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About five years ago, I had a funny experience during aseries of job interviews in Philadelphia. Theorganization doing the hiring was a large, prestigious non-profit, and althoughthe position in question represented apotential change from my usual area of professional endeavor, I was veryinterested even though the salary was modest.
Initially I met andspoke to four or five subordinate attorneys in the department, all of them intelligent andpleasant, during the course of several hours, recounting my life story and reciting my resume skills in various characterless offices andconference rooms, regarding Philadelphia's gray-brown frost outside the windows. Finally, I was ushered in to meet the General Counsel, a womanwith a lot of presence who simultaneously gave an impression ofaccomplishment, joy and melancholy. We had a good discussion about the position, the organization and bothour careers and backgrounds. She had been a nurse before going to lawschool which, given her field of legal specialty, was a valuablequalification in terms of both the analytical and affective components of herjob.
Midway through our conversation, describing her approach to work,she said "I'm an alcoholic." Shequickly corrected herself, substituting the word "workaholic," looking surprised and embarrassed, but laughing. It was anawkward 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 positionnever came through, something I'm happy to say I was able to confirm through othersources. (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 whenone talks about nonverbal referential processes – that is, wordless thinking;these people simply seem to have no ability to grasp the idea that a great dealof covert living – living that is not objectively observable, but onlyinferable – can go on without the use of words. The brute fact is, as Isee it, that most of living goes on that way. That does not in any sensereduce the enormous importance of the communicative tools – words andgestures."
Harry StackSullivan –
TheInterpersonal Theory of Psychiatry, New York, Norton, 1953 *Paintings by Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin. Upper: Girl WithRacket and Shuttlecock, 1737, Uffizi Gallery, Florence; Lower: The House of Cards,1736-7, National Gallery, London.** This post isdedicated to “half-Leapling” and badminton artist Jane Butler Robertson her fourth half-birthday, 2-29-12. It may be a matter of pure coincidence thatJane taught her parents, who were never great silent movie fans, to appreciateCharlie Chaplin’s early artistry when she was very young and stillnonverbal. In the nicest possible way, Jane still renders me speechless most of the time.
TO ROBERT ROSS
MS. Clark
[28February, 1895] Hotel Avondale, PiccadillyDearest Bobbie, Since I saw you something has happened. Bosie’s father has left a note at my club with hideouswords on it. I don’t see anything nowbut a criminal prosecution. My whole life seems ruined by thisman. The tower of ivory is assailed by the foul thing. On the sand is my life split. Idon’t knowwhat to do. If you could come here at 11:30 please do so tonight. Imar your life by trespassing ever on your love and kindness. I have asked Bosie to come tomorrow.Everyours. OSCAR
EdouardManet, 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. Onthe advice of the Reviewing Committee, the Culture Minister Ed Vaizey hasextended the temporary export bar on the painting untilAugust to give the Ashmolean time in which to raise the funds in order toacquire the painting. The painting has been sold toa foreign buyer for £28.35 million but, under a privatetreaty sale, with tax remission it can be purchased by an approved UKpublic collection at a greatly reduced price. The Ashmolean isapproaching public funding bodies, trusts and private individuals, andlaunching a public campaign to raise the required £7.83xmillion. Dr Christopher Brown CBE, Director of the Ashmolean, said, “Thisis one of the most important pictures of the 19th century which has been inthis country since its sale following the artist’s death. The painting is available to public bodies approved by theTreasury at 25% of its market value. The £7.83 million, though a substantial sum to be found, is a mere fraction ofthe picture’s actual worth and it would therefore be anenormous disappointment if it could not be saved for the nation. The picture’s significance is reflected in its history: it was hugely admiredand then bought by another great artist, John Singer Sargent, in 1884. Its purchase would, at a stroke, transform the Ashmolean’srepresentation of Impressionist painting.”
JohnSinger 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 thepublic, was hugely admired by artists. His reputation grew rapidly in the 20thcentury and consequently his best works were acquired by major museums. Thereare now remarkably few Manets in private collections, almost all in France, andthere are only a handful of important pictures byManet 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 theMuseum’s permanent collections and the Pissarro Family Collection, the acquisition of this masterpiece would make the Ashmolean aworld-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 theImpressionist 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 onwardswhen he began to focus his attention on his family and close friends. The portrait’s subject is Fanny Claus (1846–77), the closest friendof Manet’s wife Suzanne Leenhoff. A concert violinist and member of the first all-women stringquartet, Fanny was one of Manet’s favourite sitters and a member of aclose-knit group of friends who also provided the artist with models. Shemarried 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.
EdouardManet, Le Balcon, 1868-9
If acquired by the Ashmolean the Portrait of Mademoiselle Clauswill be shown at a number of museums in the UK in a specialexhibition. Having previously been exhibited only once since it waspainted, this will be a great revelationboth to the public and to Manet scholars. As a first sketch, the portrait has aspontaneous quality and a vibrant palette lessevident in Le Balcon which was reworked a number of times by the artist as he refinedthe composition in his studio. Mademoiselle Claus reveals fascinating newinformation about the working methods of Edouard Manet, one of the greatestmasters of modern art.
EdouardManet, Self-Portrait With Palette, 1879
NOTE: This article on the ArtDaily.org website caught my eye this morning, mostly because it pairedthe names of Edouard Manet, one ofmy favorite painters, with Oxford’s esteemed AshmoleanMuseum. 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 meangry. The general publicusually pays very little attention to Stateexpropriation of private property under the sanitized,clinical, and almost noble-sounding sobriquet “eminent domain.” Eminent domainconcerns are mostly the province of its unfortunate victims, their lawyers andthe "compulsory takers'" lawyers. (By the way, anyone with any significantleasehold on real property should read their legal documents carefully on thispoint before signing.) I don’t wish to overelaborate, spin this out, or ruin anyone’s day, but itis one thing (albeit a complicated one) if the State feels the desire and expresses the intention to putan essential road through privately-owned real estate by engaging in coerced taking. But it is quite another when government abrogates aprivate, legal sale of personal property by a citizen (or otherwise legally authorizedperson) for any reason, let alone for such attenuatedand specious ones as we find here. I suppose I could understand – slightly – if the artwork inquestion were British, rather than French, or if it had been the property of ahistorically significant British collector, rather than a famous Americanpainter who happened to purchase the work in Great Britain where he was then resident.Essentially, this painting’sheritage is as foreign to Britain as my own. I assume that the “private treaty sale,with tax remission” aspect of this horrendous exercise ofState power is intended to lessen the ultimate tax consequences for theabused seller and restore some of his or her lost profit margin. Possiblyother emoluments (invitations to museumopenings, blue ribbons and rosettes, fancy hors d'oeuvres) are also beingoffered in partial, paltry recompense. In the end, however, the State will do whatthe State will do. Regularly reading about the totallyscrewed-up financial and social state of the United Kingdom today, I find it absolutelyappalling that Prime Minister Cameron's government and the grabby Ashmoleandirector don’t feel that their priorities aretotally misplaced. (Please see today's relevant Link Of The Day on this subject.
) I mean, it’s a lovely painting with an interesting history andconnection 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).
EdouardManet, Portrait of Madame Claus (detail), 1868
