Art lovers, connoisseurs, kunstliefhebbers.

Daumier_art lovers

Daumier’s portrayal of amateur French art lovers (collectors? connoisseurs?) very careful peering at a small frame / picture. Is Haecht’s depictions of art lovers (kunstliefhebbers) comparable, assuming that Daumier’s isn’t exactly flattering? Note man peering closely, on bended knees before picture of hunt. Kneeling being a not very dignified, gentlemanly position.

Willem II Haecht_Kunstkammer of Cornelis van der Geest_1628, from wga.hu

Pleasure of old books.

While I am quite aware that “we have become accustomed to the irrelevance of the artist’s intentions or the inaccessibility of the artist’s experience in our aesthetic response,” (Joel Black review of Greenblatt’s Allegory and Representation) and even though historians like David Freedberg or Hans Belting question the categories of high art and low art, still, it’s hard to not be a bit in awe when one comes across the works of a ‘famous’ painter. Even knowing that that fame is built-up, constructed, and changeable.

Hence despite it all, I must say that I had the incredible pleasure of handling and reading a book printed in 1627 (English edition) with an engraved title-page that was designed by Rubens.

Rubens_title page to Obsidio Bredana by H. Hugo, from Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum, 1994,0514.45

A few iPhone photos of the book (something could be said about new technology meeting new technology!):

photo from Warburg_English edition of H. Hugo's Obsidio Bredana.

Now I’ve got to write a paper about it. Not so pleasurable. More about the readings in a bit (for my own reference in the future).

Unrelatedly, just ran into this in a reading about allegory and representation, which amused me:

“Characteristically, Courbet expected to draw vast crowds and, at twenty sous a head, to make a financial killing while embarrassing the government. In these expectations he was of course disappointed…”

from Michael Fried, “Representing Representation: On the central group in Courbet’s Studio,” Allegory and Representation, ed. Stephen J. Greenblatt (Johns Hopkins UP: Baltimore) 94.

Here’s the painting:

Courbet, The Painter's Studio, 1854-55. Paris, Louvre.

Daylight savings time ends.

Makes me want to hug a Percival.

Another Election Day is soon upon us!

I won’t believe the Democratic majority will be utterly demolished until it happens. I won’t I won’t I won’t.

One of my favorite posts, from just before the inauguration (has nothing to do with politics or elections, I just wanted an excuse to dig this bit up):

Call me a damned sap, but my favorite piece is “Parenthesis” (the 1/2 chapter…what makes a chapter half a chapter?).  This is Barnes’s essay on love.

On the expression “I love you”, Barnes says of the French version, “Je t’aime”: “The grammar is also one of reassurance: with the object positioned second, the beloved isn’t suddenly going to turn out to be someone different.”  So true!  What sensible fellows those Frenchmen are.

This, I think, is my favorite metaphor (for the ephemeral nature of love) because it’s not only so true, but so unexpected.  Bleak.

A photograph develops in a tray of liquid…  We slide the photo quickly into the tray of fixer to secure that clear, vulnerable moment, to make the image harder, unchippable, solid for at least a few years.  But what if you plunge it into the fixer and the chemical doesn’t work?  This progress, this amorous motion you feel, might refuse to stabilize.  Have you seen a picture go on relentlessly developing until its whole surface is black, its celebratory moment obliterated?

Finally, a discussion of the brain v. the heart (rationality v. sentimentality):

Put the heart beside the brain and see the difference…  The brain looks sensible…  You can deal with the brain, as I say; it looks sensible.  Whereas the heart, the human heart, I’m afraid, looks a fucking mess.