I'm going to a small art museum today with my younger daughter. There is an artist we both love - Hung Liu - and we're going to get an art fix. Liu takes things that are old, like photographs from long ago China, and makes something new and revealing out of the images. Art is forever synthesizing the old and the new, and thus my twenty something daughter and my sixty something self can share a moment of complete atunement. Both the old and the new have equivalent value. We're both seers, and united beyond difference.
This experience is far removed from the art market, where generally older is more valuable, though you can snag a Rembrandt more cheaply than a Van Gogh, and all the veneration in the world won't necessarily fly on a mug or scarf.
Art teaches us something about the attitude towards age in different times and cultures. You can see, in an art museum, that old age may be viewed as the receptacle for wisdom, or for character. Rembrandt's self portraits are more gorgeous as he ages, not less. Because more truth seems to be available through his face, more history. Artists find that appealing, and I wish people in our culture right now, could see past the botox urge to the allowance that something profound may have transpired in the face we decide needs fixing. Maybe it's the viewer who needs tweaking. The viewer is missing the view.
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