I’m still savouring Hilary Spurling’s Matisse biography (I’m a third of the way through her second volume Matisse the Master). One aspect of Matisse that captivates and astounds me is how he is driven by some volcanic impetus, again and again, to innovate, at huge cost to his psyche and his family. In June 1914, [...]
Yesterday I revisited a portion of Damon Young’s Distraction, a fifteen-page section called ‘Looking More Closely’ within a chapter on the philosophy of art. This book section examines why ‘many of our encounters with art are duds,’ straddling Marcel Proust’s early flop experience at the Balbec Cathedral, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s equation of art genre with [...]
Also posted in Undistraction |
T. Corraghessan Boyle is one of my favourite authors, an exuberant stylist who tackles ambitious topics, often from intriguing angles. Being a beginning student of the arcane (but surrounding) subject of architecture, I snapped up his latest, The Women, for it’s a brave fictional look at the life of an architectural great, Frank Lloyd Wright. [...]
Also posted in Literary Fiction |
In April of 1909, a newspaper interview with Henri Matisse recorded his view (quoting Hilary Spurling in her exemplary bio Matisse the Master)
that the invention of photography released painting from the need to copy nature. From now on art was free to condense and synthesise, eliminating surface detail in an attempt to penetrate rather than reproduce [...]
Also posted in Nonfiction |
Viewed a few days ago:
The third one in the series, Red Riding: 1983, is a corker, coming with a virtuoso plot knitting together the first two. In some ways darker than the first two, with its main protagonist one of the corrupt West Yorkshire policemen, it nonetheless offers a ray of sunshine at the end. [...]
I’m especially taken by a letter extract Hilary Spurling includes (on page 337) in her biography (much recommended) ) of the first half of Matisse’s life. Thirty-seven-year-old Matisse, still poor and maligned, is writing to his artist friend Henri Manguin:
A slowing down of sales or even a full stop doesn’t mean all is lost. . [...]
Far more interesting than Matisse’s physical life is the unfolding of his creative life. Here is Hilary Spurling writing (on page 192 of her highly recommended first biography) about Matisse, not yet aged thirty:
Matisse himself was reluctantly seduced that summer by a collection of exotic butterflies on display in the window of a postcard merchant opposite [...]
People who seek to create are fond of describing themselves as ‘driven.’ If you’re one such, I’d recommend reading Hilary Spurling’s masterful biography (The Unknown Matisse: A Life of Henri Matisse: The Early Years, 1869-1908, which I have praised) of Matisse. I was quickly disabused of my own level of commitment compared to Matisse’s. Here [...]
In Distraction, my current launching point for thinking about how to live, Damon Young writes about the two-volume biography of Matisse by Hilary Spurling:
There are simply too many superlatives to describe Spurling’s effort: if you’re interested in the painter or the relationship between art and life, these books are priceless.
Having now read the first of [...]
Also posted in Nonfiction |