Both a metaphor and a work of art are things representing something else.
A work of art can be analogous to our conceptual imagination.
Concrete and physical, a work of art can express something that our minds or hearts understand so completely that we not only accept it but we embrace it.
While paradoxically metaphors can be said to stretch truths regarding our physical world, they trigger emotions that run deep within.
Is this type of identification at the heart of art appreciation?
Certainly we can quantify elements, technique and quality, but is that why we fall in love with a particular piece of art?
I would suggest that technical analysis or observation cannot explain this phenomenon.
Art, like a metaphor, has the power of grabbing the heart and blasting past the logical mind, enticing us to see within the artwork images of our own lives, or perhaps a moment within history that we see is lived over and over again.
This allows us to identify in some way with the work of art in question.
Why is it that Rembrandt’s Lucretia had such an effect on me when I first saw it?
I froze and couldn’t take my eyes off it.
Even now, when I think of that moment the words of Emily Dickens ring out: “I saw no way, the heavens were stitched…”
Was this pseudo-Stendhal effect due to my love for poetry?
What caused these two images to converge at that very moment and why can I not forget it?
Is it that the events told of in Lucretia have been repeated so recently in our world and are in some ways analogous to the events that have occurred in the Arab Spring?
Is this why this work of art remains close in my memory?
The images in my dreams often defy the logical mind yet when I awake I can still continue to live within that reality, for a little while, especially when creating.
I wonder if in creating a piece I am providing a world for someone else’s heart, like Rembrandt did for mine.
Life is full of mysteries….
By Boky and Blake