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J. Carter Brown (1934 — 2002)
Photos from Memorial Service: Audio Recordings from Service: | |
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photo: J. Carter Brown in front of Henri Matisse’s “Acanthus”, 1996. |
My father traveled in wide circles. He traveled far. But as he went, he was always attuned to life affirming aesthetic experiences. My father loved aesthetic apprehension, aesthetic comprehension; and he wanted it direct, first hand, in all the particularity and strangeness of new experience. For him, and for me growing up, that meant going anywhere to see a work of art ... it meant making the effort and the effort, I have learned, is always worth it. His aesthetic zeal, involved, as many of you know and have kindly remembered to me, eating great food and drinking great wine. It involved landscape. Watching the light change in the desert, or the first smell of the ocean as you approach the coast, or bright morning sun in a new place these were very important to him and are to me. Carter was fascinated by artistic wholeness, by events that cohere, visually, musically, emotionally, and socially, spiritually. He knew, very well, that the entropy that can pull our lives apart can also be gathered up and bound together in a single moment of rejoicing. We are gathering and rejoicing for him today, for his memory, and for each other. This total expression, this gathering, this gesamptkunstwerk, or total aesthetic experience, as Carter loved to call it, is very simple. It comes from our need to say yes, yes to the newness of life. —Jay Brown, 25 June 2002 |
