The Hill News

Before I came to this, the work I did consisted of looking at the world as pictures without words: the Beatles rushing down the stairs together at JFK, Neil Armstrong on the moon, Salvador Dali's 1943 painting of an American messiah climbing out of an egg and another messiah same year in a football helmet, Emanuel Gootlieb Leutze’s painting of Washington crossing the Delaware, Holbein’s full portrait of Henry VIII which signified the beginning of our age. Without words, they form patterns and tell the inner story of our passage. One such photo occurred this week at the Grammy Awards. A sensational iconic photograph taken by AP’s Matt Sayles of Lady Gaga standing alone in the audience, looking mournfully to the left. It has that same quality of James McNeill Whistler’s “Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1” of an elderly woman who appears to be trying to remember something lost or forgotten. Lady Gaga has dressed herself in mourning and like Whistler’s mother,! she appears to be mourning for an age passed. Mourning for herself.

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