{"id":6018,"date":"2015-06-08T11:28:09","date_gmt":"2015-06-08T11:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=6018"},"modified":"2015-06-10T11:36:37","modified_gmt":"2015-06-10T11:36:37","slug":"keeping-an-eye-open-essays-on-art-by-julian-barnes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=6018","title":{"rendered":"Keeping an Eye Open: Essays on Art by Julian Barnes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Jonathan Cape UK, Knopf US<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Si\u00e2n Miles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This volume, printed and bound by the Chinese on immaculately certified acid-free paper, is initially a bit of a puzzlement.\u00a0 Its sumptuously produced UK cover design – front flap, spine, back, and back flap – manages to cram in largely unidentifiable bits and patches of Degas\u2019 The Dance Lesson, <\/em>Courbet\u2019s The Artist\u2019s Studio<\/em>, Valloton\u2019s The Lie<\/em>, as well as Manet\u2019s The Execution of Maximilian. <\/em>Quite a haul in terms of space as well as permissions sought and received from globally disparate galleries and museums, attesting to the current trend in producing a book as a luxury item.<\/em> There follow end-papers depicting paintbrushes and palette-knives of various shapes and sizes, should an inattentive reader miss the point.\u00a0 The fifty-plus illustrations are beautifully reproduced.\u00a0 But the key to an understanding of what it\u2019s all about is provided by the choice of Howard Hodgkin\u2019s multi-coloured Alpine Snow <\/em>as the image on the front cover.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A personal and long-standing friend of Barnes\u2019, Hodgkin provides the ear into which the writer\u2019s voice, two chapters from its conclusion, ultimately confides.\u00a0 However, the tone for most of this collection, which is largely devoted to Barnes\u2019 views on French painters, is uncertain, at times shaky, despite comprehensive knowledge of its subject.\u00a0 It offers unfunny comments allegedly \u00e0 la Gardeners\u2019 Question-Time<\/em>:\u00a0 And whiles we\u2019re about it, that Douanier Roussau feller\u2019s bin plantin\u2019 too many of them giant succulents on his patch<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 Including unhelpful ellipses which make do for a nudge or a wink as an ironic, cosy in-joke against, say, the Freemasons, the prose assumes a familiarity with the reader which is never properly established.<\/p>\n

Those hoping for a collection of essays like John Berger\u2019s Ways of Seeing<\/em> will be disappointed. Others, following John Nash on Franz Hals, will find little to match his unforgettable observation that the painter captures that look which every sitter, however ugly, bestows upon the object of his affections.<\/em><\/p>\n

A set of Essays on Art<\/em> suggests the hint of an attempt to understand communication via the graphic.\u00a0 Instead, this volume, which considers the work of G\u00e9ricault, Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Fantin-Latour, C\u00e9zanne, Degas, Redon, Bonnard, Vuillard, Valloton, Braque, Magritte and Oldenberg, descends at times into the description of a stamp collection, with perforations and franking, rather than the meat of the message, exhaustively explored.<\/p>\n

In its two concluding chapters, however, the reader catches a glimpse of the reason behind Barnes\u2019 knowledgeable mystery tour d\u2019horizon.\u00a0 <\/em>Through his love of Hodgkin\u2019s work and via his frank appraisal of their compatriot and contemporary Lucian Freud\u2019s, we ultimately reach the destination of a diligent scholar\u2019s journey from the picture to the page.\u00a0 <\/em>Hodgkin\u2019s Arctic Snow <\/em>finally <\/em>blazes out all the overtones of transmuted colour which the painter sees in whiteness and turns it into the visible piece of Glass which Barnes has all along attempted to describe.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This volume, printed and bound by the Chinese on immaculately certified acid-free paper, is initially a bit of a puzzlement.\u00a0 Its sumptuously produced cover design – front, front flap, spine, back, and back flap – manages to cram in largely unidentifiable bits and patches of Degas\u2019 The Dance Lesson, <\/em>Courbet\u2019s The Artist\u2019s Studio<\/em>, Valloton\u2019s The Lie<\/em>, as well as Manet\u2019s The Execution of Maximilian. <\/em>Quite a haul in terms of space as well as permissions sought and received from globally disparate galleries and museums, attesting to the current trend in producing a book as a luxury item.<\/em> There follow end-papers depicting paintbrushes and palette-knives of various shapes and sizes, should an inattentive reader miss the point.\u00a0 The fifty-plus illustrations are beautifully reproduced.\u00a0 But the key to an understanding of what it\u2019s all about is provided by the choice of Howard Hodgkin\u2019s multi-coloured Alpine Snow <\/em>as the image on the front cover.<\/p>\n

A personal and long-standing friend of Barnes\u2019, Hodgkins provides the ear into which the writer\u2019s voice, two chapters from its conclusion, ultimately confides.\u00a0 However, the tone for most of this collection, which is largely devoted to Barnes\u2019 views on French painters, is uncertain, at times shaky, despite comprehensive knowledge of its subject.\u00a0 It offers unfunny comments allegedly \u00e0 la Gardeners\u2019Question Time<\/em>:\u00a0 and whiles we\u2019re about it, that Douanier Roussau feller\u2019s bin plantin\u2019 too many of them giant succulents on his patch<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 Including unhelpful ellipsis which make do for a nudge or a wink as an ironic cosy in-joke against, say, the Masons, the prose assumes a familiarity with the reader which is never properly established.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Those hoping for a collection of essays like John Berger\u2019s Ways of Seeing<\/em> will be disappointed. Others, following John Nash on Franz Hals, will find little to match his equally unforgettable observation that the painter captures that look which every sitter, however ugly, bestows upon the object of his affections.<\/em><\/p>\n

A set of Essays on Art<\/em> suggests the hint of an attempt to understand communication via the graphic.\u00a0 Instead, this volume which considers the work of G\u00e9ricault, Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Fantin-Latour, C\u00e9zanne, Degas, Redon, Bonnard, Vuillard, Valloton, Braque, Magritte and Oldenberg, descends at times into the description of a stamp collection, with perforations and franking, rather than the meat of the message, exhaustively explored.<\/p>\n

In its two concluding chapters, however, the reader catches a glimpse of the reason behind Barnes\u2019 knowledgeable mystery tour d\u2019horizon.\u00a0 <\/em>Through his love of Hodgkin\u2019s work and via his frank appraisal of their compatriot and contemporary Lucian Freud\u2019s, we ultimately reach the destination of a diligent scholar\u2019s journey from the picture to the page.\u00a0 <\/em>Hodgkin\u2019s Arctic Snow <\/em>finally <\/em>blazes out all the overtones of transmuted colour which the painter sees in whiteness and turns it into the visible piece of Glass which Barnes has all along attempted to describe.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Si\u00e2n Miles<\/p>\n

A set of Essays on Art<\/em> suggests the hint of an attempt to understand communication via the graphic. Instead, this volume, which considers the work of G\u00e9ricault, Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Fantin-Latour, C\u00e9zanne, Degas, Redon, Bonnard, Vuillard, Valloton, Braque, Magritte and Oldenberg, descends at times into the description of a stamp collection, with perforations and franking, rather than the meat of the message, exhaustively explored […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6018"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6037,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6018\/revisions\/6037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}