Seductively asserting with their curves
their right to be the mistresses of fortune
our women please us, playing on our nerves
the music that our unplucked chords importune.
Michael Kimmelman (NYT, July 20,2006) , writes about an exhibition at the Grolier Club, where a show called “Teaching America to Draw” provides a refresher course in pencil-pushing and other sorts of sketching as a collective pastime: day, when educated Americans drew as a matter of course:
Drawing was a civilized thing to do, like reading and writing. It was taught in elementary schools. It was democratic. It was a boon to happiness. From 1820 to 1860, more than 145,000 drawing manuals circulated, now souvenirs of our bygone cultural aspirations. Not many of these manuals are still intact because they were so heavily used, worn down like church relics, which supplicants rubbed smooth from caressing. We’re addicted to convenience today. Cellphone cameras are handy, but they’re also the equivalent of fast-food meals. Their ubiquity has multiplied our distance from drawing as a measure of self-worth and a practical tool. Before box cameras became universal a century or so ago, people drew for pleasure but also because it was the best way to preserve a cherished sight, a memory, just as people played an instrument or sang if they wanted to hear music at home because there were no record players or radios. Amateurism was a virtue, and the time and effort entailed in learning to draw, as with playing the piano, enhanced its desirability. Drawing promoted meditation and stillness. “A sustained act of will is essential to drawing, ” Paul Valéry put it. “Nothing could be more opposed to reverie, since the requisite concentration must be continually diverting the natural course of physical movements, on its guard against any seductive curve asserting itself.”
7/20/06
gershon hepner
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/curves-and-chords/
