Musings. Ex Libris

A bustling crowd is like an absorbent sponge, sucking water in and out. It should be appreciated if disciplines and orders suddenly come in the way, and each restless, abandoned entity is made to march in straight lines, shedding the disguise of inapt boisterousness and simulating a performance of solemnity. This orderly crowd resembles piles of clouds that occupy the sky: rarely is there a prodigal son wandering off the group liberally. They always travel together; as a family they should. People can divine no explanations when seeing themselves constantly flanked by others of their kinds. The faces bespeak stupor and insensitivity, but once a knell breaks every head looks up in unquestionable promptitude. The crowd of devout religious believers merits a close inspection in Paul Gauguin’s Vision after the Sermon (1888). A slender trunk of a tree diagonally separates the present scene with the “vision”- the biblical scene of Jacob wrestling with an angel. Realit...

She who is solitary rarely lives invariably in contentment. Therefore she makes up dramas that seem consequential. Everything can be so easily dilated upon even when the surrounding is dreary, and days are padded out with insipidness and weariness. A sudden creaking sound can be construed, in her ears, as a romantic ballad still vivid in her remembrance- back in the days when she was the happiest and that song would repeat itself endlessly amidst the extended silence. She will later come to fear anything that refuses to be cowed to stillness. She often shudders when the streams of light flood in and dusts flit about. Not all self-willed solitudes are reduced to such incurable ennui and depression. For the viewers who choose to be ignorant of the psychological aspects of living creatures, a lonesome figure set against a sparsely populated landscape can seem an exalted sight. The partial view of the mother’s face in Fritz Mackensen’s Mother and Infant (1892) bear...