|
Hi, SUPERBUY patrons & @小小编儿美丽 M, So sorry if I posted in the wrong section, was looking for a relevant section. This post neither belongs to "Reviews" nor "Shopping News"... @小小编儿美May I venture forth a suggestion? A column within SUPERBUY BBS for sharing our thoughts & realisations? In doing so, one can share one's experiences (be it triumphs or defeats, successes or mistakes, lessons learned from mistakes or sufferings...). Hopefully, it will help others avoid taking the unnecessary paths. To avoid fallacies..... much like a horse with blinkers on? Or like the different blind men who touched different parts of an elephant?
Sorry, I digressed. Back to this post. I came across an exchange of messages:
This brings to mind the scultpture
After centuries, why does this beautiful but broken sculpture still fascinate? The Venus de Milo is an accidental surrealist masterpiece. Her lack of arms makes her strange and dreamlike. She is perfect but imperfect, beautiful but incomplete.
(1) In the 18th century, aristocrats and artists took their Grand Tours to Rome to revere the Apollo Belvedere in the Vatican museum. That sculpture has both arms. Indeed, technically and theoretically, it is perfect in every way. It was admired two hundred years ago as an image of the absolute rational clarity of Greek civilization; the perfect harmony of divine beauty; and the classical pursuit of idealism / perfection.
However, centuries later, in modern day:
Don't we find the traditional and CONVENTIONAL ideal of perfection BORING? For example, much of what is deemed fashionable or beautiful has taken on this path less travelled.
Come on, man (woman/lady), who wants perfection?
And, WHO CARES what her arms were doing?
After all, why bother chasing after an elusive and futile abstract or construct? An ideal, by virtue of definition, is an ideal. In vain. Futile. While one may worship the ideal perfection, such a relentless quest will ultimately and inevitably prove to be disappointed and worse, transform into disillusionment. Worst, the skepticism and cynicism may lead to learned hopelessness and helplessness.
(2) This statue also embodies the modern world's ambivalence towards classical beauty. As a matter of fact, Salvador Dali made a copy of the Venus de Milo with drawers inserted in it, so it could be used as a piece of furniture. Dali saw the armless Greek goddess as a ready-made surrealist object straight out of a dream. An oxymoron indeed: It is the absence of her arms that makes the Venus de Milo a modern enigma and mystery. That sense of enigmatic and mysterious incompleteness has transformed an ancient work of art into a modern one.
(3) Interestingly, the arms were broken due to an accident during an excavation by archaeologists. In an interesting twist of fate, this very accident of archeology has turned this ancient statue into a masterpiece which intrigues us.
Don't we make mistakes in life? We, mere mortals, are not infallible. To put things into context, we live in a world which is fallen and imperfect; and becoming increasingly uncertain, dangerous and precarious...
All of us make mistakes: Some end up either forgetting it in order to move on; some escape and seek solace in various forms of distractions, displacements or escapes (We are guilty of shopping, buying, and acquiring things);
some learnt from it and became more resilient;
while some....
Yet, mistakes can improve our lives! And, further adds colour to enrich our otherwise stressful, weary and dreary life in modern society
FOOTNOTE: It is popularly believed that this Grecian statue depicts the Greek Goddess of love and beauty. However, the Greeks would have called this deity Aphrodite. Nonetheless, the Roman-inspired Venus de Milo caught on. The armless Venus de Milo entered European culture in the 19th century just as artists and writers were rejecting the perfect and timeless.
|
