Julian Barnes: Keep An Eye Open
A fascinating collection of comments and observations on pieces of art and artists. The intial focus is often on only one work but this invariably leads into wide-ranging remarks about the artists,his mileu, otejr works and art in general. Its written in a beautifully elegant and fluent way (with no pretetntious ‘art appreciation’ vocabulary) which allows it to slip down easily and expresses smart and thoughtful ideas very lucidly.
The vast majority of of the painters are French and from the the last century - some of whom I must admit I was only very generally aware of.. Tw of the best though do not fall into that category; the final essay on Howard Hodgkin and one of Lucian Freud.But, connected to this, I could have done with many more illustrations of the works under discussion. Ones which are the main focus are, by and large, there but others are lacking. It would have been too much for every referenced painting to be there but nevertheless… For me, knowing a fair amount of Freud’s oeuvre, references ot unseen paintings made much sense but with the lesser-known ones, it was tricky.
I am not going to comment on every chapter - and the commensta re very much almost instant reponses jotted down while reading.
Gericault; Fascinating thoughts on how a real-lfe event can become art and the sort of decisions that might need to be made in different circumstances; poses questions like ‘when is a painting a documentary and when is it art’…
Fantin-Latour. Definitely an artists I had not heard of and one of the main times when a reproduction of the 4 pieces of work under discussion - a series of group portraits of the artists and intellectual of the late 18th/early 19th centuries.
Redon; again fascinating insights into an artist again not known.
Bonnard: Intriguing insights into an artist who constantly used the same model
Vuillard: Value (or not) of the use of biographical information in terms of appreciating/understanding an artists. Here, the comments, as with many others, could also be extended to other artists.
Barque: Marvellous picture ofthe artists as a human being
Oldenburg: Refreshingly clear-sighted about Pop Art.
Freud: Excellent.Liked and intrigued by the ‘Narrativist’ and ‘Episodicist’ definitions as relate to an artists - and the point that an painting has a narrative in that the sequence of brush strokes to create ‘the moment/person’ is a narrative as a decision has to be made about which brush stroke to put on next. Also some good points about F as a person and how that necesarily reflected in his painting.
Hodgkin: Super final chapter - only one where a close personal connection with - and the perfect ending for a book like this about art ‘so that’s enough words’ (subtext go and look at the art don’t write about it?)
