Oliver Sacks My Periodic Table
When I first walked into the “Francis Picabia Exhibit” the first thing I noticed was this big painting surrounded by paintings just like it, most likely his earlier work, assuming the exhibit is organized in chronological order. I kept walking simply to see what other great works Picabia had painted, I was not disappointed at all. Walking through you can see Picabia’s change in form and type of art he painted, starting with the impressionist art to cubism and his surrealist art towards the end of the exhibit. It all showed different sides of Picabia’s talent, still I returned to the beginning of the exhibit and chose a painting. The painting that caught my attention was the first thing I noticed, it was one of his first paintings, Pine Trees,
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Oliver Sacks gets the same sense of beauty and comfort from the periodic table of elements. The connection between Sacks and the periodic table is explained by Sacks himself in his article “Oliver Sacks: My Periodic Table.” When first read, the connection is not obvious much like Picabia’s painting, but once we see beyond the text, the connection can be seen. Written towards the inevitable end of his life, Sacks explains how he came to have the personal connection he has with the table. As humans, when we tend to suffer a loss, we turn to something for comfort. Whether it’s a personal belonging, the arts or another person, we seek comfort from things or people that give us a sense of happiness or the sense that everything will be okay. For Sacks, he experienced that sense of comfort “by turning to the nonhuman” in the world starting in World War II when “numbers became” his “friends” and after the war “the elements and the periodic table became” his “companions” (2). When hard times came, Sacks returned “to the physical sciences, a world where there is no life, but also no death” with no death in the physical science, it can be seen why Sacks chooses the nonhuman over the human, there is no loss (2). Not only did he turn to the periodic table for comfort, it was his unique way of looking back and tracking his life, keeping the fourth element beryllium close to remind Sacks of his childhood and “of how long ago” his “soon-to-end life began”
Oliver Sacks gets the same sense of beauty and comfort from the periodic table of elements. The connection between Sacks and the periodic table is explained by Sacks himself in his article “Oliver Sacks: My Periodic Table.” When first read, the connection is not obvious much like Picabia’s painting, but once we see beyond the text, the connection can be seen. Written towards the inevitable end of his life, Sacks explains how he came to have the personal connection he has with the table. As humans, when we tend to suffer a loss, we turn to something for comfort. Whether it’s a personal belonging, the arts or another person, we seek comfort from things or people that give us a sense of happiness or the sense that everything will be okay. For Sacks, he experienced that sense of comfort “by turning to the nonhuman” in the world starting in World War II when “numbers became” his “friends” and after the war “the elements and the periodic table became” his “companions” (2). When hard times came, Sacks returned “to the physical sciences, a world where there is no life, but also no death” with no death in the physical science, it can be seen why Sacks chooses the nonhuman over the human, there is no loss (2). Not only did he turn to the periodic table for comfort, it was his unique way of looking back and tracking his life, keeping the fourth element beryllium close to remind Sacks of his childhood and “of how long ago” his “soon-to-end life began”