Why pause and study this particular painting among so many others
ranged on a gallery wall? Wonder, which Descartes called the first
of the passions, is at play; it couples surprise with a wish to
know more, the pleasurable promise that what is novel or rare may
become familiar. This is a book about the aesthetics of wonder,
about wonder as it figures in our relation to the visual world and
to rare or new experiences.
In three instructive instances--a pair of paintings by Cy
Twombly, the famous problem of doubling the area of a square, and
the history of attempts to explain rainbows--Philip Fisher examines
the experience of wonder as it draws together pleasure, thinking,
and the aesthetic features of thought. Through these examples he
places wonder in relation to the ordinary and the everyday as well
as to its opposite, fear. The remarkable story of how rainbows came
to be explained, fraught with errors, half-knowledge, and
incomplete understanding, suggests that certain knowledge cannot be
what we expect when wonder engages us. Instead, Fisher argues, a
detailed familiarity, similar to knowing our way around a building
or a painting, is the ultimate meeting point for aesthetic and
scientific encounters with novelty, rare experiences, and the
genuinely new.
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