The power of material presence

To think through things, that is the still life painter's work — and the poet's. Both sorts of artists require a tangible vocabulary, a worldly lexicon. A language of ideas is, in itself, a phantom language, lacking in the substance of worldly things, those containers of feeling and experience, memory and time. We are instructed by the objects that come to speak with us, those material presences. Why should we have been born knowing how to love the world? We require, again and again, these demonstrations.

- Mark Doty, Still Life with Oysters and Lemon

Hmmm. This sounds suspiciously... sacramental to me.

And in a time when so much so-called "Christian art" is obviously made in a way that prioritizes ideas over embodiment, it could be very useful to the discussion.

I'm adding it to The Looking Closer Book of Wisdom.