July 12 At the gallery yesterday I bought a book containing all of the Caravaggios to be found in Rome. The focus of this project is widening. I want to look at and think deeply about them all, and, in doing so, wonder aloud about what it is we value in a work of art. I don’t think that our reaction to a work of art is merely our opinion. I’ve always believed that certain works of art are objectively good, and I connect this goodness, quite naturally I think, to morality. That isn’t to say that a good work of art cannot contain elements we would consider immoral. This is in a way too obvious to go into much here. All one need do is read some Goodreads reviews in which a reader dislikes an entire book because the protagonist was unlikeable. We don’t have to like a book or a painting in order to call it good. I don’t even want to wade into all the discourse around this right now, the quite boring, because obvious, op-eds by boomer, tenured professors (Francine Prose, etc.) about how students need to encounter work that makes them feel uncomfortable. I don’t like it when people talk about art as a kind of vitamin, a big, bitter pill you best swallow. If something makes me uncomfortable in the moral sense — the classic example, though it doesn’t make me uncomfortable, is
The Cerasi Chapel (July 12 - Part One)
The Cerasi Chapel (July 12 - Part One)
The Cerasi Chapel (July 12 - Part One)
July 12 At the gallery yesterday I bought a book containing all of the Caravaggios to be found in Rome. The focus of this project is widening. I want to look at and think deeply about them all, and, in doing so, wonder aloud about what it is we value in a work of art. I don’t think that our reaction to a work of art is merely our opinion. I’ve always believed that certain works of art are objectively good, and I connect this goodness, quite naturally I think, to morality. That isn’t to say that a good work of art cannot contain elements we would consider immoral. This is in a way too obvious to go into much here. All one need do is read some Goodreads reviews in which a reader dislikes an entire book because the protagonist was unlikeable. We don’t have to like a book or a painting in order to call it good. I don’t even want to wade into all the discourse around this right now, the quite boring, because obvious, op-eds by boomer, tenured professors (Francine Prose, etc.) about how students need to encounter work that makes them feel uncomfortable. I don’t like it when people talk about art as a kind of vitamin, a big, bitter pill you best swallow. If something makes me uncomfortable in the moral sense — the classic example, though it doesn’t make me uncomfortable, is