“[Jasper] Johns lets the conventional laws of thought lapse in order to be in more direct touch with his experience. ‘”Looking” is and is not “eating” and “being eaten.”‘ This thought, uninhibited by the laws of thought, can be compared with a tragic European thought of a woman who later died of malnutrition. Simone Weil writes that the great sorrow of humans – La grande douleur de l’homme – which begins in childhood and lasts until death – qui commence des l’enfance et se poursuit jusque à la mort – is that to look and to eat are two different operations – c’est que regarder et manger sont deux opérations différentes. Eternal bliss is a state in which to graze is to eat: La béatitude éternelle est un état où regarder c’est manger. Weil had to go to the sphere of the eternal, to logical space, where ideas can be turned that they fit upon each other, where looking can be eating.”

(Wilson, ibid)