Wednesday, 26 November 2008

Enough?

Albrecht Dürer: Young Woman with Bound Hair, 1497


The exhibition was worth the major effort it cost me to get out of bed at the weekend. Such treasures of deep, luminous, intelligent beauty. Gazing at this lovely painting – the colours! the gravity! the delicacy! her nose! her wrist! - I heard myself silently ask: are you enough? Is art enough to make life worth living? And got no answer. I suppose the answer is ‘sometimes’ – better than ‘no’.

7 comments:

Dave King said...

That is a terrible question to have asked yourself, but you gave the only possible answer, I think.

green ink said...

I asked myself a similar question once, when walking around the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.

My question was "how can one live without art?"

We all live in the meanings we are able to discern.

As always, your writing is beautiful and so eloquent.

Anonymous said...

Not a question I've ever thought to ask. I'm very glad your answer is "sometimes".

Of course it might also depend on the art ;-)

Rosie said...

yup, sometimes goes for me too...It would be even more often if I lived in a big city with some art within reach.
Never mind, we have nature, which can often push the same buttons for me

Anonymous said...

My heart warmed when I read "sometimes", but I prefer your first answer.

Zhoen said...

No one thing is enough.

Durer's people do tend to look a bit irritated, I wonder if the artist inspired their expressions.

Dale said...

(o)