Cimabue

Cimabue's "Maesta" (c.1280)

Waiting is attendant upon human existence. You wait by definition in a crowd unless you're waiting for the phone to ring, for an email or for a sign from the eternal. More prosaically people wait to get into the Vatican or the Louvre for the recent Cimabue show. This kind of waiting involves two steps, one waiting to get into the presence of the artwork, the other, the complex process of delayed gratification— by which art is put through the meat grinder of mind. This last is the most significant form of waiting, involving as it does the chemistry of sensation and almost perceptible neuronal activity as serotonin flows between axons and dendrites of the synapses. You may find yourself taking a ticket at the entrance to a popular bakery as you're lured by enticing smells. That is the kind of soggy waiting you endure in the service of carbs and sweets.

review of The Kafka Studies Department by Francis Levy, Booklife