Sunday, August 24, 2008

A Moshol

Once a man was zoche to own the Mona Lisa. He wanted to be in a position to fully appreciate all the qualities of the painting. And so he studied - he learned about the history of painting, the Renaissance, the biography of Leonardo DaVinci. Then he moved on to learning about other paintings in order to appreciate the Mona Lisa better.

A friend came by and told him he was doing the wrong thing. "What if you find that you like some other painting better? What if you are looking at the painting one day and you find yourself thinking "The Mona Lisa is nice, but the color in Van Gogh's Starry Night is nicer"? And your study of painting techniques might lead you to mistakenly think that the painting could have been done better. The best approach to fully appreciating the Mona Lisa is to avoid any interaction with other paintings and restrict yourself to the Mona Lisa alone.

2 comments:

Leora said...

I have a vague idea of what your nimshal is. Vague.

One of the striking features of the Mona Lisa is the perspective. It is impossible to understand the Mona Lisa without looking back at earlier art. And if you study Van Gogh, you will learn even more. So what does this do to your story? Can't you like them both, each for their specialness, just as you might love different types of children?

I'm not sure art works for your analogy. Or maybe it does, and you are showing us a very rigid way of thinking.

Frum Heretic said...

Is this someone decrying a Jew wanting to learn about other religions? Unfortunately, the moshel itself is tripe.