Wednesday, June 11, 2014

The Chief Glory of the Upright Ape

Orson Welles at Chartres Cathedral, from his very last film, "F Is For Fake," 1976.





Today as 5000 years ago, people pick their noses and scratch their butts.  And yet then and now they can make art, unique to the upright ape and her/his chief glory (together with music and literature).
Did any king or bishop or theologian or philosopher ever leave so happy and stirring a legacy as that of the anonymous master masons who built Chartres?

Every ruler from Ramses to David to the Qin Emperor to Caesar to Louis le Grand to Mao is ultimately a thug on a throne.  Political history is mostly a record of crime.  It's the artist who makes it worth the bother.


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