Alex Da Corte and I are walking through the Prado in Madrid, surrounded by the treasures of the art world. Yet some, despite their beauty or painterly perfection, are so easy to walk past. Another era. Jesus and Mary. Portraits of nobles, kings and queens. More Jesus and Mary.
Alex points out the pre-Renaissance genre of ‘world landscape’, before painters knew how to paint perspective; before there was a vanishing point, before there was scale, where every object in the frame – no matter the importance – carries the same weight. It makes me think of the internet. I say as much to Alex and he laughs.
We are not studious tourists or completists. We haven’t brought a checklist. We do not feel compelled to study every brushstroke, read every placard, squint and hum. We float, pulled along by a supernatural current of instinct and chance. We only stop and stare at what calls to us from eternity. Yes, yes, centuries ago. Different time, different rulers, different plague, different wars, but the same human condition. This is it: eternity. What we try, like mad but occasionally contented Sisyphi, to channel into our own work.
We are called to a small room: Goya’s Black Paintings. The temperature falls 15 – no, 20 – degrees. You felt that too, right? The air, like a gunshot. I immediately lock eyes with Saturn Devouring His Son. I don’t know why, but I understand this mania, this violence. How many sons did it take to get to THIS look in his eyes? Was this the taste of first flesh? The third son going down? The final gnashing and gulp?
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der October 2024-Ausgabe von Wallpaper.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der October 2024-Ausgabe von Wallpaper.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
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