One ought to fall in
One ought to fall in love, abroad. I know I did. Several times, in fact! But the tales of my subsequent love-affairs will have to wait, because now I will tell you of how I fell in love with Attic figured ware.
"Baaaaah!" I hear you all saying. "Here we were thinking that Katherine had found herself a living and non-fictional human being, preferably some sexy Italian with a leather jacket and a Vespa, and here she is mooning over pottery."
Well, bah right back. Of course, I had seen some Greek vases before - mostly in pictures, and a few in American museum. But here, what profligacy of beauty! That is the satisfying thing about seeing pottery in reality - no picture ever can ever properly capture it since it is so solidly three-dimensional. And the good artists are the ones who know about space, whose figures fit so perfectly into their context that anywhere apart from it they look lifeless or distorted.
The decorative aspects charmed me as much as the figures. The beauty and the intricacy of those patterns! And the very shapes of the vessels, even the ones without decoration of any sort, were overwhelming in their beauty and their reality.*
I think that I ought to take up as many artistic or creative pusuits as possible, just to enable me to see more clearly. For without having been a potter, how much would I have seen of the shape of the pots? Without having been a wall painter, how much would I have seen of the beautiful colored walls from the Etruscan tomb? I am conscious now of these objects as created things, and through having some idea of what went on in their creation I see beauties about them that I would otherwise have been unconscious of.
I ought to take up architecture, if I’m going to be in love with construction and space.
*Footnote: You will notice I seem to be raving about the reality of things a good deal. Three-dimensionality will do that to you. And after Freshman year, one realizes that the highest praise for something is to call it real.
But I should think you would also have realized that the most real things do not exhibit dimensionsionality.
August 12th, 2002 at 1:22 amIndeed! But one gets so used to not seeing dimensionality, and then BAM! there it is! Space!
August 12th, 2002 at 7:15 am