Once again, those in range of New York have the chance to see something wonderful -- the new exhibition of works by Jean Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, the eighteenth century still life painter. Some of his paintings can be found here. At the Metropolitan until September, this brings together many of his most beautiful works, though truth be told, they are all beautiful. Everything he painted has a stillness and balance that only two other painters have come close to: Vermeer and Cezanne. They too provide an entry into a spiritual place: where every ordinary object is wrapped in a kind of silent reverie and reverence. The paintings put us into the same mood: and in a strange way they justify our own existence, not as busy bodies, but as beauteous objects worthy of reverie and reverence, just by the wondrousness of being, just by being physically in the world. That is what makes them so powerful: they quietly affirm that there is something awe-inspiring about just being in the world. Chardin's paintings are, for me, some of the few articulated justifications that I can respect for the whole dark mystery of what it is all about, and what we are doing here in the middle of somewhere.