All The Beauty In The World by Patrick Bingley is the next book club book, and it's good it's short because I got it 13 days before we meet, and I had a day where I finished up another book for another book club.
I once did the NY Times challenge of looking at a painting for 10 minutes, so I look at the Greco painting for quite a while, while I notice a lot of things about it (See links below). The paintings kind of come alive when you take some time with them, and not just move on when they get boring. I'm often too interested in consuming everything, instead of really grokking one painting when I'm present at a museum. Moving forward I'm going to be more strategic.
He talks about being struck by the beauty, and having nowhere to put it.
He talks about windows into the world, Maria Theresa by Diego Velazquez.
Of the 34 paintings by Vermeer, the Met has 5 of them. Frick has 3. Manhattan has 8 of the 34 Vermeers, 24%.
You know, I think I'm going to create museum blog.
Links to first 4 references:
View of Toledo by El Greco at Met.
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Raphael. Detail below
Little Dancer of Fourteen Years Degas
Links:
The book pdf
A favorites of Bringley's with little essay. The Harvest is his fav.
Bringley worked at the New Yorker before becoming a guard at the Met (source).
Further:
I'm going to go to the Met now to follow up on a few things, and I got to thinking about what's my favorite Buddhist work. First one that came to mind was the Arhat. There are some others I fondly remember. I'm going to have to ask my daughter to pick her own section, so we can see what she wants, because she's a great character who likes to do things her way, like her mother.
I decided to ask everyone I know what their favorite work at the Met is. Friends and family by email, Bluesky, Reddit, my soccer discord.
Rich likes The Glorification of the Barbaro Family and Tiepolo. At one point in Bringley's book he gravitates to the Venetians.
“Venice was an impossible city, a chain of 118 wave-lapped islands that once boasted the brightest, deepest colors in the world. Ultramarine from Afghanistan, azurite from Egypt, vermilion from Spain... Even the name Venice relates to the Latin venetus meaning sea blue. The greatest Venetian of the sixteenth century was Tiziano Vecellio, called Titian, and he enveloped his scenes in rose-tinted atmosphere, as though he mixed his pigments in puddle water and red wine. I approach his great Venus and Adonis, so beautiful and silent a poem that I can feel my mood become engulfed by it.”
Hammy liked the hippo.
Quote:
P. 10: “I responded to that great painting in a way that I now believe is fundamental to the peculiar power of art. Namely, I experienced the great beauty of the picture even as I had no idea what to do with that beauty. I couldn't discharge the feeling by talking about it-there was nothing much to say. What was beautiful in the painting was not like words, it was like paint-silent, direct, and concrete, resisting translation even into thought. As such, my response to the picture was trapped inside me, a bird fluttering in my chest. And I didn't know what to make of that.”
The Crucifixion by Bernardo Daddi Italian ca. 1325–30:
He broke from tradition, according to Wikipedia, to be more realistic. I suppose you have to have paintings from prior to him, around his paintings, to show you the tradition he broke from, but the museum is usually just greatest hits, so you don't hear all the crappy stuff. This is why I really appreciate grinding in my art appreciation, you're only going to get peak experiences once in a while. Not everything is a greatest hit. I could be projecting but I feel like Bringley tries to appreciate every painting for it's strength and what makes it good, why it's hanging in a museum. There's something very positive about that process, if we could do that about every human being, and not just the exquisite mourners of Jesus in this painting. This painting isn't currently up at the Met.
Further posts about this book are at my new blog.
Comments
Post a Comment