Seeing Georgia O'Keefe's work for the first time:
I'd read a biography, looked through two collected volumes of her work, had been interested in her denial that her work was primarily sexual, if sexual at all.
But it wasn't until I saw her paintings in person that my appreciation for what she was doing leapt high--high as a salmon leaping up falls.
She didn't just paint. She painted with precision. She painted in such a way that I could see how each stroke had been applied with a kind of perfected, even unearthly skill. What she did was comparable, in my mind, to a master violinist performing one of the most demanding concertos seemingly flawlessly. A Midori at the Beethoven. A Milstein at the Tchaikovsky. O'Keefe did with paint what Heifetz did with the Brahms.
I agree that whatever art is lies out there on many levels. And I wouldn't want anyone to stop the creative impulse in anyone, no matter what the level and no matter what the subject or the medium.
Babatunde Olatunji told a group of children learning African drumming that the orchestra didn't have the spirit of drummers drumming about the god spirit of Iron. But I knew he was wrong, though I greatly admire him and hold his own skills high in my estimation. Sometimes it's too easy to criticize what you haven't tried yourself--too easy to miss excellence because of lack of understanding.
But at my own level of lack of understanding of this light bulb, taking a room from darkness to light and back to darkness again...well, it seems to be a statement at best. Just something to make us think. But not prize-worthy. Where's that element of a human doing something godlike? Where's the heart-stopping moment that makes us (or me) sense something of greatness? It seems to me we should give prizes to great, successful effort... something that somehow humbles us.
