Art lies. Inspect this human, face contorting, robe rippling, hand rising. The human is stone, not flesh nor life nor gentle give that is the truth of man. Glance down this street, mark the sun creeping over the water between buildings on the left, about half as far as one can see. There is no street, only a lines of pigment and oil brushed on canvas. That house so far away remains four feet from where one stands to look, and that house so near does too. The far house in truth is larger than the near, yet perhaps an inch by two, while the other dominates a foot by half. Listen to the sorrow and the torment of this music. But the instruments and players are without distress. Follow the rise of this leader in his time two thousand fifty eight years before last Wednesday, and watch his fall by night. But this young man is no leader, this dilapidated stage no ancient kingdom, and this fall no longer than a day before another rise. Even when art has truth – a man did rule a kingdom, a soul once suffered loss, a street did stretch into the distance, a sun did rise, a face did cringe – it only lies the better. Mixed with its tricks of perspective and tone, these small truths merely render the lie more convincing, like a half-truth told to calm an anxious parent. Even now I lie, when I say art, abstract idea it is, may lie or have or do.
Yet art is no half-truth to calm, it is a bold-faced lie to drudge up some part of the soul that hears or sees. It riles and worries and inspires. Great art lies to tell great truth. When a child lies to a mother, he hides something, but when an artist lies, she reveals something. A fraction of the rage, the peace, the pain, the loss humanity has faced in infinite ways, arranged in an elegant composite of one face or phrase, while directly untrue, divulges to the viewer something deeply true about himself.
A wonderful poem.
A “true” image of lies. A “false” picture of beauty.
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