That quote of Auden's reminded me of the exhibit I saw at the Prado when I visited Madrid last spring. The title was “Velázquez’s Fables.”

My take-away from that exhibit was a note I scribbled down from the placard at the front of one of the rooms. It stated that in the late 1620’s, when Diego Velázquez was in his late 20’s, a married father with a good-paying position as a painter to a duke and in favor with the king, who gave him all sorts of plummy commissions, he decided he needed to go to Rome and borrowed money and permission to do so. Because Velázquez felt he needed to go there, the placard stated, to learn some new tricks. He “sought a formula for depicting convincingly a group of people’s reaction to unexpected news.”

The examples of this put forth by the curator were his The Forge of Vulcan and Joseph’s Bloodied Coat Presented to Jacob. Neither of these paintings did much for me (although I am far from an expert) and in the case of The Forge of Vulcan I thought he failed utterly in his mission statement. I was unfamiliar with the myth and had to look it up. Apparently, the god Apollo appears in, well, the forge of Vulcan, the blacksmith (aka the god of beneficial and hindering fire, creator of volcanic fire and forger of thunderbolts) to alert him to the fact that Vulcan’s wife, Venus, is carrying on with Mars.

Whatevs. Ye gods.

What arrested me was that Velázquez left domesticity, security, prestige and salary to travel to Rome to learn to depict “convincingly a group of people’s reaction to unexpected news.”

What? Why? Home at his well-appointed casa in Madrid, did he wake up in a cold sweat and realize that until then he had only unconvincingly depicted a group of people’s reaction to unexpected news? Or that he had convincingly depicted only one person’s reaction, or a reaction to only expected news? Did he witness such an event – an extended family learning, for example, that the son/ husband/ father they thought drowned at sea was actually okay in Cadiz and limping slowly toward their happy reunion? Did he see that and did he then say “Man! If I only had the talent to depict that!” And why was he so sure that this (questionable) ability of convincingly depicting such a scene could be attained in Rome?

Perhaps you laugh. A painter friend of mine laughed when I asked her. Most likely she was amused at the idea that this sentence on a placard has tormented me for more than seven months. I kept picturing trying to tell my own friends and family that I had to leave all my responsibilities behind to travel to a distant beautiful city so I could to depict (“convincingly”) something most people would never, ever think about or feel was lacking in their lives as consumers of culture.

And then I pictured asking them to give me money to achieve this goal.

And then there’s the question of whether he even succeeded in his goal. To me, no. The Forge of Vulcan (again, no expert) does not demonstrate this ideal. Vulcan and his blacksmith staff do not look like they have received unexpected news, but rather they look the way you or I would look if a clean and rosy half-naked god appeared uninvited in our sweat-drenched workplace. They look, as we would, as though we would rather than he go away -- soon -- so we can bloody well get on with it. His stupid news can wait.

But then a few days ago, I came across Auden's phrase, “artistic problems lovingly worked out for themselves.” And then I saw clearly.

Labels: Auden, The Forge of Venus, Velázquez

posted by Elizabeth at 10:50 PM   0 Comments

“Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind,” the poet says. So it follows that a writer’s death diminishes me a bit more because I am involved in the futility of the faithful, the craft of writing.

And it follows one step further that a writer’s suicide is all the more anguishing -- J. Anthony Lukas hurt, so did Iris Chang – one of the reasons I did not major in English – this is true – is because of Virginia Woolf and Anne Sexton and Sylvia bloody Plath. I’m not here to condemn suicide, or to condone it; I’ve lived in my own dark places; still, I’m always astonished, although you think I would have toughened up by now, at how hard the unacquainted – in every sense of the word – are on depression. Last night I read forums on David Foster Wallace until I had to stop.

I needed something to read before I went to sleep.

In times like these, you need a really, really good writer, someone who will absorb you in the story the way you were spellbound as a child. Story, story, story and stay out of the way.

I settled on Auden’s Lectures on Shakespeare.

Just after World War II, W.H. Auden taught a Shakespeare course at the New School in New York City. Years later, someone thought to seek out the notes of his besotted students (since Auden kept no record!) and compile the lectures into a book, edited and with an introduction by Arthur Kirsch.

“Auden speaks of the mythic power of The Tempest in similar terms,” writes Kirsch, “and he says that The Tempest is Shakespeare’s farewell piece, whether he was conscious of it or not”:

Auden:

I don’t believe people die until they’ve done their work, and when they have, they die. There are surprisingly few incomplete works in art. People, as a rule, die when they wish to. It is not a shame that Mozart, Keats, Shelley died young: they’d finished their work.

“Following a suggestion of Aldous Huxley,” (this is Kirsch again), “he considers all of Shakespeare’s final plays as examples of the genre of the late works of major artists like Beethoven, Goya, and Ibsen, deliberately strange in their vision, unconcerned about the difficulties they may pose for an audience, and enormously interested”

Auden:

-- in particular kinds of artistic problems lovingly worked out for themselves, regardless of the interest of the whole work.

I find Shakespeare particularly appealing in his attitude towards his work. There’s something a little irritating in the determination of the very greatest artists, like Dante, Joyce, Milton, to create masterpieces and to think themselves important. To be able to devote one’s life to art without forgetting that art is frivolous is a tremendous achievement of personal character. Shakespeare never takes himself too seriously.

Particular kinds of artistic problems, lovingly worked out.

Lovely.

More on this, anon --

Labels: Auden, Shakespeare

posted by Elizabeth at 9:04 PM   0 Comments