I'm a great lover of the paintings of Ferdinand Leger and one summer my wife and I visited the museum dedicated to his work in Biot in the South of France. The museum is in a small village a little off the main tourist route. We arrived by public bus and there did not appear to be any other visitors at the museum. It felt as if the museum had just been opened for us - just a few attendants and the works of the artist Leger. Photography is allowed as long as there is no flash. I don’t like taking photos of works of art as there are plenty available everywhere, but I do take photos of paintings and sculpture in their viewed context.
There was a large drawing of three musicians which has a composition similar to a poster of a Leger painting that we have in our kitchen. To take its photo was the right thing to do. So here is the drawing similar to our kitchen poster with a museum attendant, oblivious of our activity, consulting his phone. However much we look at the musicians we cannot hear the music, but perhaps, for a moment, if we allow music to be in our looking harmonies can arise. In the settling mind if we are able to put down one sense, another sense responds and gradually whatever is there just arises. We can hear pictures, see music, smell the rough and smooth and taste the colours all around; all blending into the world as it is.
dumb to the audience
a compromise of silent harmonies
unfolds
Dogen has a phrase “seeing form and hearing sound with the whole body-mind.” John Daido Loori says of this phrase, “that seeing form with the whole body and mind, hearing sounds with the whole body and mind and understanding them intimately is nothing other than just seeing, just hearing, just standing and sitting – the moment to moment direct experience of our lives.”
This photograph is now also in our kitchen alongside the poster - if you'd like, please come to see it and have a cup of tea, you would be most welcome.
