Seeing Things

Neil Harris in his book on J. Carter Brown’s directorship of the National Gallery (Culture Capital) explains how our nation’s capital came to be appreciated through graphic and literary presentations. Samuel F.B. Morse painted Congressional proceedings, but cartoonists provided caricatures of politicians that encouraged interest in the “farcical as well as tragic features of government” (Harris 40).

Films and plays, however, really helped rally interest in the workings of government with themes “reflecting attitudes toward partisanship, corruption, power, and pretension” (Harris 41). Before television, government was a largely mysterious affair, occurring at a great distance from most every day lives. Films like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Born Yesterday, and State of the Union provided peeks into these places of power.

Television has changed some of that by providing us closer looks at Congress and the White House, but still we must remember how much we are influenced by what we see, or rather are given to see. There are parts of the world that I have never seen, but that I can describe because I have seen them in film and on television. We cringe at critical remarks in the 19th century about ‘exotic’ locales and people that are often derived from the Romantic imagery of the painters who visited, composed, and returned with canvases in hand. Art and stories do tell us something about a culture and a time, but sociological research also reveals those things that remained unacknowledged.

I feel compelled to mention this here because I am such an advocate for the role of poems and stories in encouraging interest in art and artists. I really do think we can use them to tell us about responses to certain works and movements over the years, why and how they have continued to appeal. There is a place in the history of art for the stories of art. BUT, all that being said, we must also remember that these are fictional accounts. They have dramatic requirements that allow them to warp evidence to the contrary. After all, as I’ve said before, why ruin a good story for want of a few facts?

A good story is a good story and over wine or on a Sunday night before a busy week ahead, that is what I want. I want drama! Give me House of Cards! But, Monday morning, don’t expect me to believe it. A peek into a place of power is not a good solid look. That requires more than sitting on the couch. It requires the hard work of investigative journalism, whose tales are far longer and more warped than any novel or film, and which we often ignore until it becomes entertainment…

All the President’s Men, Lincoln, The Butler, Selma.

These are fictions. But if well done, they might just make us wonder about what we’ve seen, what we think we see, what we might see if we looked more carefully.

Lady Emma Hamilton

Lady Emma Hamilton was not so much née, but eventually took the name Hart. She was a young beauty, and became the love of Lord Admiral Nelson’s life. In a codicil to his will, he wrote: “I leave Emma Lady Hamilton, therefore, a legacy to my King and Country, that they will give her ample provision to maintain her rank in life.”

Susan Sontag fictionalized their love affair in her novel The Volcano Lover, a book that I enjoy but certainly not for its great worth as a literary text. Partly it means so much to me because of the lover who gave it to me four years ago for my birthday.

The first image is credited to Joshua Reynolds, but she is largely known as the muse of George Romney, whose paintings are below. Life was not kind to Lady Emma. Besides eventually becoming quite large, and disdained, she died in France in 1815 in poverty. Her beauty gone she was largely forgotten–the beauty myth was less myth than fact of life.

Reading, My Life

Last night I stayed up very late trying to finish a book that I eventually conceded could be concluded in the morning. As I venture into another night of reading, this picture by Carl Spitzweg, a successful Romantic era German painter and poet, came to mind.

I feel this way often, though I am not the Poor Poet of the title. I did actually have a leak last fall, though not from the roof but a crack in a pipe of the tenant above me. But a pile of books by my futon, also on my bedside trunk, by my chair on a little stool, and in a crate specifically for the current must-reads and library books illustrates my passion, as it does his here.

I do occasionally tidy. But often in the morning, when I get up just at dawn specifically in order to read for a few hours before another day begins, I look around my apartment to see that the organizing of the night before, done in order to settle into my work, has somehow shuffled into wandering papers, socks forgotten on the floor, tea cups half drunk, magazines discarded to be recycled, yellow post-its strewn with thoughts.

And I love it.

Book as Art

Edmond de Goncourt had the first edition of his friends' works bound in parchment and a portrait of the writer painted on the cover by the artist he deemed most appropriate for each writer. Jean-Francois Raffaeli did the one of Zola; the image here is simply called Bohème since I do not have access to a book cover.

Carrière did the one of Daudet, but I have included here a study of Daudet with his daughter.

Paul Valéry, in Aesthetics, disdains this project as it entirely forgets the purpose of the book. The book can no longer be read but is mummified "to sit eternally in a glass case".

For collectors this would undoubtedly seem an entirely natural response. This particular book is not to be perused but worshipped, fetishized. For Goncourt, the book became an object for posterity through the additional artistic endeavor of the portrait. The knowledge contained within the book is no longer material to the book's value. The book's value now occurs through being contained first, in vellum and then, by art. In fact, the question becomes whether the object is valued as a book, or as a portrait. In what sense does it remain a book except as the foundation for its current state, transformed into an objet d'art by the portrait, by its wrapping, by its untouchability? I can easily dismiss the question by saying it is all of the above. But that dismissal does not acknowledge the complication caused by each additional step of time (first edition), wrapping (vellum), additional artistic endeavor (portrait done by known artist), fragility (parchment and art made it impossible to touch), and lastly its possession by Goncourt, whose reputation adds to the history and thus value as an object.

To complicate the matter further, the book would now be valued as a collector's item by virtue of being a first edition, that is book-to -be-read into book-as-historical-entity. Its historicity then alters it from a book-to-be-read into book-as-value-object. First editions are rarely read or handled precisely for being rare. But in this instance, the book can not be confirmed as a first edition without destroying its surrounding artifactuality. The book is known to be a first edition through its historicity.

If the book is uninteresting, trite, or simplistic, it no longer matters. The content of the book, in some sense what it is the book refers to in being a book, has become irrelevant. Its materiality has literally disappeared.

As a collector do you want the book because you are a fan of Zola? Edmond de Goncourt? Raffaeli? Or, simply for the conquest of collection? Do you want it because it is a book or a work of art?