October Reading List - 2020
On the first of day of November I have visited an exhibition called 'Titian: Love, Desire, Death'. I have almost forgotten what it feels like to visit a museum or a gallery. It was so unusual to enter through the doors of the National Gallery after seven months and to be surrounded with people and art again. For a moment everything seemed to be back to 'normal'.
This month's reads focused around the idea of 'beauty':
Umberto Eco's 'On Beauty'. I like Eco not only as a writer, but also as a person. He seemed to be a great guy with whom one could grab a drink and talk about interesting subjects. I think it is because of this that 'On Beauty' is such a great book to read. If it was written by some art-historian it could have been a boring and dry work. 'On Beauty' is a history of what we considered beautiful from the times of Ancient Greece to our present day.
Julian Barnes 'Keeping an Eye Open'. The last book that I have read by Barnes was his fictional biography of the Russian composer Shostakovich. It became one of my favorite works of 2016. This book is a collection of his beautifully-written essays on art, from Géricault to Hodgkin. You can read each essay separately, if you prefer. But I think it is worth reading this from the start to finish. (He inspired me to write an essay on Géricault as well, you can take a look at it here)
A short excerpt from John Ruskin's lecture 'On Art and Life'. Ruskin was a famous 19th century English art historian, who wrote dozens of books on history of art. This book is only 100 pages long, but each sentence in this lecture teaches you how to see again. He discusses the pursuit of perfection in art and unintentionally gives some practical tips on how to create exceptional masterpieces.
Alain de Botton's 'Art as Therapy' I found Alain's 2012 Ted Talk called 'Atheism 2.0' funny and very practical to our day. I think some of you might find his book 'Art as Therapy' useful as well. Alain tells how we can find joy, hope, strength and peace in art. This is, of course, nothing new, but it is great to be reminded of it occasionally. But also let me warn you that sometimes he interprets paintings in his book too meticulously without leaving the reader a space to think.
Yukio Mishima 'The Temple of Golden Pavilion' There is a difference between 'storytellers' and 'writers'. Storytellers are entertainers. They write to make us forget about the world around us. Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood - they are storytellers. Being a writer is different. Dostoyevsky, Camus, Orwell, Mishima - they are not entertainers. Their aim is not to distract us from the world, but the opposite - to make us see reality's ugliness and beauty in a new light (or shadow). Camus once said that writers are 'modern philosophers'. Mishima is one of those philosopher-novelists, who wrote in a beautiful poetic language. In 'The Temple of Golden Pavilion' he addresses the question of 'ideal beauty' and what happens when we obsess over it. When our inner world is ugly we want to destroy the beautiful world outside ourselves. And the other way around.
My writing:
1. My article on Victor Hugo's drawings of his unconscious : Blood & Dust: Drawing the Unconscious
2. I analysed symbols in Delacroix's painting 'Lady Liberty Leading People' : Undressing Lady Liberté
