I’ve been thinking a bit lately about time and its relationship to different forms of art. Though I have never questioned the necessity of time for letting ideas unfold in music, film and theatre, I had never built that into the equation for painting, drawing and photography. My maintaining a position in front of a Degas, as other visitors to the Museum of Fine Arts rushed past, provided the opportunity to change that understanding.

In the past-paced world in which we live, one has few chances to “live” with things that don’t demand our attention. Because our environment is filled with images that constantly come and go, it’s hard to think of a two-dimensional piece of art as rewarding you in new ways when you give it some face time. If you resist the temptation to move on, a painting or drawing can reveal what a glance will not. Your own experience of discovery may even in some ways resemble the “story” found in a play or piece of music. I’m not talking about the implied text of a painting with recognizable elements. What I’m getting at is the recognition—in the language of the particular art form—that something has taken place. Perhaps with you.

Bumper stickers seem to live long lives. The above is an example of a bumper sticker that has a meaning completely different now than the one it was meant to convey some 6 or 7 years ago. Of course, it refers to the Patriot Act pushed through by the Bush administration and the right to protest its existence without seeming unpatriotic. Now, it sounds like a Tea Party rallying cry. Context is everything. I guess it’s time to take it off my car.