Thinking about the something beyond nothing

Here’s something I read in the current issue of the London Review of Books that took my fancy.

‘Yet it is the sense one has when faced with ancient or exotic things that there is something beyond what can be grasped by mere inspection, if only some priest or shaman could give the correct interpretations, that makes the obscure impressive. We don’t necessarily need to know what things mean, but we do like to think they mean something: we want to know what Stonehenge was for.

No modern sculpture is embedded in systems of belief of that sort. With Moore you must look to your own responses for explanations of what you see and feel.’

London Review of Books 25 March 2010 Peter Campbell reviewing an exhibition of Henry Moore at Tate Britain.