How to Look at Art

Today, I'd like to say a little bit about beauty.  Given the amount of useless information that we see every day, there isn't enough attention paid to beauty.  I don't want to sound nostalgic and that is not my intent.  I am sure that there was plenty of useless information in the year 1345 (year picked randomly, by the way).  But the difference between 2016 and 1345 is the dissemination of the information.  Of course, this is nothing new; we are already aware of this.  And we choose to ignore the consequences of the abundance of informational detritus.

Much of this problem has to do with the change in the conception of time.  Once man figured out a way to move faster from point A to point B, it changed our experience of the landscape that we are in contact with.  But this does not have to be a negative experience.  There is bound to be change.

If you look closely, if you examine the subject matter of information that is out there at an immediately gratifying disposal, you will see that most of it is senseless, mediocre, boring, uninspiring.  The democratization of dissemination of public opinion has allowed the loudest and the most obnoxious voices to rise.  Pundits of all kinds analyse and analyse and analyse compulsively the same situation over and over again.  People, unfortunately, listen.  Everything is an argument, or at least, it should have an argumentative flair because we cannot possibly handle silence.

This voice equality is not bad.  It allows me, for example, to write a piece like this.  But shouldn't we be aware of what are weeds that need to be plucked out?  Not by censorship, of course, but by creating a different way to communicate, dialogue, and most of all see.

What does this have to do with beauty?  Everything.  The rise of the "social justice warriors" has erased the possibility of aesthetic experience.  Ethics are important but these "warriors" are not interested in real ethical acts.  They get their sexual release from the perception that they are making the world a better place.  They have substituted one experience for the other: protests that have reached a pathological level have become an aesthetic experience.

At the center of any experience is an encounter, whether we are dealing with another human being, an animal, flower, a stone, and of course, a work of art.  Ruins, for example, should make an impact on us.  They speak of a very distant past, of those who came before us and have experienced this world before us.  There should be, at the very least, a sense of respect for the past endeavors.

Leonardo da Vinci, Head of a Woman, c. 1508, Galleria nazionale di Parma

Do we know anymore what to do when we are in front of a work of art?  How are we to encounter it, how are we to relate to it?  Take for example, Leonardo da Vinci's painting titled Head of the Woman.  What do you see?  Look closely.  Don't worry about the constraints of time.  Who is she?  The name is not important.  Her gaze, at once removed from us and yet inviting, "speaks" to us.  She is confident and shy.  She knows something we do not.  She is aware of her interior life.  Here is an inanimate object that is actually having a dialogue with an enfleshed person!  Aren't you amazed by that?  Or have you been "somatized" by the millions of twittering screens that pop out whether you like it or not?

Still, contrary to some beliefs, we do have free will.  You can choose to step away from the screen and choose to step in front of a painting.  I urge you to take some time today and reflect.  Don't feel one bit guilty for contemplating.  Great beauty, by very definition, is not an ethical act.  But great works of art can inspire acts of charity, precisely because you chose to nourish yourself for that day.