The art of seeing

I find more and more often I fail to take the time to see a painting or picture.  I've always questioned those "experts' and scholars who can go on for ever about all the symbology, inferred meaning and what the artist was trying to say.  I think this is even more pronounced in our new world of high speed streaming media blasted at us electronically.  The vast majority of this new content do not require any thought.  The meaning is clear and to the point, "drink coke."  I fear that we may be losing something along the way thought.  The need and desire to look and think deeper.  Exercise is hard, and the brain is just another muscle that needs to be exercised, and yet human nature drives us to seek the easy path, like electricity seeks the path of least resistance.  I found this beautiful etching in a cheap art book of mine lost among all the rest.  I will not try to decipher all the clues, no do I feel I could, but there is a lot more to this scene than a simple sleeping beauty and the clues about it abound.