A Soulful Journey

When the curators of London’s National Gallery suggested that the paintings of the Old Masters be cleaned there was an outcry.  The accumulated grime was essential to the pictures, they reasoned.   Any art historian will tell you that accumulated grime does not enhance the artist’s creation, it diminishes it.  Yet there are some who claim that nothing should touch what has become old.      Every thing, every moment, and event should be looked at as novel.  Innovation, while not abandoning the past, should not be seen as dangerous.   We grow from each new experience under heaven.  Look with fresh eyes at God’s world.  Peel away the layers of dust and detritus and you will be richly rewarded for seeing the universe as was intended, not though smudged glasses.

Maxie Dunnam tells an interesting story about the great Canadian photographer, Yousef Karsh. According to Dunnam, Karsh only took one portrait of a person’s back, that of Pablo Casals in a French abbey in 1954. Karsh writes that as he was setting up his equipment, Casals began playing by on his cello. Karsh was so enthralled by the music that he almost forgot why he was there. He took his portrait of Casals with the little baldheaded man bent over his cello, frozen in time against the plain stone wall of the chapel.  Karsh said that he took it that way to capture the loneliness of the truly great artists and the loneliness of exile. Years later, when the portrait was on exhibition in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, another old, baldheaded man came day after day and stood for long moments at a time in front of the portrait. The curator of the museum noticed him and, when his curiosity got the best of him, went over, tapped him on the shoulder and asked why he staye...

  An American couple found themselves in Paris and decided to visit the Louvre. As they walked from gallery to gallery, they would comment on each work of art. They would stand before a painting and say: this one's nice - that one not so   much… this painting is too dark, that one is boring, there is something wrong with the proportions in that painting. Now, you should know the guards who work in art museums are not just ordinary guards. They spend many hours with the masterpieces and have a very personal relation with these works of art. As the visitors stood in a gallery passing judgment over one particular work, a guard came over and said: "Excuse me but you have it backwards. You are not here to judge these works of art; they are here to judge you. They were here long before you came to the Louvre and they will be here long after you're gone. How you see them is a measure of your character, your vision, your insight. -   Rabbi Mark Greenspan