You think that I am naive, but it is you who are naive. You have no idea what is happening inside of you when you look at a painting. You think that you are getting close to art voluntarily, enticed by its beauty, that this intimacy is taking place in an atmosphere of freedom and that delight is being born in you spontaneously, lured by the divine rod of Beauty. In truth, a hand has grabbed you by the scruff of the neck, led you to this painting and has thrown you to your knees. A will mightier than your own told you to attempt to experience the appropriate emotions. Whose hand and whose will? That hand is not the hand of a single man, the will is collective, born in an interhuman dimension, quite alien to you. So you do not admire at all, you merely try to admire. . Witold Gombrowicz
About This Quote

In his book, A World Without Women, sociologist David L. Eng describes a scene from a film in which a man, after watching the film Titanic, realizes that he has been fooled into thinking that women are beautiful. His response is, “I’ve been tricked into believing that women are beautiful.” In a similar way, we have been tricked into believing that art is beautiful. But, as Eng points out, this is a trick.

The beauty of art has been evoked through our experience with it and our cultural conditioning about sex and gender roles. The window through which we see the world is window dressing; it’s not realistic to expect that we can gain access to an objective truth about art without reference to our own personal feelings and experiences.

Source: Diary

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