About five years ago, I had a funny experience during a
series of job interviews in Philadelphia.
The
organization doing the hiring was a large, prestigious non-profit, and although
the position in question represented a
potential change from my usual area of professional endeavor, I was very
interested even though the salary was modest.
Initially I met and
spoke to four or five subordinate attorneys in the department, all of them intelligent and
pleasant, during the course of several hours, recounting my life story and reciting my resume skills in various characterless offices and
conference rooms, regarding Philadelphia's gray-brown frost outside the windows.
Finally, I was ushered in to meet the General Counsel, a woman
with a lot of presence who simultaneously gave an impression of
accomplishment, joy and melancholy.
We had a good discussion about the position, the organization and both
our careers and backgrounds. She had been a nurse before going to law
school which, given her field of legal specialty, was a valuable
qualification in terms of both the analytical and affective components of her
job.
Midway through our conversation, describing her approach to work,
she said "I'm an alcoholic." She
quickly corrected herself, substituting the word "workaholic," looking surprised and embarrassed, but laughing.
It was an
awkward and unsettling moment. From the instant I met her, I had wondered whether she was an alcoholic.
I didn't get the job. They told me that the funding required for the position
never came through, something I'm happy to say I was able to confirm through other
sources. (I'm distrustful by nature.) This recession has been a brutal depression, really, a terrible long winter.
"Incidentally, there are people who seem completely staggered when
one talks about nonverbal referential processes – that is, wordless thinking;
these people simply seem to have no ability to grasp the idea that a great deal
of covert living – living that is not objectively observable, but only
inferable – can go on without the use of words. The brute fact is, as I
see it, that most of living goes on that way. That does not in any sense
reduce the enormous importance of the communicative tools – words and
gestures."
Harry Stack
Sullivan –
The
Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry, New York, Norton, 1953
*Paintings by Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin. Upper: Girl With
Racket and Shuttlecock, 1737, Uffizi Gallery, Florence; Lower: The House of Cards,
1736-7, National Gallery, London.
** This post is
dedicated to “half-Leapling” and badminton artist Jane Butler Roberts
on her fourth half-birthday, 2-29-12. It may be a matter of pure coincidence that
Jane taught her parents, who were never great silent movie fans, to appreciate
Charlie Chaplin’s early artistry when she was very young and still
nonverbal. In the nicest possible way, Jane still renders me speechless most of the time.
TO ROBERT ROSS
MS. Clark
[28
February, 1895] Hotel Avondale, Piccadilly
Dearest Bobbie, Since I saw you something has happened.
Bosie’s father has left a note at my club with hideous
words on it. I don’t see anything now
but a criminal prosecution. My whole life seems ruined by this
man. The tower of ivory is assailed by the foul thing. On the sand is my life split. I
don’t know
what to do. If you could come here at 11:30 please do so tonight. I
mar your life by trespassing ever on your love and kindness. I have asked Bosie to come tomorrow.
Ever
yours.
OSCAR
Edouard
Manet, Portrait of Madame Claus, 1868
The Ashmolean Museum is mounting a campaign to save Edouard Manet’s Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus, 1868, for the nation. On
the advice of the Reviewing Committee, the Culture Minister Ed Vaizey has
extended the temporary export bar on the painting until
August to give the Ashmolean time in which to raise the funds in order to
acquire the painting. The painting has been sold to
a foreign buyer for £28.35 million but, under a private
treaty sale, with tax remission it can be purchased by an approved UK
public collection at a greatly reduced price. The Ashmolean is
approaching public funding bodies, trusts and private individuals, and
launching a public campaign to raise the required £7.83xmillion.
Dr Christopher Brown CBE, Director of the Ashmolean, said, “This
is one of the most important pictures of the 19th century which has been in
this country since its sale following the artist’s death. The painting is available to public bodies approved by the
Treasury at 25% of its market value. The £7.83 million, though a substantial sum to be found, is a mere fraction of
the picture’s actual worth and it would therefore be an
enormous disappointment if it could not be saved for the nation. The picture’s significance is reflected in its history: it was hugely admired
and then bought by another great artist, John Singer Sargent, in 1884. Its purchase would, at a stroke, transform the Ashmolean’s
representation of Impressionist painting.”
John
Singer Sargent, Self-Portrait, 1906
Manet was one of the greatest painters of the 19th century.
During his lifetime he was controversial, but his work, though it shocked the
public, was hugely admired by artists. His reputation grew rapidly in the 20th
century and consequently his best works were acquired by major museums. There
are now remarkably few Manets in private collections, almost all in France, and
there are only a handful of important pictures by
Manet in the United Kingdom – in the National Gallery and the Courtauld Institute in London,
as well as other works in Cardiff, Birmingham, and Glasgow. Adding to the
Museum’s permanent collections and the Pissarro Family Collection, the acquisition of this masterpiece would make the Ashmolean a
world-leading centre for the study of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist work.
The portrait is a preparatory study for Le Balcon (1868–9) now in the Musée d’Orsay - one of the key images of the
Impressionist movement. Initially inspired by the sight of people on a balcony,
during a summer spent in Boulogne-sur-Mer with his family in 1868, Le Balcon famously draws on Goya’s Majas on a Balcony painted around 1810.
It is also an important example of Manet’s work from the late 1860s onwards
when he began to focus his attention on his family and close friends. The portrait’s subject is Fanny Claus (1846–77), the closest friend
of Manet’s wife Suzanne Leenhoff. A concert violinist and member of the first all-women string
quartet, Fanny was one of Manet’s favourite sitters and a member of a
close-knit group of friends who also provided the artist with models. She
married the artist Pierre Prins (1838–1913), another friend of Manet’s, in 1869,
but died of tuberculosis just eight years later at the age of 30.
Edouard
Manet, Le Balcon, 1868-9
If acquired by the Ashmolean the Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus
will be shown at a number of museums in the UK in a special
exhibition. Having previously been exhibited only once since it was
painted, this will be a great revelation
both to the public and to Manet scholars. As a first sketch, the portrait has a
spontaneous quality and a vibrant palette less
evident in Le Balcon which was reworked a number of times by the artist as he refined
the composition in his studio. Mademoiselle Claus reveals fascinating new
information about the working methods of Edouard Manet, one of the greatest
masters of modern art.
Edouard
Manet, Self-Portrait With Palette, 1879
NOTE:
This article on the ArtDaily.org website caught my eye this morning, mostly because it paired
the names of Edouard Manet, one of
my favorite painters, with Oxford’s esteemed Ashmolean
Museum.
However, when I read it and learned about the museum’s “campaign to save Edouard Manet’s Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus, 1868, for the nation”, it made me
angry.
The general public
usually pays very little attention to State
expropriation of private property under the sanitized,
clinical, and almost noble-sounding sobriquet “eminent domain.” Eminent domain
concerns are mostly the province of its unfortunate victims, their lawyers and
the "compulsory takers'" lawyers. (By the way, anyone with any significant
leasehold on real property should read their legal documents carefully on this
point before signing.)
I don’t wish to overelaborate, spin this out, or ruin anyone’s day, but it
is one thing (albeit a complicated one) if the State feels the desire and expresses the intention to put
an essential road through privately-owned real estate by engaging in coerced taking. But it is quite another when government abrogates a
private, legal sale of personal property by a citizen (or otherwise legally authorized
person) for any reason, let alone for such attenuated
and specious ones as we find here.
I suppose I could understand – slightly – if the artwork in
question were British, rather than French, or if it had been the property of a
historically significant British collector, rather than a famous American
painter who happened to purchase the work in Great Britain where he was then resident.
Essentially, this painting’s
heritage is as foreign to Britain as my own.
I assume that the “private treaty sale,
with tax remission” aspect of this horrendous exercise of
State power is intended to lessen the ultimate tax consequences for the
abused seller and restore some of his or her lost profit margin. Possibly
other emoluments (invitations to museum
openings, blue ribbons and rosettes, fancy hors d'oeuvres) are also being
offered in partial, paltry recompense. In the end, however, the State will do what
the State will do.
Regularly reading about the totally
screwed-up financial and social state of the United Kingdom today, I find it absolutely
appalling that Prime Minister Cameron's government and the grabby Ashmolean
director don’t feel that their priorities are
totally misplaced. (Please see today's relevant Link Of The Day on this subject.
) I mean, it’s a lovely painting with an interesting history and
connection to another famous Manet, but Who Cares? The painting belongs to its owners, not to the British government or people
(who I hope would be in general agreement with that proposition).
Edouard
Manet, Portrait of Madame Claus (detail), 1868
