ART: Painted With WordsBy Lara Marlowe Liberties Press, 280pp. €25
WHEN, MORE THAN a decade ago, I came back to this country after living in the US, one of the pleasures I rediscovered was the long, easy Sunday morning, listening to Sunday Miscellanyon RTÉ Radio 1, as the remains of the traditional fry calcified on the plate. There you'll find musings on a range of subjects, from Moorish architecture in southern Spain to bread-making in Lismore, or the taciturn antics of Ernest Blythe's days at the Abbey. They display style and substance, serendipity and rigour, in a literary form that we do not celebrate enough in today's world.
So it was a pleasure to discover Lara Marlowe’s book of essays and revel in their content. Marlowe has been a correspondent for this newspaper for nearly 20 years, for most of which she was located in Paris. She also reported on conflicts in the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan, and, between those no doubt difficult assignments, she made time to mine the beauty and cultural wealth of the French capital.
This volume is the result of her passionate interest in art, and many of the essays here found their first manifestation in this newspaper. Reworked for this book, they offer us a personal selection of more than 60 artists and writers, ranging from Ingres to Picasso, from Robbe-Grillet to Hugo, and from WB Yeats to Brian Maguire.
In the acknowledgments, Marlowe makes a qualified declaration: “I remain an amateur, in the English sense of a dilettante, but also in the French sense of someone who loves art.”
Well, thank God we have intelligent close readers who love to engage in the formalism and content of art, away from the technical and often impenetrable language of contemporary scholarship. Marlowe is able to admit that she can be transfixed by beauty or riveted by truth in art, and is also wise enough to discuss the separation of their properties.
The book is organised into sections, including 20th-century painters, classic painters, Irish connections and 20th-century writers, so the reader can dip in and out of the texts, dispense with chronology and enjoy Marlowe’s conversation. Many of the essays on painters arise from exhibitions Marlowe visited in Paris, and it is easy to be envious of the wealth of such manifestations available to her. Her extensive essay on Picasso, for example, is drawn from at least five exhibitions, seen over 14 years in both Paris and New York.
Her practice as a journalist pervades the style and approach, so the armature is one of dates: marriages, affairs, births and deaths. Thus, as we gain an insight into her subjects, we also get the facts woven into the narrative. One of her most successful studies is that of Brian Maguire, perfectly capturing the Irish artist’s outrage about social injustices in western society, his passionate affiliation with the dispossessed and the marginalised, and his fondness for good suits! The humanistic Maguire concludes, “I have as many contradictions as the next man”; reading Marlowe, we realise that indeed he is entitled to them.
Her vignette of Camus, Lover of the Absurd, is an object lesson in economy. Within little more than 600 words we are educated in the life, work and context of Camus and his circle. So often in this book, the essence of a character is astutely compressed by identifying one act or incident. In this case, it is when, as the novelist's suicidal wife undergoes insulin and electroconvulsive therapy, he is quoted as saying, "I hope by autumn it will be over. And it better be, as I am tired and can't help her anymore." Marlowe then reveals how Camus used this experience to help create one of the most haunting scenes in his novel The Fall.And she finishes her study on Camus with a grave-rolling quote from his one-time friend Sartre, about how he would have hated Sartre having the last word on any treatment of his life – perhaps a little black humour from our author.
In her prologue, Marlowe cites her discovery of the word “ekphrasis”, or the use of one medium of art to describe another – John Banville is a master of it – and if I were to ask for something more from this intriguing and companionable book it would be that the author give her language even more rein to describe that experience of the power of Picasso, or the rigid warmth of Bonnard, or the beauty of Ingres.
Liberties Press has done well to secure the copyright to reproduce so many seminal and germane images, and this handsomely illustrated book would be a welcome Christmas present for anyone interested in art, literature or both. The commentaries are attentive, intelligent and informed, and many thoughts and ideas arose from my reading of it. The highest praise I can offer the author is to say that she is definitely on my list for the perfect dinner party.
Patrick T Murphy is director of the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin
