Afterword

For thirteen chapters I described an ascending process: raw material, differences, pointers, selection, detail, the observed. From the bottom up, floor by floor.

That is half the picture, and the second half is more important.

Go back to the first chapter and take apart what happens there.

What rises from below is always one and the same: the canvas hangs motionless, the light falls the same way, the photons from Repin’s room fly into the eye along the same trajectories at each of the seven showings. The only thing that changes is what comes from above: one spoken sentence.