July 31, 2024

Beauty

By Elizabeth Hasen
Beauty

In October my sister and I hope to go on a trip to Bordeaux, France -- and in preparation I've been reading a book, "The Cave Painters" by Geoffrey Curtis, which focuses on the many paleolithic cave paintings in the south of France: when and how they may have been painted and by whom, who discovered them, and the archaeologists and anthropologists who have tried to understand their meaning and purpose.

Curtis writes about his emotional reaction seeing a cave painting where a male reindeer is leaning down to lick the head of a female reindeer, saying that it is "rare among cave paintings because it shows a moment of affection." And then he says: "Beauty in art or in nature or in a person is always surprising because it is stronger and more affecting than you could have anticipated."

I've been thinking about that -- about how the moment of encountering something beautiful often feels like a wave, unexpectedly powerful, washing over me. Whether it's looking at a painting or photograph, or a summer field of flowers, or the delightful, perfect beauty of a cat -- in that moment, I sometimes think "If life consisted of nothing more than this, it is enough."

Perhaps that's what art is all about.  Perhaps artists -- of any time and place -- are simply trying to capture a moment of beauty -- to explore it, preserve it, share it.   How very human that attempt is -- now and here, in Vermont, or thousands of years ago in a cave in France....

 

Elizabeth

3 comments

  • Betsy on July 31, 2024

    Thank you, Elizabeth, for your thoughts about Beauty. My takeaway is to slow down and to look and listen. You remind me that’s it’s all around us, and, within ourselves and others.

    Werner Herzog directed a wonderful film about the cave paintings in France. Suggest you watch it!

    Betsy

  • Jed Feffer on July 31, 2024

    Wonderful insight about beauty Elizabeth.. Beautiful image of the reindeers. Strangely the “more prone” reindeer seems to be lying down on her front hal, but propped up a bit on her hind legs. I wonder if she is hurt or sick. Have fun in France!!

  • Marcia Stone on July 31, 2024

    Thank you, Elizabeth for this thoughtful insight. On a tour of the Vatican Museum I saw, all too briefly, a high Renaissance painting of the Annunciation that struck as so beautiful. Down through the ages the power still shared with me.

    Hope you are not being affected by the stormy weather.

    Marcia

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