Art is inextricably tied to man's survival - not to his physical survival, but to that on which his physical survival depends: to the preservation and survival of his consciousness.
Great paintings__eople flock to see them, they draw crowds, they__e reproduced endlessly on coffee mugs and mouse pads and anything-you-like. And, I count myself in the following, you can have a lifetime of perfectly sincere museum-going where you traipse around enjoying everything and then go out and have some lunch. But if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don__ think, __h, I love this picture because it__ universal._ __ love this painting because it speaks to all mankind._ That__ not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It__ a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you. An individual heart-shock. Your dream, Welty__ dream, Vermeer__ dream. You see one painting, I see another, the art book puts it at another remove still, the lady buying the greeting card at the museum gift shop sees something else entire, and that__ not even to mention the people separated from us by time__our hundred years before us, four hundred years after we__e gone__t__l never strike anybody the same way and the great majority of people it__l never strike in any deep way at all but__ really great painting is fluid enough to work its way into the mind and heart through all kinds of different angles, in ways that are unique and very particular. Yours, yours. I was painted for you. And__h, I don__ know, stop me if I__ rambling_ but Welty himself used to talk about fateful objects. Every dealer and antiquaire recognizes them. The pieces that occur and recur. Maybe for someone else, not a dealer, it wouldn__ be an object. It__ be a city, a color, a time of day. The nail where your fate is liable to catch and snag.
The Goldfinch
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Great paintings__eople flock to see them, they draw crowds, they__e reproduced endlessly on coffee mugs and mouse pads and anything-you-like. And, I count myself in the following, you can have a lifetime of perfectly sincere museum-going where you traipse around enjoying everything and then go out and have some lunch. But if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don__ think, __h, I love this picture because it__ universal._ __ love this painting because it speaks to all mankind._ That__ not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It__ a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you. An individual heart-shock. Your dream, Welty__ dream, Vermeer__ dream. You see one painting, I see another, the art book puts it at another remove still, the lady buying the greeting card at the museum gift shop sees something else entire, and that__ not even to mention the people separated from us by time__our hundred years before us, four hundred years after we__e gone__t__l never strike anybody the same way and the great majority of people it__l never strike in any deep way at all but__ really great painting is fluid enough to work its way into the mind and heart through all kinds of different angles, in ways that are unique and very particular. Yours, yours. I was painted for you. And__h, I don__ know, stop me if I__ rambling_ but Welty himself used to talk about fateful objects. Every dealer and antiquaire recognizes them. The pieces that occur and recur. Maybe for someone else, not a dealer, it wouldn__ be an object. It__ be a city, a color, a time of day. The nail where your fate is liable to catch and snag.
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Art, even the art of fullest scope and widest vision, can never really show us the external world. All that it shows us is our own soul, the one world of which we have any real cognisance. And the soul itself, the soul of each one of us, is to each one of us a mystery. It hides in the dark and broods, and consciousness cannot tell us of its workings. Consciousness, indeed, is quite inadequate to explain the contents of personality. It is Art, and Art only, that reveals us to ourselves.
I like "Julie Gold's song "From a Distance". Her song reminds me of the world as seen through an observer's eye. Seen from a distance, we are people in the same band playing music for everyone. We are artists who play the most beautiful instruments in the world - life.
I sat back and looked at it. It was ugly, dark, uncontrolled. Like a monster's face. Or maybe what I saw there was my own face. I couldn't quite tell. Was the face the image of something evil or the image of myself?"Both," Bea muttered, as if I'd spoken my question out loud. "Of course, it's both. But it shouldn't be. Goodness, no.
Happiness, you see, its just an illusion of Fate, a heavenly sleight of hand designed to make you believe in fairy tales. But there's no happily ever after. You'll only find happy endings in books. Some books.
If there's to be damnation, she had said, let it be of my choosing, not theirs. He knew a little about damnation himself_ and he had an idea that the lessons, far from being done, were just beginning.