the eyes

The eyes are the climax. In fact, everything else can go wrong on the canvas, but if the eyes are true…

I once heard Odd Nerdrum say that the reason Rembrandt’s eyes were so good, is because Rembrandt’s hands were so bad. Odd was, of course, being facetious, but he was also hitting on a real truth. The composer of a song knows the same thing, so does the author of a novel. You find the climax, and everything else must be subordinate.

This is why so many people are disillusioned with photo realism and classical realism- the absence of climax, and the universal presence of razor sharp perfection. Perfection is fitting for scientists constructing atomic clocks, but accuracy is for artists. And accuracy is nothing more than human intuition, and human intuition is infinitely more complex than any atomic clock.