They are for display only.

What you are looking at is my favorite painting. If you were to add up the amount of time I have spent sitting, studying this painting, it might equal about two whole days of my life --just staring. I have written papers about this painting. It's a good painting. It's called "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" and was painted in 1881-1882 by Edouard Manet. If you were to ask me what I love so much about this painting, I would have a lot to say. I'd probably pause for a second, stare at it, and then go off on how much apathy I see in her beautiful face, but yet there is so much desperation, angst, and brokenness behind that apathy. It's like she's stuck behind that bar for the rest of her life pretending to enjoy mixing drinks and pouring champagne for rich Frenchmen for the rest of eternity. To me she seems like the symbol of all the pleasure-seeking world. I'm sure she was excited to work there at first. She probably loved how glamorous it all was. She probably loved how much men would flirt with her and tell her how beautiful she was. She probably loved getting all dressed up, setting up the bar just right, putting out fresh fruit and flowers, just waiting for all the classy French couples to come in to the glamorous Folies-Bergère to dance and drink their troubles away. But just as everything on this Earth will do one day, it all began to lose its luster. And while that bar may have once felt like a gateway to a world of pleasure and constant excitement, it soon began to feel like a prison. And while all the people once seemed so glamorous, the flirtatious compliments so exciting, the music so beautiful, the sights and smells so intriguing, new, and wonderfully sublime it all became empty, blank, even depressing. This is the face of a woman who is truly trapped in a life she thought would free her. She is all of us who thought that what the world has to offer would satisfy us, but all it does is disappoint. All the time.
Don't be afraid to be moved by art. That's what it's for.