Richard Jernigan -> RE: Being an artist. (Apr. 6 2013 19:36:27)
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Yet today--or at least last May--you can't see the colors in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel if you take the tour of the Vatican Museum. After tramping for miles (literally, miles) with the thundering herd through marble corridors lined with the loot of centuries, you come to the chapel. The curtains are drawn shut on the windows, the only windows, high above the floor. The light is very dim, almost dark. The crowd is suffocatingly dense, shoulder to shoulder, back to back, belly to belly. You don't dare spend any time gazing up at the ceiling, or your will be knocked off your feet by the jostling mob. But a few quick glances reveal only dim, dull forms. You can find a seat on the long stone bench attached to the wall on one side, if you wait long enough. Then people stand in front of you, glaring at you to encourage you to move so they can take your seat. So, you compose yourself to remain calm, and think of something else until it is time to shoulder your way through the massed herd, to meet your guide at the appointed time at the exit. You manage to end up at the doorway, but on the wrong side of the velvet rope meant to funnel the mob into the next cattle chute. But the guard, seeing your predicament, unhooks the rope and lets you pass, with unfailing Italian courtesy. All in all, a wonderful experience of great art![&:] Sister Wendy looks nice enough. My buddy Renaldo and I caused enough trouble in 4th grade San Antonio public school that they sent him to the nuns for 5th grade. Fortunately I was a Protestant. He said you could never tell when one of those nice looking nuns would whip our her ruler and rap your knuckles if you disagreed with her! I'd say she knows what she's talking about... But perhaps we mathematicians and physicists are made more accustomed to the process of abstraction by our training. It seems obvious enough that you can't take the surface of a donut and flatten it out onto a sheet of paper without cutting it somewhere. Yet the process of proving this logically involves the invention of abstract concepts like Euclidean manifolds, the topological ideas of compact and connected sets, continuous mappings...things the plumber or sculptor need not concern himself with, even if he is a brilliant virtuoso at his trade. But once the concepts are invented, the mathematician finds them interesting objects of study in themselves, just as the artist who has mastered color in realistic painting can find it interesting to study in and of itself. RNJ
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