An unusual week

This week has been bit different. On Sunday I saw the Pompeii exhibit at the National Gallery, on Tuesday night I saw a 400 year old play, "Dog in the Manager," a Shakespeare Theater production and then on Wednesday my partner and I traveled to Philadelphia to see a Cezanne exhibit. This is more art than I've seen in the previous year.

It has left me feeling like an adjunct to a stream that has been flowing all around us, but that most of us do not participate in on a regularly. During the Cezanne exhibit I really did get the feeling that everything is part of a whole. Roman art was completely derivative of Greek art, its meaning seemed to only be in relationship to the Greeks. Fast forward to Cezanne it was manifest that his work's meaning was in his break from the Impressionist and he heralded the cubists. Each gained its meaning because of its place on the continuum.

I wondered if any of it would be "good art" in and of itself. Can Jasper Johns work actually stand alone, or is it only good if you know the art that came before him and what he was trying to do intellectually. Would a person unfamiliar with the "tradition" look at cubist work and love it?

My instinct is no. It all reminds me of poets who explain their poems before they read it. If you have to do that, then you need to re-write your poem. Few things stand by themselves. I'm thinking that those things that do, have an a priori relationship with us.