[Shrezzing]

I went a while ago to the same museum. Jean-François Millet's work is in the basement there, as he's one of Van Gogh's inspirations. Millet's work is all dreary peasants toiling in the bleak fields, really grim and depressing stuff, and I would probably never look twice at it online.

Then you get to see his work up close. It's outstanding. It's jaw-droppingly beautiful and intricate. Some of the pieces absolutely overwhelmed me. His paintings are mostly done with a line technique, where he'll paint lines over and over again until the canvas is complete with a comprehensible picture. I'm not sure what it is about screens, but they just don't convey the detail properly at all. On his wikipedia page, Millet's work appears to me as the bleak flat paintings I'd have ignored before I saw his work in person - copies of the exact same paintings I'd seen in person, which overwhelmed me.

I don't really understand why, but there's something fundamentally different about seeing some art in person.