Listen With Your Eyes: The Barnes

I was going to call this: The Tale of the Grey Moleskin

If ashes could talk, would they want to? There is certainly a good reason that whatever color an object may have been, its ash is usually grey.

Charcoal is still an object, consumed or depleted of its energy. All that remains are ashes.

I purchased a fresh pack of moleskin notebooks, three the color of ashes.

Grey, that ash color, which does not assert itself in any way; that sits back and does the uniting while red, orange, and yellow show off.

This grey notebook is polite and inert. Unlike the red moleskin, this one does not reveal a story, only provides a place to record one.

This grey notebook is not a muse, and when I ask it to try, it says something that makes me tremble: "Think for yourself".


"Think for yourself" is probably the most powerful statement a true muse can whisper.

Trust your vision, remember that dream and listen to yourself; all are key muse invective directives.

"Use your eyes, listen with your eyes" were the muse's words that popped into my brain, after I remembered that my perfectly good inspiration was not this ash grey moleskin.

My muse placed a short, elderly tour guide in front of me. I had been seated at the Barnes Museum writing, when a tour group camped out in front of me. The guide, in her brown skirt, began talking; but I could not hear, or at least was not paying attention. I looked up when my unseen muse directed me to "listen with my eyes."

As I turned my gaze from the pages of the notebook, I observed what was a representation of a miracle.

The guide withdrew a tiny, brown, glass medicine bottle from her pocket and held it up with her index finger and thumb. She displayed it for the group like an old time snake oil scam.

But what she had was a miracle, no snake oil. The bottle represented the fortune and miracle of the Barnes.

Dr. Barnes had concocted eye drops, that when administered to a newborn's eyes, would prevent blindness, if the parents had a common sexual disease.

This explains the fortune that allowed Dr. Barnes to buy major art works from important artists.

But, what are art works but one half of a visual conversation? An artist begins a conversation that doesn't end but requires a viewer to pick up and respond. It takes eyes not blinded at birth to continue a visual conversation.

"Listen with your eyes".



How interestingly logical it is that Doctor Barnes should have purchased one of the two known paintings by Gustav Courbet entitled: "Origin of the World". The origin of the world and his wealth.


visit Sandy Kinnee.com

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