Rebecca Nemser

Hun­dreds of peo­ple came to MERYL BRATER’s Memo­r­i­al Exhi­bi­tion at the Rose Art Muse­um. We all believed that Meryl would live on at the Rose, and that many gen­er­a­tions to come would have the chance to know her through her art. To close the muse­um now would be a ter­ri­ble blow to every­one who loved her – to every­one who trust­ed their trea­sure to the Rose.

He was the pre­em­i­nent por­trait painter of his day, and he gave it all up to paint land­scapes. His pri­vate life is a mys­tery. His brush­work is still daz­zling. JOHN SINGER SARGENT seems to have walked out of the pages of a nov­el by Hen­ry James, who wrote of him: “Yes, I have always thought of Sar­gent as a great painter. He would be greater still if he had done one or two lit­tle things he hasn’t—but he will do.”

Bod­hisattvas with serene, all-embrac­ing smiles; gold­en flower bas­kets for car­ry­ing lotus petals to puri­fy a sacred space; rit­u­al bronze chimes adorned with pea­cocks. “Each arti­cle is incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful, but it’s only when all the arti­cles come togeth­er, evok­ing the pres­ence of the Bud­dha, that you can under­stand Bud­dhist art.”

These ancient bronzes, which have long since lost their gold­en gleam, are still numi­nous frag­ments of a van­ished world. One stat­ue of young man was recent­ly pulled out of a riv­er; his pale sea-green body is scratched and scarred; but he is still a love­ly appari­tion, remind­ing me of some lines from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”:
“Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suf­fer a sea change
Into some­thing rich and strange.”

WINSLOW HOMER spent most of his life fish­ing and paint­ing, reel­ing in the deep, unfath­omable mys­tery of the sea. His pic­tures often show some­body gaz­ing out to sea, con­cen­trat­ing on some­thing no one else can see. Maybe it’s the light on the water, or the wind in the sails, or a boat com­ing home to shore, or just the flick­er of a dream.

“When the “light prop” was set in motion for the first time in a small mechan­ics shop in 1930, I felt like the sor­cer­er’s appren­tice. The mobile was so star­tling in its coor­di­nat­ed motions and space artic­u­la­tions of light and shad­ow sequences that I almost believed in magic.”

A crowd­ed stage, and all the play­ers on it. A king, wear­ing a crown, stabs him­self in the heart. A woman looks at her reflec­tion in a mir­ror, next to a stat­ue of a Greek god. Mod­ern men and women read the news­pa­per, talk, flirt, and fight with real knives. MAX BECK­MAN­N’s The Actors aims to encom­pass all of Art and Life in thick, sure slash­es of paint.

in a moment, the door will swing back shut, and the cafe will dis­ap­pear, and then the street singer will van­ish, into the street, into the night, nev­er to be seen again. Only here, in this paint­ing, where she is for­ev­er caught in the gold­en net of the Paris night at the moment when she stepped out through the swing­ing door, onto the street, and into our dreams.

In a dark, smoky room, a soli­tary dancer rais­es up her arm in a tense, ecsta­t­ic move­ment of inspi­ra­tion; her oth­er hand clutch­es the skirt of her dress — a flash of white light gleam­ing in the dark. You can almost hear the rhyth­mic weep­ing of the gui­tars; you can almost feel beat­ing of the dancer’s tumul­tuous heart.

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.

GUERCINO drew like an angel—his gor­geous line curls across the page; his brush forms shad­ows that sug­gest a sense of the round­ness and full­ness of life. His best draw­ings are more than drawings—they are bless­ings, exquis­ite expres­sions of those moments when Art and Faith are one.

In mono­type, there is no fixed image on the print­ing sur­face. The artist paints or draws on a print­ing plate, makes changes, and prints again; the final proof is an accu­mu­la­tion of all the changes that have been made. Pale, fad­ed images of past impres­sions often cling to mono­types like shad­ows; they are called “ghosts.”

It is said that CHU TA nev­er spoke — but he laughed, cried, waved his hands, and drank rice wine most expres­sive­ly while he paint­ed. Every sin­gle touch of Chu Ta’s brush means some­thing. Every mark still mat­ters. Hun­dreds of years lat­er, you can still almost feel the move­ment of his hand — the bold drunk­en touch of his brush.

Bar­bi­zon was a place and a style — and also a feeling—a mood—a time of day — dusk, when the forms of things soft­en and the edges blur, and a kind of hush falls over the world. The earth is solemn, soft, and ten­der, like a bed—and some­times like a grave. 

BON­NARD’s art is an art of nuance and sug­ges­tion. His friend, the Sym­bol­ist poet Paul Ver­laine, wrote:
“You must have music first of all,
and for that a rhythm uneven is best,
vague in the air and soluble
with noth­ing heavy and noth­ing at rest.”

His fal­cons are ele­gant objects, yet they are also birds of prey. They are chained to a perch, dream­ing of flight; per­fect­ly at rest, yet poised to spread their wings and reach for the sky. His art con­veys a sense of scrap­ing away and dis­card­ing every­thing that is not essen­tial — of trav­el­ling light, like a nomad, and soar­ing high, like a bird.

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. 

Great art cheats death of its vic­to­ry by trans­form­ing mem­o­ry’s frag­ile frag­ments into some­thing last­ing, pre­cious, and incor­rupt­ible. The ghost­ly white porch is a win­dow to a world beyond flesh and paint — a world with­out sor­row or sub­stance, col­or or weight. It is cool, pale, and white as a bone.

In the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, women in Shak­er com­mu­ni­ties record­ed their visions of heav­en­ly gar­dens in “spir­it” or “gift” draw­ings — sim­ple gifts that speak to the heart. The words, writ­ten in tiny, spi­dery hand­writ­ing, are fad­ed and almost illeg­i­ble, but the lit­tle birds and hearts and flow­ers make the feel­ings clear. 

In paint­ing after paint­ing, the earth moves and the water swoons and the sky tum­bles and all the blues and pinks and pur­ples and reds and oranges dis­solve into one. Earth and water come togeth­er, again and again, and explode in a sym­pho­ny of light and col­or and air.

I loved THE CONCERT, the beau­ti­ful lit­tle paint­ing by VERMEER. Each time I looked at it, I saw some­thing new. Now it’s gone. I try to remem­ber every line, every shad­ow, every gleam of light, every sweet cadence of its silent music, but I can already feel it fad­ing. As time goes by, it will dark­en and grow dim. 

Rugs and blan­kets, shrouds and shawls: tex­tiles touched the lives of the peo­ple who lived with them. Slum­ber­ing in store­rooms, rolled up and pro­tect­ed from light, these tex­tile mas­ter­pieces have kept their vibrant col­ors and some­thing of their human warmth. Now, unfurled, they look like mag­ic car­pets, poised to rise.

Light as a whis­per, these ele­gant images, in the del­i­cate style known as ROCOCO, con­vey the “sweet­ness of life” before the Rev­o­lu­tion. Some­thing of the warmth of the artist’s hand still lingers in all the lit­tle jabs and touch­es of chalk or ink that make up these deli­cious lit­tle 18th cen­tu­ry draw­ings and prints.

The CONE sis­ters col­lect­ed art because they loved it and want­ed to live with it. Their art col­lec­tion became an emblem of their secret selves — a vision of the rich­ness of their inner lives. Many of the images here show women the same expres­sion on their face — a look of con­tent­ment, com­plete­ness, and self-fulfillment.

WEST­ON’s por­traits of friends and lovers are so intense that their souls seem to flick­er through their sen­si­tive faces and expres­sive hands. But West­on’s Nudes are seen in name­less frag­ments, as cool and smooth as mar­ble. You see their bod­ies, but their faces are turned away. 

The 80’s began with big, shiny, self-con­fi­dent paint­ings, but they are end­ing with of shreds and tat­ters, and anx­ious pre­mo­ni­tions of a ruined world. They remind­ed me of the end­ing of William Gib­son’s sci­ence fic­tion nov­el Count Zero, when a bril­liant com­put­er dis­tills the few remain­ing frag­ments of a ruined civ­i­liza­tion into exquis­ite lit­tle con­struc­tions. Or these lines from a Shake­speare son­net; “bare, ruined choirs, where late the sweet bird sang”.

Many of the most mem­o­rable images of the six­ties were silkscreen prints: Andy Warhol’s soup­cans, Mar­i­lyns, and Jack­ies, Roy Licht­en­stein­s’s day-glo brush­strokes on Ben-Day dots, Sis­ter Cori­ta’s Flower Pow­er mes­sages, Robert Indi­ana’s LOVE, and Ed Ruscha’s daz­zling 1966 Stan­dard Sta­tion, radi­ant and gleam­ing in the Cal­i­for­nia light.

In the 12th cen­tu­ry, the Emper­or Quian­long, who was a also a poet, said, “I want col­or”. He got col­or: exquis­ite pale blues and greens that seem to float on the sur­face of the bowls’ smooth sur­faces like clouds; pur­ple splash­es called “the sky at dusk”; and a pale cobalt blue that seems dis­tilled from a serene and cloud­less sum­mer sky.

In many of the prints, a wom­an’s face is par­tial­ly obscured, either because of the way she has turned her head, or because she is hold­ing some­thing in front of her face ‑‑ a hand, a let­ter, a child. This con­veys a sense of mys­tery, a feel­ing that there are secret mean­ings and moments of tragedy and what Vir­ginia Woolf called “ecsta­sy” — hid­den in the tex­ture of a wom­an’s dai­ly life.

MEN­ZEL’s draw­ings often show peo­ple and things as if they were turn­ing into shad­ow, turn­ing into smoke, dis­solv­ing into a cloud; just about to dis­ap­pear. He said, “I ear­ly cul­ti­vat­ed the habit of draw­ing things as though I were nev­er to see them again.”

The sil­very glow of the moon and the flow of an under­ground riv­er are reflect­ed in sin­u­ous cal­lig­ra­phy that swoons down a page from 12th cen­tu­ry book of poems, strewn with shim­mer­ing sil­ver ros­es: “True, I say nothing/ but the long­ing in my heart/ reach­es out to you,/ secret as the con­stant flow of an under­ground river.”

Anselm Kiefer uses the lan­guage of mod­ern art to rewrite the kind of grandiose nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry his­to­ry paint­ing that mod­ern art reject­ed. He paints a rag­ing ele­gy for the fail­ure of rea­son and civ­i­liza­tion to over­come the evil that is part of human nature. Yet for Kiefer, only the mag­ic of art can build some­thing beau­ti­ful out of the wreck of rea­son and the fail­ure of history. 

Tao Chi was a prince who became a wan­der­ing Bud­dhist monk. His “Melan­choly Thoughts on the Hsiao and Hsiang Rivers,” cap­tures the mood of the end of autumn. A lone­ly fish­ing hut is half-hid­den by a few sparse trees; a flock of wild geese flies over a riv­er. The cal­lig­ra­phy echoes the flight of the birds and the quiver of the leaves. With­out under­stand­ing a word, we can feel the poetry.

Jean-Fran­cois MILLET saw a time­less beau­ty and sad­ness in life, in evenings dark and filled with col­or. “What I know of hap­pi­ness is the qui­et, the silence, that you can savor so deli­cious­ly, either in the forests, or in the fields,” he wrote.

“There is some­thing divine about his tal­ent, some­thing com­pa­ra­ble to the pow­er of a great poet who, out of the worlds of truth and false­hood, cre­ates a third whose bor­rowed exis­tence enchants us.”

Red Sea shells and pol­ished stones from the pyra­mid tomb of Queen Khen­sa — “great of charm, great of praise, pos­ses­sor of grace, sweet of love” — and oth­er trea­sures from KUSH, Lost King­dom of the Nile. A med­i­ta­tion on Art, Time, and the ancient river.

THE DIAL was a lit­er­ary mag­a­zine that pub­lished T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice and Vir­ginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dal­loway, as well as repro­duc­tions of art­works col­lect­ed by Schofield Thay­er, a Hen­ry Jame­sian char­ac­ter who went abroad in search of old knowl­edge and new art. 

For a twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry audi­ence brought up on abstrac­tion, INGRES’s great­ness, his fas­ci­na­tion, lies in the abstract qual­i­ties of his line, its rest­less, obses­sive move­ment across the page. Ingres’ line has pow­er, grace, life; it’s bril­liant, dra­mat­ic, neu­rot­ic, even per­verse. He told his stu­dents, “Draw­ing is every­thing; it is all of Art.” 

A woman sits think­ing, rest­ing her head on her hand in a room filled with flow­ers and fruit. The room seems charged with mean­ing, filled with her extra­or­di­nary pres­ence. For GABRIELE MUNTER, art was not about appear­ances, but about real­i­ties lying behind appear­ances. Abstrac­tion was a way of see­ing into the heart of things.

CLAUDE LE LORRAIN depicts the moment just before trans­fig­u­ra­tion — the moment just before women turn into god­dess­es, or girls turn into swans, or life turns into art. His light is dusk and twi­light — the dark­ling light that wash­es the phys­i­cal world in unearth­ly beau­ty and fills the heart with an intox­i­cat­ing sense of possibility.