At least 1,000.
I’ve been sitting here behind Giambologna’s “Rape of the Sabine Woman,” for
only an hour, and yet I feel certain that I’ve been in at least 1,000 photographs.
It is difficult
(to say the least) to digest the moment. The setting: cold, hard, unapologetically
itself. The onlookers: like flies swarming a dead animal—some staying for only
a moment, others remaining to feast. And the art. Ah, the art: a piece so haunting
in its message and its beauty that one finds oneself all but choked by the
sheer afflatus. All of it—the marble, the figura serpentinata, the eyes, the
moment—all of it is the art. Undiluted artistic expression has a way of making
you feel very small. Rilke states it perfectly, writing, “experiences are
unsayable, they happen in a space that no world has ever entered, and more
unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences,
whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.”
It is because art
lives in the present differently than it lived in the past that we must
abnegate from inextricably linking a piece to its time period. This is why we
must study art in the context of history as well as in the light of reality.
Reality; harsh, egregious, ever-alinear, reality. “The Rape of the Sabine
Woman” lived in 1582, and it continues to live in 2013.
The metaphor of “flies swarming a dead animal” is a very creative and accurate description of the movement of tourists. At every monument and piece of art some seem to move aimlessly and are just following the crowd. They see something everyone else is looking at and take a moment to focus their attention upon it as well. They might take a small memory of the piece home with them, but it is likely to fade soon. The others who “remain to feast” actually take in the significance of the artwork. To them it is more than a passing thought and just another remnant of the past. It has a chance to make a lasting impression and remain alive within them.
ReplyDelete"The Rape of the Sabine Woman" is so life like it is hard to look at, yet we haven't stopped since 1582. It is no wonder that some don't take the time to really look. Those who do see the hard marble turn to flesh and that terrible moment in time played out in front of them. The twists of the bodies, the struggle for power, and that look in her eyes, god forbid you catch it. It is no wonder why so many people just take a picture.
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