“No art, only artifice”

So much of what makes art numinous is the mystery of it. We look at a great painting or listen to an incredible piece of music, or we read a beautiful passage in a book, and we wonder that such things could ever be. How can it be that another human being, with a mind not so very different from our own, could make such a thing? It seems impossible. We are in awe of this wonder that we cannot understand.

But this is a matter of perspective. To someone with a natural ability to understand and create music, Rachmaninoff might be awe-inspiring, but not incomprehensible. I believe that someone like Ed Witten is deeply respectful of Einstein’s work, but I don’t believe for a second that it seems in any way superhuman to him. We understand that which is like us.

I’m an artist. I’m not a Caravaggio or a Rembrandt, or a Picasso, or a de Kooning. I am a thoroughly average artist in every respect, though I have hope of something greater. I am in awe of David and Goliath or Guernica, but I understand how they were made. That makes sense to me. It doesn’t feel beyond me, not really.

I wonder if that makes me appreciate art less somehow, the visual arts at least. I find that often when I visit a museum, I don’t even really look at the images anymore. I don’t take in the scene. I get right up close, as close as I can get without setting off an alarm, and I look at brushstrokes. I look for fingerprints and blobs of paint and cracks where the artist pushed the materials farther than they were ever meant to go. The drips and scratches are what gets me off, far more than the image itself. The image I almost lose sight of altogether.

I’m drawn in by the process, because the larger whole, the great mystery of the work, is already revealed to me. Am I less moved because I understand? Certainly I find myself more dumbstruck by written or aural works. Music, prose, they’re beyond me. I am entirely incapable of really understanding them in any meaningful way. And perhaps because of that, I find myself lying awake at nights replaying my favorite songs and reciting my favorite literary passages in my head, whereas even my favorite visual works rarely stick in my head for more than a few hours.

Does familiarity breed contempt, or does it engender a deeper appreciation? If I could understand music the way I understand drawing, would I love The Beatles more or less? I wonder if I’m just going through a phase-- as I always seem to be-- or if some part of me will never be able to fully regain that sense of the supernatural that I once felt for the great paintings. Maybe that’s the price of making art, not ever really seeing it the way you could before.