In a message dated 9/26/12 1:30:46 AM, [email protected] writes:
> > http://www.calgaryherald.com/travel/Museums+Galleries+speak+Dummies/7207602/s tory.html > Jeff spalding, the Director of the Calgary Museum of Contemporary Art, says, "no matter what the artist tells the viewer a piece is about, b the audience might find deeper significance in the gesture than the person who happened to bring it onto the earth did.b On our forum I've used the term 'a.e.' (tryng to veil its inspiration, the troublesome phrase "aesthetic experience") to label the semingly sui generis ecstasy that I've received over the years from certain works of creative people as various as Mozart, Hokusai, Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare, Pavarotti, Scott Fitzgerald, and Van Gogh. Here's an odd fact: I have never been "brought to experience" an a.e. because of an "explanatory" remark about the work -- by its creator or any other commentator. (Clarification: I have certainly brought to the work by others. I've said that I found the literary critic Malcolm Cowley to be hugely beneficial, but not because of anything "expanatory" he ever said. His gift to me was in saying "Read this passage..." -- something I might have raced over too quickly or missed altogether. He made me focus, but nothing he or anyone else has made me experience an ecstasy that I would not have without the "explanation". ) I wonder if this is true of other listers?
