One Eye Sees, the Other Writes

Someone posted this Turner yesterday. This is Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth — more fully (in wonderfully excessive Turner fashion): Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water, and going by the Lead. The Author was in this Storm on the Night the “Ariel” left Harwich.

Turner seems to paint the collapse of the distinction between storm and perception. The ship is there—barely—but it has ceased to be the subject. Wind, water, smoke, and light have entered into a kind of conspiracy, and the eye no longer stands safely outside what it sees. Turner understands that terror often arrives not as an object but as a condition: the moment form begins to surrender itself and the world loses its nouns, becoming all verb.

Which seems as fitting a commentary on our times as one might manage.