"Do you know Art?"

"Art Who?""Artesian" "Oh yes, I know Artesian Well"
I would like to offer, that at the new DeYoung Museum of San Francisco, it apparently can be a statue depicting the head of Jesus on a dressed ready-for-the-prom body of Aphrodite; diverting, but slightly startling. In another room, people in a painting looked unexceptional until one read the title "John Brown on his way from courtroom to gallows." Depending on ones poltics, the emotions roused by a work of art can vary from "He got what he deserved" to "He gave his life for a worthy principle." Saturday, from the Metropolitan Opera we got the pathetic end of the lovers in Sir Walter Scott's novel. Lucia. And soon we get to thrill to Emerson's "Here the embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round the world." Those colonies were apparently so small that the noise carried all the way to New Hampshire, according to the fact-challenged republican congressperson from Minnesota.
Of course, art is not just paintings: Shakespeare did wonders with words"Antony, ket me have aro9und me men who are fat, sleek-headed men and such who sleep anight. Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look. Such men are dangerous."
But this writer really loves the art of music. Yesterday, we got a dozen or so people to hear J.S.Bach's B-minor Mass. The mind just keeps repeating that finale. There is just one word "Amen" for 5 minutes or so,a choir singing in four parts. totally stunning.