First exposure

The first question should be "what is art?" It is a striking fact that so little consensus exists about what art is. One is Socratic to realize that the chief idea, the most central and taken for granted idea is exactly the idea that not only lacks definition but seems even to resist definition. Our whole understanding rests upon a word whose contours dissolve into air.

Well, painting isn't principally about words anyway. A painting is about spectacle. Everyone knows how to look at things, everyone finds themselves momentarily arrested by an appearance. Artists in contrast do not just have such experiences, they seek to dwell in them. A painting presents one long exposure in the camera obscura of the human heart. And the lines and forms that compose the experience are not a simulacrum, they become ends in themselves. Discovered lines and forms lead to a place of their own -- ends justify the means, the ends are the means. The painted surface, the seamless warp and weft, directs our thought toward what our eyes can see.