I was browsing around a second-hand charity shop bookstore the other day, and picked this book up (attached picture) for a few pounds. I’ve now examined it throughout twice (so far), and found some of my favourite paintings (I like most of them, and there are many more… one good formal ball scene was spoiled by the presence of a nigger serving boy).
I had a brief, well, what I would call spiritual crisis earlier… examining the elegance of the pictures and the often sumptuous settings, that delicacy and grace, and the reserved yet carefree nature of the subjects, and realising that neither the scenes – the architecture, the furnishings, the décor, the sense of space and modest charm, nor the paintings themselves could ever be recreated in our garish and vulgar modern world.
What beauty is there today? How on earth could an artist draw inspiration from our sprawl? It made me extremely sad, examining a world lost (that cannot even be painted adequately today, not if one kept to the artistic requirement of realism! It would feel contrived if even attempted! All we have to paint is ruins and relics – no people would suit the aesthetic requirement; hopefully some in bodies, none in dress).
I’ll attach a few of the images for you. I like dwelling on these sorts of books, but, as with the landscape pieces (which made me almost as sad as the portraits and interior scenes)… I just know all we have is litter and decay these days. The streets were so clean, so well laid out, tended to, and verdant, all quiet colonnades and verdant parks, reserved public buildings in good upkeep; respected (I remember also, as counterpoint, Gustave Doré’s illustrations of the Victorian squalor of London, but I look to continental Europe during this period for the most inspiration, England having been ruined visually – and in terms of settlement – by the Industrial Revolution, and never recovering from that ugly loss).
I see why this must be reclaimed, along with the best of our physical bodies, as an aesthetic impulse, but will art ever recover? I don’t think it will in my lifetime. I was sobbing a little there, to myself, withholding tears.
Best regards,
Ben