The seductiveness of art

The May 12, 2013 “Lives” page of The New York Times Magazine features “Object Love”, an essay by Paul Gordon, a technician for a Los Angeles-based sculpture conservator which expresses so well the seductive qualities of art—- those qualities which led so many of us to choose conservation as a profession as it allowed us to hold and touch works of art. One wonders how many young people reading Gordon’s phrases like “there’s real magic”; “as I moved to the arch of her back, my stroke turned to a caress”; “only a fool could fail to feel the desire, the spirit inside such beauty”; and “I have witnessed the miracles. I have seen them happen under my own hand” will be drawn to conservation.