I can remember the day well. It was 1998 and I was in London, walking round the galleries. Looking over I could see people walk in, glance briefly at a painting before swiftly studying the text to find out what they were looking at. I found it upsetting that, even in a temple of the visual the word addicts could not, dare not or perhaps wanted not to trust their own eyes. Since that day I have been unable to forget that very few people are able to look. Language and self reflection have undoubtedly pushed us along the evolutionary journey but our strongest sense is suffering.
We ought to be able to trust ourselves. To go to see art without recourse to discourse. Just as we do when dancing, when hunting, when having sex, as we do at any time when we forget ourselves.
As children we skip through books, missing out the boring words till we can enjoy the pictures. Many adults can not look for wanting to read.
This may well be where a lot of our problems lie. In the hunger for understanding we succumb to the word; we want explanation rather than just being, just seeing or just doing.
It always saddens me that followers of my blog fall in to ignoring the pictures, which are the true journey, and jump from text to text.
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