I've always adored Rembrandt. From the time my grandfather first took me to the art museum, I was entranced by the grandmaster's ability to capture not only the features of his subjects but the essence of their souls. To feel pigmented oil arranged on canvas so deeply stirring the human heart testified to the divine genius of artistry.

Van Gogh was a different matter. Compared with the realists, his paintings appeared to me like childish fingerpainting. So, too, as much as I delighted in the bright colors of Monet's water lilies, I found nothing compelling about his spotty brushstrokes. The entire impressionist genre struck me as little more than artsy self-indulgence.

Realizing just how wrong I was provided me a valuable lesson in intellectual humility: Don't make judgments about anything or anyone before you've made a serious effort to understand them.

Standing in an art gallery one day — I can't remember where — I paused before an impressionist masterpiece and tried, yet again, to fathom why the world held the art and the artist in such high esteem. The room was empty except for two other patrons and I couldn't help overhearing what one was saying to his companion.

"Step close to the painting," the speaker instructed, "then slowly back away until you see the jumble of disconnected splotches fuse together into a coherent image."

Curious, I tried it myself. In the next moment, my disdain transformed into wonder. Four decades later, the experience inspires me to welcome this week's addition into the Ethical Lexicon:

Impressionism (im*pres*sion*ism/ im-PRESH-uh-niz-uhm) noun

The 19th-century art movement focused on subjective experience, fleeting moments and the shifting effects of light and color.

There are two ways we fail to perceive the world around us. One is by missing the forest for the trees. The other is by missing the trees for the forest.

By fixating on details, we lose sight of context, significance and meaning. By marveling only at the broad view, we neglect structure, subtlety and nuance.

Impressionism compels us to reconcile the divide between micro and macro by over-emphasizing the component parts. Only when we take a step back, literally and figuratively, do we behold the big picture while grasping the complexity that created it. The genre reminds us that the details and the whole are one and the same, even if we cannot perceive them simultaneously. By overvaluing either one, we undervalue the other.

Almost as fascinating as the impressionist movement itself is the history of its origins.

Later in their careers, both Edgar Degas and Claude Monet suffered deteriorating eyesight. Their advancing blindness accounted for the blurred impressionistic style of their later works.

As Edouard Manet grew older, he endured leg pain and loss of muscle control. These affected his concentration and brushstrokes, inducing him to abandon his earlier realism and adopt the looser style for which he is best known.

Crippling arthritis confined Pierre-Auguste Renoir to a wheelchair and left him unable to pick up a paintbrush on his own. He pivoted to the softer lines and the brighter color palette that produced his dreamlike images. Renoir himself acknowledged that his infirmity set free his impressionistic style.

The stories of these impressionist masters reflect the essence of impressionism itself. If we focus only on the obstacles life strews in our path, we may never discover our own ability to circumvent or transcend them. We need to look beyond where we are toward where we want to be.

Conversely, if we regard the sprawling panorama of our world without perceiving or contemplating its component parts, we won't appreciate the wonder of its texture and multiplicity. We also won't recognize the power we have to make a difference.

The genius of the impressionists inspires us to embrace, if not resolve, the eternal conflict between the head and the heart. Facts without context mislead us at best, deceive us at worst. Intuition divorced from reality leads us into folly, if not catastrophe.

True, the whole picture may be greater than the sum of its parts. Nevertheless, by recognizing that the whole remains inseparable from those parts, we find ourselves one step farther along the path toward authentic wisdom.

See more by Yonason Goldson and features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists; visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Art Institute of Chicago at Unsplash