Art Every Wednesday (9)

A blog grows up like a person, changing over time. You used to think it was cool to wear those elastic black pants every day, now you have become a man and you have put childish things behind you. It's the same with blogs. In the name of growing up we are making a change: Poem Wednesday is expanding to include lots of other forms of art other than poetry (though poetry will still make regular appearances). Look for photography, painting, literature recommendations, songs and lyrics, sculpture, and the list goes on and on. As well as actual examples of art I hope to do some apologetics for art generally and try to answer the question "Why Art?" bit by bit every week.

To make the transition as smooth as possible this week's Art Every Wednesday blends mediums. It is a painting about a myth and a poem about the painting.

"The Fall of Icarus" By Bruegel:

Musee Des Beaux Arts
W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully
along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.