Resumen de Response: The Far in the Near
A response to Michael Ann Holly's paper “The Melancholic Art,” which is published in this issue. Holly presents melancholy as “both a metaphor and an explanatory concept” for the aesthetic experience of objects from the past and for the scholarly writing about those objects. In the aesthetic experience of such contemporary art as Christopher Bollas's, however, phenomena are encountered that can never be entirely understood. The creation, experience, or writing of art serves as a reminder of the human condition of separateness and ultimate inability to fully understand the most engaging artistic representations, thoughts, or language. The differences between subject and aesthetic object, aesthetic object and language, guarantee that the making, experiencing, and writing about art rely on connection instead of possession, reparation instead of restitution.
