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Thursday, September 01, 2011

Thomas Moore asks, "Is God literally in the sky?"

Thomas Moore's essay "Magritte’s Good Logic" helps to introduce the  The Dasein Project today, a new site about "what it means to be human" hosted by Jason McCarty. Moore considers his translation of the New Testament Gospels from Greek to English while accompanied by René Magritte's visual sensitivities. Moore writes,
"Magritte said that he wanted to be a thinker who paints, rather than a painter who thinks. He was interested in ideas, specifically ideas about how we perceive and interpret the world around us. He understood more than most that our way of connecting things is not as rational and linear as we imagine."
After considering a few of Magritte's canvases, Moore suggests,
"The lesson Magritte teaches with his paintings is not only important; it’s essential. We have to include the imagination in our logic and geometry. If we leave it out, we make significant mistakes in genre and meaning. How much religious foolishness goes on simply because people reading sacred texts have never studied Magritte." 
Read how sky and pipe may be connected.