The unspecifiable

Turning the pages of a fascinating 1948 issue of Life magazine recently (nominally for the roundtable discussion of modern art, but as much, in the end, for the cigarette ads, as well), I came across Clement Greenberg's response to a painting by De Kooning. “It is like," said the dean of American art criticism, "a Beethoven quartet where you can’t specify what the emotion is but are profoundly stirred nevertheless.”

Ah, but I think I know what he means. The pleasure of looking at your own sleeping child evokes the same.