Regular readers of Living Wittily will know that there aren't usually such long spaces between posts unless there is a good reason. How about a 60th birthday? And 4 days in London? A visit to see The Lion King, the National Gallery, the V&A, a Vivaldi concert by candlelight in St Martin in the Fields, the London Eye, the usual iconic buildings from the Palace to Parliament, and several expensive but indulgent patisseries!!
Where to start describing such a crowded temporal canvas. The highlights can't be chosen between - The Lion King was a stunning show - imaginative, African, colourful, funny, moving, musically throbbing and rhythmic - wouldn't have missed it and have seldom spent loadsa money to better prupose. The Sainsbury Wing of the National was for me an overwhelming encounter with beauty, religious devotion, history and some of the finest art of Europe gathered in one location. I've decided over Lent to do a series of posts on paintings in the National Gallery (two or three a week), as a way of distilling high points of experience into more permanently appropriated insight, appreciation, and that elusive golden strand that runs through all transformative aesthetic experience - joy in beauty. Ruskin wasn't wrong - a thing of beauty is a joy forever. I saw, and enjoyed so much - with time and a refusal to rush into gushing newsiness about it all, perhaps the impact of such lavishly displayed genius will have time to dissipate, leaving behind those wounds of knowledge that give permanence to those touches that change the way we are, and the way we view the world.
But as one example, and because I can't forbear - and don't want to anyway! Here is one of the works that made me go in the first place. I have a postcard of this, The Virgin on the Rocks, which is a more faithful representation of the depth and texture of the colours than any web page. But nothing prepares for the moment you stand in front of this and know yourself addressed by beauty, truth and goodness. You go all the way to London to appraise a painting, and find yourself judged and wanting in the everyday skills of perception and understanding, and not because such ability is inadequate - more fundamentally, I found they were not appropriate.
There are ways of knowing, levels of comprehension, modes of apprehension, that do not survive intact the authoritative demand of a work of art which threatens to revise the assuredness of all our previous knowledge, to ransack fruitlessly our existent vocabulary, and reduces to incidentals the absoluteness of much of our personal experience. To stand before this painting is to be relativised, to re-calibrate our criteria of judgement, to acknowledge yet again, as a necessary and necessarily recurring process of correction, that what we know, really and deeply know, is always and ever provisional, partial, limited, and therefore has to be open to the possibility of expansion, enrichment and newness in those places of encounter where previous experience leaves us unprepared, and thus vulnerable to wonder.
Viewing this painting was for me a religious experience in its own right. I've now read up on it and learned some important facts about context, technique and the artist's likely purposes. But these are secondary, the painting is primary; I am, and hope to remain vulnerable to its wonder.
Happy birthday - youngster. We have a print of the Virgine del rocca over our fireplace.
Posted by: Bob MacDonald | February 23, 2011 at 02:58 AM
and one of the comnforts and delights that I have in being here is the chance to visit the NG often. The Sainsbury wing, since that is where my tastes lie, is a place of worship, silence and contemplation. (But I am miffed we didn't get included in your tour :))
Posted by: ruthg | February 23, 2011 at 09:42 AM
So this is what I have to look forward to should I reach old age - religious experiences, and indulgent patisseries ... or are these related? Happy birthday Jim ;-)
Posted by: Jason Goroncy | February 23, 2011 at 11:05 AM
Happy birthday - sounds you had a fab time
Posted by: Simon Jones | February 23, 2011 at 05:50 PM
Happy birthday, young man! :-) (Must escape the grandchildren for a bit next time I'm down - need to visit the NG again)
Posted by: chris | February 23, 2011 at 11:35 PM
I was in the Sainsbury Wing the week before you!! I loved it, although I have to say the 11 year old tugging my arm was a bit of a distraction. I'm going to a theology conference in London on my own in June so might make a detour there again.
However my favourite painting....in another part of the building....was the group portrait of the Moravian Brethren, including Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf....did you see that one?
Posted by: lynn | April 09, 2011 at 10:33 PM