ABSTRACT
Substances occupy the mind by invading it with thoughts of the artist’s body at work. Painters feel the things as they look at pictures, and they may re-enact the motions that went into the paintings by moving their hands along in front of the canvas as if they were painting the pictures at that moment. In a museum, it is often possible to tell an experienced painter from an historian because the painter will step up to a picture and make gestures, or trace outlines. The clean snow and cold air of Ansel Adams’s photographs of Yellowstone in the winter are mixed with the acrid odor of the stop bath; their pure whiteness mingles with the red darkroom light; and their open distances are closed again by the memory of peering into a magnifier, focusing the grain of the negative onto the test paper.
