J F Martel at Aeon Magazine:
What astounds us when we enter a cathedral or contemplate a Mark Rothko is not merely the finished form of these works but the strange transformation each embodies. I know the stone to be impossibly heavy, yet I see it suspended as though lighter than air; I see the strokes of paint, yet the colour field feels all the more solid for them. Aside from this, it is the gratuitous contingency of the building and the painting – the undeniable fact that they might just as well never have been made – that takes my breath away. Their existence depends on an act of creation in time, a free decision to make, and by making, to enlarge the world and alter the terms by which it can henceforth be represented.
Turning from the painting or stepping out onto the street, I may in my astonishment see the world as though for the first time. Stripped of the overlay of familiarity that I habitually project upon it, everything appears to exhibit the very contingency I encountered in the artwork. The world itself suddenly seems the result of a creative act that continues even as I intuit it.
more here.
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