Rebecca Nemser

Madame Vigee-Lebrun rev­o­lu­tion­ized the por­trait. She despised the pow­der and stiff clothes that women wore; she let their hair down, and draped them in soft, flow­ing shawls and paint­ed them look­ing soft, dreamy, nat­ur­al, alive. Her paint­ings helped to cre­ate a new look, a new style, a new atti­tude to life in pre-rev­o­lu­tion­ary Paris.

When Berthe Morisot met Édouard Manet at the Lou­vre in 1867, he was 36 years old and mar­ried; she was ten years younger and still liv­ing with her par­ents at home. She was live­ly, intel­li­gent, charm­ing, tal­ent­ed. He was bril­liant, dif­fi­cult, fick­le, famous, fas­ci­nat­ing. She had long admired him from a dis­tance; he imme­di­ate­ly want­ed to paint her portrait.

All that we know of Greece has come to us in ruins–armless, head­less, fad­ed, fall­en, bro­ken, bat­tered, lost in trans­la­tion. What we have are frag­ments, frag­ments that have lost almost everything–except their poet­ry. But, gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion, that poet­ry has nev­er lost its thrilling, vision­ary gleam.

It is art that acknowl­edges the strug­gle of its own mak­ing, and con­veys a sense of life as com­posed of frag­ments, where not every­thing is leg­i­ble, and some things are irrev­o­ca­bly ruined or lost. The past haunts and enrich­es the present. Mem­o­ry and imag­i­na­tion are inter­twined. It is a mir­ror of the soul.

Madame de Pom­padour always man­aged to look grace­ful, even in the most con­strict­ing clothes — corsets, bus­tles, and stays. Like Madon­na, she cre­at­ed a Look that was supreme­ly arti­fi­cial — the pow­dered hair, the heav­i­ly applied make-up, the elab­o­rate gowns. Like Madon­na in her John-Paul Gaulti­er bustiers, La Pom­padour in her negligée proud­ly dis­played her sex­u­al­i­ty as the source of her power. 

On film, JEAN ARTHUR is impul­sive, but truth­ful ‑‑ true to the moment, while the moment lasts. She is chaste, but not prud­ish; she tru­ly inhab­its her small, ath­let­ic body, and she moves like a dancer with an easy nat­ur­al volup­tuous­ness. Her soft, grav­el­ly voice is aston­ish­ly expres­sive. And some of her great­est lines aren’t words at all, but an aston­ish­ing reper­toire of whim­pers, sighs, sobs, gig­gles, and moans.

“The places we have known do not belong only to the world of space on which we map them for our own con­ve­nience. None of them was ever more than a thin slice, held between the con­tigu­ous impres­sions that com­posed our life at the time; the mem­o­ry of a par­tic­u­lar image is but regret for a par­tic­u­lar moment; and hous­es, roads, avenues are as fugi­tive, alas, as the years.”

“It can be fright­en­ing, but that’s life,” said Doug. “Art is part of life,” said Mike. “It’s a real part — it’s the essence of life,” said Doug. “There’s no rea­son to make it per­fect,” says Doug. “We want to show the phys­i­cal nature,” said Mike. “The phys­i­cal nature,” said Doug. “Of every­thing, but in par­tic­u­lar, Art,” said Mike.

Stand­ing at the cen­ter of the spi­ral, I see the backs of all the chairs fac­ing away from me, and feel a tremen­dous shock of lone­li­ness and loss. Look­ing down from the bal­cony, I see that the chairs are the begin­ning of a spi­ral that could go on forever.

From the win­dow of the stu­dio ED RUSCHA had in the 1960’s, he could see a sign read­ing HOLLYWOOD. The big white let­ters are as flat an fake as an old, aban­doned movie set, crum­pled and peel­ing, with some of the let­ters falling down. But Ruscha’s many images of that sign make it a real sign, lumi­nous and charged with light. 

FRANCES HAMILTON has refash­ioned much-loved images, mem­o­ries, and dream­strans­form­ing them into a ful­ly re-imag­ined uni­verse. It is this trans­for­ma­tion – the seri­ous, dif­fi­cult task of art – that gives her work its pow­er to enchant.