Before I assemble some comments on the essay as a whole, I must react to this picture.
It's really very beautiful. It's one of those sneaky abstracts that are not abstract at all. The purely graphic character of it, like Rothko feeling blue, is a first impression level of delight in addition to the subsequent realisation that it's actually a representational, literal work.
It's a visual fuge, by which I mean the image easily becomes convincingly audible as a musical piece like this.
The musical theme is also graphically echoed in the fact that it actually looks like a musical stave, with a lonely, melancholy high note at upper left. It's obviously in a minor key.
It's a lovely, witty, satisfying photograph. I very, very rarely see a photo and think, "I'd like looking at that every day on my wall, and in extravagant size too", but this photograph is an exception to that rule. Thank you. |