How you look at things.....

Some things never have occurred to me unless I see them first hand.  Unfortunately I don't spend a lot of time in art museums although I've visited a lot of them and always enjoyed the time. It is more a matter of opportunity than of dis-interest.

Growing up as a musician, I gravitated toward music libraries and concert halls. After you get some proficiency, you can "hear" the music in a library (on the printed page) just by looking at it.  It is not a big deal skill, just that over time you can pick up a music score or part and "hear it".  The realization of music from the source is really something of a mental translation but unless you are actually playing it or "reading it", it pretty much requires someone else to perform it for you - to take it off the printed page and convert it into sound.  As an audience or consumer of music, most folks are reliant on someone else translating the symbols into the, or a, comprehensible sound form.

So on a little visit to the 5th floor of MoMA, I got to see any number of my all time favs and snapped a few phone/cam pics along the way - just to think about them some a day later. The painting at the top is now a favorite as it of course of a zillion dollar work of famous art, but, in this photo, there is someone "consuming" Starry Night in some detail, inches away from the brushstroke, and, in this case she didn't need an intermediary to consume the art form. She is touching it and digesting it straight off the canvas.

Is that the difference between the two art forms? One often needs a translator and the other is simply real and "in your face"? 

Just thinking....