Project Vision 21

For decades, and possibly centuries, art experts and historians debated why Michelangelo would have used muted colors in his unique paintings in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, given that Michelangelo himself used vivid colors in other paintings. of his paintings and works, as did many of his contemporaries.

Then, already in our time (decade of 1990), a group of expert restorers convened by the Vatican began the slow task of cleaning the paintings in the Sistine Chapel and, as a result, it was found that Michelangelo had used bright colors for his paintings. However, the grime accumulated by the passage of time had overshadowed those colors.

In other words, the whole debate about dull colors in Michelangelo's paintings was based on looking at the dirt on the paintings, but never at the paintings themselves. And none of the answers and proposals offered during that debate (from the presumed negative state of mind of a distinguished artist to the difficulties of the task) was, in fact, true.

It has been said on numerous occasions that whoever asks the wrong questions in the best of cases does not receive any answers, but in most cases, he/she receives wrong answers that lead to the cycle of wrong questions repeating itself

That is precisely what happened to art experts and historians who wondered why Michelangelo had used dull colors, when the real question was why the bright colors in Michelangelo's works had faded.

And that is precisely what all of us do every day: we look at the dirt that society has been accumulating above everything we see and experience and, therefore, we do not see the colors of life. So, we ask the wrong questions, and therefore, we reach the wrong conclusions that lead us to more mistakes.

Meanwhile, covered and hidden by social dirt (whatever you want to call it), our true creative genius, our capacity for colorful expression, remains unseen and unchallenged. We only look at the surface, but we do not see the reality.

That "dirt" is everything that we have accumulated in our minds and in our hearts that prevents us from seeing reality. It can be said that, on the one hand, we do not see this dirt. and, on the other hand, we believe that this dirt is reality.

What you might call an “existential dirt” arises from adhering to a certain belief, dogma, creed, tradition, or ideology so much that the only thing we see is what we adhere to, but not what is behind it. And, unlike what happened in the Sistine Chapel, we never remove that "dirt" from our lives. Therefore, we never shine or see the brightness of life.

Even worse, we project that society onto everything and everyone around us, accusing “them” of being opaque, when we are the opaque ones. Because we are so used to only see dirt and grime around us, we superimposed on even the most vivid colors of life. It’s time to start the cleaning process.