The Temple of My Dream -- Walking into the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States: Walking into the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States

Author: Xu Xiaobin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-06-01
Features: From the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, to the Kunstareal in Munich, Germany; from the Hermitage Museum in Russia to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, USA, each author stands at a spiritual vantage point of humanity, emotion, and perception, surveying those world-renowned masterpieces. Their unique perspectives differ from those of any art historian, historian, or cultural scholar, and what they offer is the most valuable thing—the subjective and personalized aspects. Yet, precisely because of this unique vantage point, they see profound and precious things that ordinary people could never perceive. This is the value of this book. After all, art is like life—when you think it has reached its end and can no longer progress, it always turns around and appears with a familiar face, giving you another surprise. It is said, "When the mountain is heavy and the water is deep, you doubt there is no way forward, but then you see a village bright with willows and flowers," and this describes such a realm. For example, modern painting, after experiencing Dadaism, Pop Art, Op Art, and Machine Art, suddenly returned to realism—but this was not Renaissance-style or Courbet-style realism, but pushed to the extreme of photorealism. This reminds me of Bach's famous theme and variations piece, "The Musical Offering." Bach uses the "infinite canon"—that is, repeating the same theme and then subtly modulating it, so that the ending can smoothly transition back to the beginning.