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Wake up Neo: An ancient painting competition, and The Matrix
The Ancient Athenian Paint-Off Technical skill at imitating reality seems to have been a yardstick by which the best ancient Greek and Rom...
If we now get this wrong and reach out for the apple, doomed ever to repeat the mistake of Eve and Adam, then mankind will remain locked in spiritual death, living the miserable fallen life of our ancient mother and father, weeping bitter tears of regret as we stand at the gates, shut out from Christian paradise and communion with God... no pressure then. The deceptive fresco, like ancient Sosus's messy mosaic floor, can help train us to develop what the Byzantine mystic Symeon the New Theologian calls pneumatikōs blépontes, or 'spiritual vision', setting us free us from the problematic and sentimental relationship with the visual which threatens to holds us prisoner. If we hope to move on from Eve and Adam we must recognise and nurture our spiritual hunger for the unseen, assuming a more responsible place in a sensory world than simply pecking at artistic realism, grazing habitually on painted fruit, accepting the fateful apple and taking the testimony of our eyes and ears at face value.
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