Hacker News Reader

Comment by Dwolb | Hacker News Reader

Have you seen David in real life?

I'm not artistic at all nor do I understand artistic nuance.

I can say there was something striking about going into that museum in Florence, seeing other massive blocks of started-on marble in the corridor, and finally arriving at David.

No, I didn't get the nuance then nor do I get it now, but I remember the awestruck feeling I got seeing the statue for the first time.

It's probably a personal perspective I'd guess.

View on HN

Don't want to deprecate your personal feeling, but maybe there are rather profane factors that can add to a struck of awe. I imagine that when you come into a big bright hall with that thing right in the middle, which is far bigger than expected and which you have seen a hundred times before on photos, it's hard not to get an awestruck feeling, no matter what kind of thing there actually is.

Oh well, it's a bit hard to discuss art if you have not the slightest sense of it like me.

Awestruck is one thing, but I think you need to actually read the author's recounting of his own experience (which from sounds of it is furthermore many years in retrospective) to understand why I'm calling him out on it.

There's a reason that so much Enlightenment-era philosophy is devoted to trying to understand aesthetics/artistic genius, and it's that the human response to art can be truly profound. His description is no more hyperbolic than thousands of others, and the fact that you haven't experienced these reactions doesn't have any bearing on how others experience art.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com