A year ago, a friend gave us a printout of an art piece framed in cardboard, which I leaned against the wall on top of a desk drawer.
And for a year, I kept telling myself how abstract that art was because, until now, I still don’t understand it. Isn’t there some art that takes time before you get it? Like the one I saw in childhood, the more you get closer to it, the more the details blur and become nonsensical, and it would only make sense if you stood far from it, changing your perspective.
Change perspective.
So, one day (because it felt like I had all the time to stand and stare at the printout), I looked at it and tried to make sense of it to better appreciate it.
First, I looked at the edges of the polygons and the lines, trying to find patterns and make sense of the points where they intersect and cut each other.
Change perspective.
Until I started to make out a man, with a circle for a head and a shape of what would resemble a straw hat, then a polygon for a hand, then a body, then the rice field, and some trees, and a building with a tree or a plant on its fence.
I started to make sense of these things, leaning my head on one side, only to realize that I’d been propping up the art wrong. It should have been positioned upright against the wall, not lying flat.
I fixed my viewpoint and did not bother changing it until I decided to pay attention (it was a year too late). And now, the artwork did not look as complicated as I had always thought.
Change perspective.
I must have misunderstood so many things because I never tried to change my perspective.
Perhaps you do too.
jessa 