The pain in the paintings hit me like flames
jumped out
a mad man’s hundred-year-old vivid fury
blasting me between the eyes
scalding my senses
and changing my life
like a first kiss

American poet and novelist, Dan Fante, wrote of first discovering Van Gogh, in his poem 7-17-93. A moment captured in time, an externalization of the internal, something abstract and vague. One can draw many parallels to writing and art, and one medium of the writing world that is especially similar to painting, in both its execution and subsequent effect, is poetry. 

Poetry is a fleeting feeling. A snapshot of something profound. A stirring somewhere in the cavern of the chest. Anything answered only leads to more questions. This is the same for art. In the opening stanza of Baudelaire’s The Mask, the 19th century French poet writes: 

Let us look at this treasure of Florentine grace;

In the curves of this muscular body

Elegance and Force abound, divine sisters.

This woman, a truly miraculous work,

Divinely strong, adorably thin,

Is made to preside over sumptuous beds,

And charm the idleness of a pontiff or of a prince.