With the unanticipated and shocking events of September 11, I have changed from the Basics of Art to a short soliloquy on the power of the Visual. After being totally saturated with the images, I switched to listening to the radio, but found that the images were still with me, running on what I call my "private video." I expect this was the way for almost everyone. Day and night. And I saw, briefly, an account of the major art which was lost in this mass destruction: Miro, Calder, Rodin, Nevelson - and B. Cantor's extensive collection of Rodin. He and his wife had given several hundred pieces to museums, but there were more hundreds in Cantor/Fitzgerald's headquarters up there at the top. That is the company which lost some 700 of its key employees, too.
Images of refugees in Afghanistan, the horrible crimes on women by the Taliban, the Taliban edict against music, the millions trying to escape, piled up at the borders - dispossessed, starving, sick, no where to escape to, borders closed. Those planes going full bore into the skyscrapers, the Pentagon, the Pennsylvania coal mine tailings. The selfless emergency personnel trying desperately to save others, and losing, losing.
I am really having a hard time trying to put any of this into words, and have found that my energy is just sapped (depressed?) by the situation. I have been through this before, when each Kennedy was murdered, during the civil rights marches and murders, during the Cuban missile crisis - so will wait for the return of the Muse. The Muse always returns, in time. In the meantime, this article's deadline rears its ugly head, so I have gone out looking for some contemporary and modern images, and lovely things. Nothing immediately current, but images to take one’s mind off the incredible events that have taken place. Being a very visual person, I find that I am getting “reruns” of the terrorist acts all the time, so I have to make a concerted effort to look at other images, nice ones, outside myself.
Go to Sotheby’s, virtually. You might have to register to get in. I’m not sure. I have found that registering can be naughty; within the next two hours, unless someone runs me off, I will have purchased a nice Indian rug “runner” for the hall for $100 plus 10% Buyer’s Premium. Not bad! So, registering can be dangerous to your wallet. But it is fun to look, take your mind off other things. All of us have lost something in this horrible time period.
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