There is a lot to inhale when you enter a museum. History, compositions, colours, intentions, relationships, crowds. There is also an elephant in the room. There seems to be something intimidating about museums as institutions in the way we integrate them into our societies. 

Let’s be honest, they are places that often seem to reek of pretentiousness. Our aim here is to strip the formal and stuck-up layer of a museum. We believe they are places where you can broaden your mind and emotional intelligence. They are a Beautiful Mind factory. 

What’s our advice? Before worrying whether you know an artist’s name, just walk into their exhibition. Before gulping books with factual knowledge and stressing out to remember all the facts, try to see if a painting evokes emotions in you. 

Below is a list of 5 painters who got to us and the experience we remember carrying out of their exhibitions. I hope after reading about them you will be googling “current exhibitions in my city.”

Experience the Vibrant Colours: Félix Vallotton

Felt rebellious as a teenager? Félix Vallotton did too. He left Switzerland when he was 16. He chose to live in France at the turn of the 19th century, where he managed to ignore the pull of many powerful art movements, and that’s an achievement in itself when you live in the cultural capital of Europe. This is a part of what makes his art so inspiring! Through dreamy, vibrant colours and wit, he developed his own voice. 

Experience Originality on a Massive Scale: Natalia Goncharova

• First exhibition of 800 works 
• The first modern artist to have a retrospective exhibition in Russia
• The leader and first woman artist of the Russian avant-garde

 She’s a painter, printmaker and … a great marketer. In 1913 she designed a famous publicity stunt to promote her first exhibition. She and a group of artists painted their faces. Soon all of Russia was swayed by both her art and started to imitate her looks. By the way, she’s also a designer of textiles and costumes and her and her husband invented their style: Rayonism.

It’s hard to write a post about Goncharova that’s not numerous pages long. I walked out of her exhibition with a reminder that we should keep dreaming and work hard. In the book Originals by organisational psychologist Adam Grant, he states that one of the keys to boosting your originality is to come up with quantities of ideas. This is undoubtedly true in Goncharova’s case. There are so many things that make her unique. 

Experience via all 5 Senses: Olafur Eliasson 

Olafur Eliasson knows how to engage every single sense you have. He is the king of immersive experience. He is exceptionally witty, and because he manages to engage your attention, he makes you feel like an artist yourself.

One of his famous installations, named Beauty (1993), is a dark room where a ray of light shines on water droplets. Rainbows form, but since light reflects in different ways, you and I don’t see the same rainbow. Beauty is individualistic, but we experience it together. And Eliasson helps us understand that.

I also remember walking down a tunnel filled with fog and illuminated by colour (Your Blind Passenger, 2010). The visibility was not more than a meter. The feeling? Incredible. The moment you realise you can easily navigate a foggy place is very empowering.

Eliasson is also a fierce environmental advocate. He placed over 30 ice sculptures in London and left them to melt. The aim was to draw attention to the harm we cause to our home, the Earth. 

Experience Another Time: Elina Kechicheva

Elina Kechicheva is an artist with an old soul who uses modern technology. She has the unique ability to draw Renaissance and Baroque paintings and plots using light and a lens. There is something old and forgotten that she manages to resurface in you – a mysterious fairytale. Recently, Dior worked with her to photograph the S/S 2021 campaign inspired by Caravaggio. It’s one of their most beautiful campaigns.

Experience the Trap of Images: René Magritte

An all-time favourite artist. I would describe his style as pedantic but dreamy. For me, he is a philosopher who uses paint instead of ink. At the time, his work was really out of the box and in a way, it still is today. Magritte is one of the first artists I explored that made me fall in love with a canvas and an idea. One of his famous works is Ceci n’est pas une pipe: this is not a pipe. Magritte wanted to highlight that what you see is not a pipe but an image of a pipe. You fall into the trap of images.