Stunned by Art

A minor (or major) miracle.

Mrs. Biblioracle and I have been in London this week, our first time in London, and I don’t know if people are aware, but this city is fantastic. If London can keep this up, I really think they might become a real center for culture and tourism.

Of course part of what is fantastic is that we are on vacation, doing vacation things like visiting museums, eating out for all of our meals, having a pastry midday, not thinking about work…what’s not to like? The London Underground feels like magic. You go down some stairs, a train arrives, you ride for 15 minutes and you emerge back above ground somewhere else entirely.

Travel is a privilege I hope to never forget. I sometimes muse about what it might be like to be a travel writer, but this is a skill set I do not possess. I am a poor noticer of everything, more of a focuser on one thing at a time. I also can’t tell you what something meant until well after the fact. The depth of my insights are along the lines of “that was cool.” The Churchill Museum was cool. The British Museum…cool. Buckingham Palace and the Royal Mews…really cool. I’m envious of those who can write a daily journal and have much of interest to say. Maybe it’s something you have to practice and I just haven’t practiced it enough.

We’ve been looking at a lot of Capital-A “Art,” particularly at the National Museum and National Portrait Gallery, including some very famous pieces like this one:

That’s called “The Arnolfini Portrait” and is by Jan Van Eyck. I don’t know if it’s the most famous painting in the National Gallery, but it’s up there because I remember seeing it in my Art History 101 course freshman year of college. Why it’s important, I couldn’t tell you. It’s tough to get a good look at because it’s rather small and people crowd around it because of its fame. Gazing at it for maybe 30 seconds I felt nothing beyond the sense that it’s kind of cool to see something old and famous, the same feeling I had when my wife and I saw Sammy Hagar walking a miniature horse along the square in Santa Monica, California.

It’s not that these things aren’t impressive. You see a Rembrandt up close and you think, that guy really was the master of light, but I’m more impressed than moved, if that distinction makes sense.

I had a different feeling seeing the work chosen as finalists for the 2024 Herbert Smith Freehills Portrait Award in exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. You can see the full list of chosen works here, and many of them are quite arresting, but there is one in particular that stunned me.

It is called “Gerard in Hospice” and is by an artist named Jackie Anderson. It reflects a moment in which she watched her dying partner sleep peacefully while near the end of his life. Like any original artwork it is difficult to convey the full quality of the work unless you see it in person, but the light blue wash of the background combined with the ochre paint so delicately brushed onto the canvass gives the figure an ethereal quality that I found powerful and haunting to the point where I had to stop looking at it so I wouldn’t make a scene in the gallery.

I viewed literally hundreds of works of art that day, mostly trudging past without much recognition or response. At the time I saw “Gerard in Hospice'“ along with the other 30 or so finalist paintings, I was footsore and a little sleepy because of jet lag and a nice lunch, but this broke through in an instant.

I have very little knowledge about visual art, I don’t spend all that much time looking at art, and no standing as to say what is “good,” or “not good,” but every so often, I will come across a piece that seems to take direct aim at some part of my own humanity, and the connection is instant.

That will never cease to feel miraculous.

Links

Not a lot of links this week since I’ve been too busy vacationing to read things on the internet, but I saw that the National Book Award announced its longlist titles for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

McSweeney's Internet Tendency

also announced the winner of the first Gabe Hudson Prize for fiction.

The Washington Post has 41 books to read this fall.

Recommendations

1. Austerlitz by WG Sebald
2. All the Names by Jose Saramago
3. Buddhaland Brooklyn by Richard Morais
4. Sweetland by Michael Crummey
5. Solito by Javier Zamora

Marcia C. - Massachusetts

For Marcia I’m recommending Max Porter’s elegiac, Grief Is a Thing with Feathers.¹

Alrighty. Regular, (and even bonus) material will be coming next week, but for now I’m off to go see the sight of a famous beheading.

John

The Biblioracle

1. All books (with the occasional exception) linked throughout the newsletter go to The Biblioracle Recommends bookstore at Bookshop.org. Affiliate proceeds, plus a personal matching donation of my own, go to Chicago’s Open Books and an additional reading/writing/literacy nonprofit to be determined. Affiliate income for this year is $92.10