[The photograph above simulates bas-relief; it was edited and enhanced by digital means.]

Often I cannot explain when asked:

Why do you like that?

For example:

Why do I esteem art in low-relief?

It’s hard to give reasons why I like it so much.

A cynical person might want to know what else captivates us — with a bit of sarcasm asking about our other indulgences — fascinations for provocative genres of music perhaps, or idiosyncratic bedroom techniques.

We might have developed a fetish for golf clubs, the details of their design and use in the field, or have grown an interest in exotic insects and their reptile predators.

The skeptical inquirer will probe until he finds that hidden, inexplicable desire.

Attempting an explanation, one often points to a teacher, lover, traveling companion or co-worker whose fascination affected you, transmitted a lifelong contagion to you, leading to an embrace for yourself of the hobby, the skill, the entertainment and the pleasures flowing from them.

But have we given the cynic a satisfactory exegesis?

I think not.

Laying hands on bas-relief fine-art sculpture — like the example pictured above from the Metropolitan Museum of Art — is taboo everywhere on Earth. That forbidden aspect seduces a person. You want to run your fingers over the surface communing with the touch of the artist, but must settle for a dreamlike and virtual experience.

This mental act of imagining sensual pleasure coming through one’s fingers (fantasy tactile sensations) might help explain the love of low-relief.

It introduces yet another question: Why are members of our species capable of accomplishing such an astonishing thing in the first place — receiving pleasure through one’s skin vicariously by way of an artist’s creation?

The Why Questions keep piling up until their regress reaches far above our heads.

As hard as you try,

You cannot explain why.