Thanks for your comments, Jess. I appreciate your gentle way of showing that, with five websites open at any given time, the internet is perhaps not the most contemplative place. In fact, I think staring at the computer screen might be a lot like staring at the TV, in that it mimics a meditative mindset, calming the brainwaves. It can seem right at the time, but later one finds that it was a false calm, and anxiety returns at an increased level. Hopefully the content on my site helps to override the problems inherent in the medium.

Personally, I still spend much more time with books than online. I picked up a book on the painter Balthus last week. It is edited and introduced by his son, Stanislas Klossowski de Rola. He is clearly tired of the myriad interpretations of his father’s work. He says, "A possible way to avoid the depressing misunderstandings that seem, almost invariably, to prevail among even those who claim to be Balthus's greatest admirers might be for the lover of his art to contemplate his paintings. By 'contemplation' I mean the elevation from mere perusal and observation to vision, from the empirical to the ideal -- a state wherein the act of seeing, the seen and the seer become one. Should one be able to overcome the superficial handicap of one's 'aesthetic reactions' (described by the anthropologist R. Firth as 'an excrescence upon a genuine interest in art which seems peculiar to civilized peoples'), one might then be able to penetrate the deeper meaning of the work and thus truly to judge it."

I think that is very good advice for appreciating Balthus, as well as for many another artist. There are far too many critics around who are enamored of their own “aesthetic reactions,” and have therefore lost the ability to look at anything in a contemplative way. Of course artists too are often to blame for presenting work which is little more than a stick in the eye, work that hardly invites the contemplative gaze. I would like to see more artwork that demonstrates the kind of attention that Balthus gave to his paintings, as well as the kind of vision his son suggests for its true appreciation.

Can it be done in the age of the internet and multi-tasking, Jessica? I truly have no idea, but at least there is something of a format here in which these things may be discussed…