Notes scribbled down in a small notebook while visiting the Louvre in Paris with a feverish head last week.
There is a place underneath everything where nothing has a function, where everything exists without reason or purpose. Pure joy of being.
Art, when it is beautiful, connects to that place.
Truth is absence of meaning.
The ornament is not a decoration on top of reality. It is what is underneath, and above. When we become ornament, we have fused with the All. A portrait is striking not when it reveals the nature of a person but when it connects the person to that place where nothing has meaning and all is beautiful.
The idea that language is a collection of words that describes reality feels very comfortable to us. But what if language was first? What if the concepts were first and all reality is just an illustration of those concepts? What if definition (sharpness) makes things less real (removes things away from their being)?
What we commonly refer to as reality is just this fine sharp line, a border, between the vast worlds below and above, the underworld and the heavens.
Each and every painting is a window through which we can see outside. Outside of this slim sliver of reality onto the vast planes of existence.
Every poem is a cathedral. A door to heaven.
A painting turns reality into beauty. And beauty is so much larger.
The purpose of art is to be so beautiful that all meaning seems trivial.
In paintings all of reality is made from the same material. Venus is one with the clouds. The buildings grow out of the trees.
A historical art museum visit is tragic. It starts with the golden glory of god to culminate in a wonderful self aware decadence. The more we appraoch our age, the more cracks start showing. By the end of the nineteenth century everything falls apart and comes stumbling down. Gone are the beauty, the kindness, the generosity. Gone is the belief in goodness.
Art after nature is absurd. This is how art lost its way: Artists mistakenly assumed they were making pictures of nature. But in reality the order is reversed: Art is where the real is! With the attention to nature, art lost all its tenderness and empathy and turned the spectators into voyeurs rather than participants. This already shows in Ingres, despite his best efforts.