… The philosopher aground in his continuous fight trying to find out the reason of things, the painter, who had just listened to some verses of his friend the poet, to which the musician had already composed the best melody, passed by him.

The painter stopped before the philosopher and stared at him wanting to interpret from his look the thoughts that had him absorbed in his own thoughts.

While doing this, the poet arrived and admired how bucolic and strange at the same time those two beings glaring were; one glaring to the infinite and the other to another retina. The musician was looking at them from far away, and looking at his fingers, wanted to participate in that scene, creating music for that encounter leading nowhere.

The painter wandered about the answer so much concerned the philosopher, which made him glare to the infinite for hours, without realizing that those were the same hours he had spent drawing the entire imagined story in his retina. The poet, who was already part of the scene, filled it with dithyrambs. The musician, he, was already filling pentagrams.

At one moment that never stops, because it comes and goes, the philosopher, feeling observed, talked to the painter and confessed him his doubts to which he found no answer; it was about the interpretation of a master work which, though he had observed and analyzed, he could not understand and… he did not manage to understand how the painter had captured something that he, though he saw it, did not know how to capture… On the other side… it was clear.

The painter answered that he would never know the reason of that work of art, because not even the artist who had painted it ever knew. He also told him that a work of art is not analyzed, but it has to be felt, make it your own, agree with it and let the work be the one explaining itself. And he told them that he had to stop being a philosopher for a moment and become the last student of the class in order to, without any knowledge, be able to assimilate the Truth of art; the one that comes from the interior of the artist and it can only be perceived from the interior.

The painter, after some time of silence, answered that the poets are the ones that really reach the interior of a work of art; they are the ones that break the outer wrapping and penetrate the core of those volumes and shapes because sometimes, even the painter who created them, does not understand the reason of those strange brushstrokes. It is the poet the one who throws his soul to the interior of those colours to find the soul of that newly born and already finished work which wants to make itself known.

The philosopher asked the painter if it is then the poet the only one capable of interpreting a work of art; the painter answered that… it is not the poet, but the soul of the poet most of human beings carry in our inside; and it has to be freed so that it is able to express itself when contemplating a work of art.

The musician was listening with great attention. And at a moment the painter, addressing the philosopher and pointing at the musician, said that he too could interpret a painting with his music, converting the colours in notes and nuances in an allegro or andante. Only art can judge art. Only the soul can understand the soul.

When the artist is able to get naked before the canvas and offers himself as another instrument more in the process of creation; that is when he is able to create a work that can be called a work of art.

Jorge Rando, Malaga, December, 2000