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Showing posts from August, 2008

That Mystic Smile

Sushma Joshi, ECS Magazine, August 2008 Art remains in people's lives long after their creators are gone. These material artifacts, ironically, weather time better than the people who shaped them from their imagination. The miles and miles of art objects that adorn the Louvre, France's and possibly the world's most well-known museum, are an aching reminder of how the material world outlives the human one. But even when an artwork survives its artist, there is no guarantee that it will be loved and appreciated as it was in its own time and place. Art, torn from its maker, becomes subject only to the ruthless criteria of the present. Take the Louvre. It is filled with floor-length paintings of emperors and empresses, monarchies and royal families, rebels and guerillas, national wars and civil conflict. It is filled with the grandeur of the Church. It has room-sized tableaus of hunting, gladiator fights, and meetings of religious and political leaders. It is filled with portra