From the beginning, he wrestles with the mute language of the canvas and the difficulty of translating his experience with it to the page: “Sometimes it is impossible to say why and how a work of art achieves its effect. I can stand in front of a painting and become filled with emotions and thoughts, evidently transmitted by the painting, and yet it is impossible to trace those emotions and thoughts back to it and say, for example, that the sorrow came from the colors, or that the longing came from the brushstrokes, or that the sudden insight that life will end lay in the motif.” The passage may be rephrased as a question: What exactly happens when a person looks at a work of art?

~ Siri Hustvedt, Karl Ove Knausgaard Reflects on the Man Who Gave Us ‘The Scream’.  (The New York Times · May 1, 2019)

Notes: I know, yes, yes, the painting is not Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” It is Claude Monet’s Meules (Haystacks, 1890) which sold this month at a Sotheby’s auction for $110.7 million, in excess of its $55 million estimate. See more at ArtNews)