I think what artists are after is an object that seems to confirm that their understanding, their experience of the world, is not just a personal opinion. They really do have some objective relationship to their intuitions and that their intuitions are not made up -- that there really is a world out there that we really can, on some level, understand -- in spite of the fact that on the surface it seems so constantly chaotic, and full of meaninglessness, and unpredictability. So we try to make of our experience something that's outside of ourselves, and that exists outside of ourselves, that has an objective life. I think one could risk saying that, in a broad way, it's a quasi--religious sense of identification with the landscape. The quality of the experience, I think, one might call "ecstatic." You know, Bernini's Saint Theresa -- the same kind of nervous, insubstantiality, this flickering, flame--like ecstatic quality. Ecstasy. It's outside yourself. It's an experience. I think one might actually for a change really use the word "epiphany," without forcing it too much.
John Szarkowski
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