Leonardo

The Artist by Himself: Self-Portrait Drawings from Youth to Old Age by Joan KinneirReview by: Inge HoffmanLeonardo, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Summer, 1982), p. 252Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1574724 .

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252 252 252 Books Books Books

germination, was brown and russet... The first thing we notice is the tongue, whose complete, fleshy, voluptuous curve was pleasant to touch.' For all of the advancement in our knowledge of Chinese statuary art, no one has ceded as immediate a tactile appreciation of the objects as Segalen did.

On the other hand, many of his annotations are charmingly impetuous at best. In approaching the famous t'ao t'ieh on the great Shen pillar, Segalen enjoyed too much his own metaphor that the beast was like a 'mole digging away and finishing his hole' when he used the metaphor to explain 'why the nose is flattened out: he has pushed back the stone'.

Likewise, what he admired, he praised with ebullience; what he despised, he simply dismissed. In the latter category falls all Ch'ing statuary, and almost all Buddhist sculpture, which he finds 'neither beautiful nor Chinese'. In a chapter entitled 'The Buddhist Heresy', he claims that 'the only thing great about the thousand Buddhas of Lung- men and Yun-kang ... is the span of their wide-open hands.'

An important feature in the present edition of Segalen's early exegesis on Chinese statuary encountered in the field is an 'Afterward' by Vadime Elisseeff, Director of the Cernuschi Museum, Paris. Elisseeff reminds the reader that Segalen died before the great period of excavation in China and proceeds to indicate some of the major advances since 1919 in order to augment, even if briefly, the young Frenchman's findings.

Ultimately, then, one must read Segalen's text less for art historical accuracy than for historiographic relevance; I believe that its idiosyncratic approach and style will enchant some and alienate others, but its reissue is certainly warranted and applauded.

The Artist by Himself: Self-portrait Drawings from Youth to Old Age. Joan Kinneir, ed., Granada, London, 1980. 224 pp., illus., ?9.95. ISBN: 0-236-40160-2. Reviewed by Inge Hoffman*

Here are seventy relatively little known self-portrait drawings and texts chosen from the work of men (plus 1 woman) who lived between 1400 and the present. Some of the painters are unknown, some perhaps not artists, but most of the works have an allure which will delight or profoundly move the gazer.

Even without the title explanation, we would have recognized these as self-portraits. Why? Is it the riveting stare of the artist's eyes looking into our own? Is it something indefinable in the pose? More personal than paintings, the calligraphy of the drawings clearly traces mood and character in its gestures. And in comparing these curiously assembled works one common impression emerges: there is a magic intensity in the self-portrait which infuses life and with it, artistic merit, even into the slighter works presented here. But beyond that, what is one to make of this collection?

Both the student and the scholar will be disappointed. For the editor shows poor judgment about nearly everything except the portraits themselves. The organization of the material is not felicitous and the texts are uneven.

The portraits are arranged chronologically by the age of the artist when he sketched it, but often the age of the artist is omitted in the text. So we begin with the ca 12 year old Diirer's famous self-portrait (1484) and go on to an unknown schoolboy's one known work, aged 14(1954), and to Raphael's undated portrait of the 15th century, aged 16/17. Eventually, the mid-life painters bring us to Wyndam Lewis, aged 51 in 1932, Holbein, 51 in 1516, Bellini, 65 in 1496, and Blake at 53 in 1810, in that order. Thus 1484, 1879, 1932, 1954, 1516, 1496 and 1810 is the chronological sequence of these portraits. The author tries to draw few conclusions from these juxtapositions. To us, this helter-skelter sequence doesn't reveal its merit as a principle of organization.

Perhaps in frustration, the reader will play guessing games along with the reviewer: looking at the portraits selected by the editor, do we detect more melancholy, brooding, introspective moods of self-doubt in youth than in later life? Whereas Rembrandt's at 29, Picasso's at 30 begin to show more of a sense of well-being? Do we agree with the editor that anyone besides Hokusai shows 'the resilience of old age'? Few are the expressions of delight on the faces of any of the portraits here chosen. But on the basis of such a selection, the scholar will beware of drawing any conclusions.

Accompanying each portrait, there is a hodge-podge of information. If we're lucky, the texts are written by the painters-there are a few good

germination, was brown and russet... The first thing we notice is the tongue, whose complete, fleshy, voluptuous curve was pleasant to touch.' For all of the advancement in our knowledge of Chinese statuary art, no one has ceded as immediate a tactile appreciation of the objects as Segalen did.

On the other hand, many of his annotations are charmingly impetuous at best. In approaching the famous t'ao t'ieh on the great Shen pillar, Segalen enjoyed too much his own metaphor that the beast was like a 'mole digging away and finishing his hole' when he used the metaphor to explain 'why the nose is flattened out: he has pushed back the stone'.

Likewise, what he admired, he praised with ebullience; what he despised, he simply dismissed. In the latter category falls all Ch'ing statuary, and almost all Buddhist sculpture, which he finds 'neither beautiful nor Chinese'. In a chapter entitled 'The Buddhist Heresy', he claims that 'the only thing great about the thousand Buddhas of Lung- men and Yun-kang ... is the span of their wide-open hands.'

An important feature in the present edition of Segalen's early exegesis on Chinese statuary encountered in the field is an 'Afterward' by Vadime Elisseeff, Director of the Cernuschi Museum, Paris. Elisseeff reminds the reader that Segalen died before the great period of excavation in China and proceeds to indicate some of the major advances since 1919 in order to augment, even if briefly, the young Frenchman's findings.

Ultimately, then, one must read Segalen's text less for art historical accuracy than for historiographic relevance; I believe that its idiosyncratic approach and style will enchant some and alienate others, but its reissue is certainly warranted and applauded.

The Artist by Himself: Self-portrait Drawings from Youth to Old Age. Joan Kinneir, ed., Granada, London, 1980. 224 pp., illus., ?9.95. ISBN: 0-236-40160-2. Reviewed by Inge Hoffman*

Here are seventy relatively little known self-portrait drawings and texts chosen from the work of men (plus 1 woman) who lived between 1400 and the present. Some of the painters are unknown, some perhaps not artists, but most of the works have an allure which will delight or profoundly move the gazer.

Even without the title explanation, we would have recognized these as self-portraits. Why? Is it the riveting stare of the artist's eyes looking into our own? Is it something indefinable in the pose? More personal than paintings, the calligraphy of the drawings clearly traces mood and character in its gestures. And in comparing these curiously assembled works one common impression emerges: there is a magic intensity in the self-portrait which infuses life and with it, artistic merit, even into the slighter works presented here. But beyond that, what is one to make of this collection?

Both the student and the scholar will be disappointed. For the editor shows poor judgment about nearly everything except the portraits themselves. The organization of the material is not felicitous and the texts are uneven.

The portraits are arranged chronologically by the age of the artist when he sketched it, but often the age of the artist is omitted in the text. So we begin with the ca 12 year old Diirer's famous self-portrait (1484) and go on to an unknown schoolboy's one known work, aged 14(1954), and to Raphael's undated portrait of the 15th century, aged 16/17. Eventually, the mid-life painters bring us to Wyndam Lewis, aged 51 in 1932, Holbein, 51 in 1516, Bellini, 65 in 1496, and Blake at 53 in 1810, in that order. Thus 1484, 1879, 1932, 1954, 1516, 1496 and 1810 is the chronological sequence of these portraits. The author tries to draw few conclusions from these juxtapositions. To us, this helter-skelter sequence doesn't reveal its merit as a principle of organization.

Perhaps in frustration, the reader will play guessing games along with the reviewer: looking at the portraits selected by the editor, do we detect more melancholy, brooding, introspective moods of self-doubt in youth than in later life? Whereas Rembrandt's at 29, Picasso's at 30 begin to show more of a sense of well-being? Do we agree with the editor that anyone besides Hokusai shows 'the resilience of old age'? Few are the expressions of delight on the faces of any of the portraits here chosen. But on the basis of such a selection, the scholar will beware of drawing any conclusions.

Accompanying each portrait, there is a hodge-podge of information. If we're lucky, the texts are written by the painters-there are a few good

germination, was brown and russet... The first thing we notice is the tongue, whose complete, fleshy, voluptuous curve was pleasant to touch.' For all of the advancement in our knowledge of Chinese statuary art, no one has ceded as immediate a tactile appreciation of the objects as Segalen did.

On the other hand, many of his annotations are charmingly impetuous at best. In approaching the famous t'ao t'ieh on the great Shen pillar, Segalen enjoyed too much his own metaphor that the beast was like a 'mole digging away and finishing his hole' when he used the metaphor to explain 'why the nose is flattened out: he has pushed back the stone'.

Likewise, what he admired, he praised with ebullience; what he despised, he simply dismissed. In the latter category falls all Ch'ing statuary, and almost all Buddhist sculpture, which he finds 'neither beautiful nor Chinese'. In a chapter entitled 'The Buddhist Heresy', he claims that 'the only thing great about the thousand Buddhas of Lung- men and Yun-kang ... is the span of their wide-open hands.'

An important feature in the present edition of Segalen's early exegesis on Chinese statuary encountered in the field is an 'Afterward' by Vadime Elisseeff, Director of the Cernuschi Museum, Paris. Elisseeff reminds the reader that Segalen died before the great period of excavation in China and proceeds to indicate some of the major advances since 1919 in order to augment, even if briefly, the young Frenchman's findings.

Ultimately, then, one must read Segalen's text less for art historical accuracy than for historiographic relevance; I believe that its idiosyncratic approach and style will enchant some and alienate others, but its reissue is certainly warranted and applauded.

The Artist by Himself: Self-portrait Drawings from Youth to Old Age. Joan Kinneir, ed., Granada, London, 1980. 224 pp., illus., ?9.95. ISBN: 0-236-40160-2. Reviewed by Inge Hoffman*

Here are seventy relatively little known self-portrait drawings and texts chosen from the work of men (plus 1 woman) who lived between 1400 and the present. Some of the painters are unknown, some perhaps not artists, but most of the works have an allure which will delight or profoundly move the gazer.

Even without the title explanation, we would have recognized these as self-portraits. Why? Is it the riveting stare of the artist's eyes looking into our own? Is it something indefinable in the pose? More personal than paintings, the calligraphy of the drawings clearly traces mood and character in its gestures. And in comparing these curiously assembled works one common impression emerges: there is a magic intensity in the self-portrait which infuses life and with it, artistic merit, even into the slighter works presented here. But beyond that, what is one to make of this collection?

Both the student and the scholar will be disappointed. For the editor shows poor judgment about nearly everything except the portraits themselves. The organization of the material is not felicitous and the texts are uneven.

The portraits are arranged chronologically by the age of the artist when he sketched it, but often the age of the artist is omitted in the text. So we begin with the ca 12 year old Diirer's famous self-portrait (1484) and go on to an unknown schoolboy's one known work, aged 14(1954), and to Raphael's undated portrait of the 15th century, aged 16/17. Eventually, the mid-life painters bring us to Wyndam Lewis, aged 51 in 1932, Holbein, 51 in 1516, Bellini, 65 in 1496, and Blake at 53 in 1810, in that order. Thus 1484, 1879, 1932, 1954, 1516, 1496 and 1810 is the chronological sequence of these portraits. The author tries to draw few conclusions from these juxtapositions. To us, this helter-skelter sequence doesn't reveal its merit as a principle of organization.

Perhaps in frustration, the reader will play guessing games along with the reviewer: looking at the portraits selected by the editor, do we detect more melancholy, brooding, introspective moods of self-doubt in youth than in later life? Whereas Rembrandt's at 29, Picasso's at 30 begin to show more of a sense of well-being? Do we agree with the editor that anyone besides Hokusai shows 'the resilience of old age'? Few are the expressions of delight on the faces of any of the portraits here chosen. But on the basis of such a selection, the scholar will beware of drawing any conclusions.

Accompanying each portrait, there is a hodge-podge of information. If we're lucky, the texts are written by the painters-there are a few good

ones by Van Gogh, Kokoshka and Henry Moore; but mostly they do not reveal anything important about the artist or his work. The reader loses even more confidence in the collector when he reads endless and irrelevant footnotes or tries to make comparisons between painters and finds no alphabetic index. Often the footnotes are mechanical identifications, e.g. is it important for the understanding of Rouault to know that it was a Mr. Gretry, born in 1741, who set the words of a childhood memory to music, and what of Vercingetorix, who the footnote reminds us, defeated Caesar in 51 BC? What do these two facts cluttering the references reveal about Rouault? So the reader may decide to skip the footnotes. Wrong again-for in that same clutter, we find a gem which should have been kept in the main text: 'Between the ages of 14 and 18, Rouault was apprenticed to a stainglass maker.' Here we have a lead to Rouault's later 'stainglass' style which may come as a surprise to some readers, who would like to learn more about that fact and could do without the two and a half pages describing what Mrs. Ingres spent on bacon, corn, her husband's hat and her gloves in July 1841.

Most baffling and symptomatic of the failures of this collection is the selection on Blake. The self-portrait is set on a page which may be his diary and where the tenacious reader may painfully decipher parts of a fascinating message of Blake's views on art and the model. Instead of helping the reader to decipher this text, Kinneir directs our attention only to the self-portrait and to her appended text, which is a letter by Blake of questionable centrality to his life as an artist.

There is no doubt good raw material here, if the serious student can find what he or she is looking for.

At least artists and others at the cocktail table can find delight in randomly opening the pages to the drawings. But it does seem like a high cost (price) for such return.

Illustrated Notebooks: 1917-55. Georges Braque. Dover, New York, 1971. 117 pp., illus. Paper, $4.00. ISBN: 0-486-20232-1. Reviewed by Inge Hoffman*

Here is a bedside book to be savoured slowly like bonbons for many years.

Dover is to be thanked for making available to the general reader, at a very modest price, a facsimile edition of private notebooks of the great Georges Braque. There are 113 pages of reflections and each page is embroidered by black ink drawings, allegedly spanning all of the painter's active painting life, from the age of 35 to 73. The pages are nearly opaque and sewn, a really superior paperback bargain.

In it the reader will find Braque's preoccupation with the definition of art; but it is hedged throughout by his distrust of 'definition': 'Peindre n'est pas depeindre...' (Painting is not depicting), 'Le conformisme commence avec la definition.' 'Une chose ne peut etre d la fois vraie et vraisemblable' (A thing cannot be true and likely at the same time). 'Le tableau estfini, quand il a efface l'idee ...' (The painting is finished when it has effaced the idea). 'Definir une chose, c'est substituer la d4finition a la chose' (To define a thing is to replace it with its definition).

The translations are the only additions of Dover's unabridged republication. They are prepared by Stanley Applebaum and, as can be seen, they are faithful, if uninspired, but never wooden. They are artfully and visibly stowed out of the way of Braque's original page layout.

The designs (familiar motifs of his paintings), and the differences in handwriting, may give the expert on Braque clues about when these pages were written and whether they are presented in the original sequence. But the 'innocent' reader is given little guidance by the publisher.

And here lies the flaw and of this and, primarily, of the original Maeght facsimile edition. The Dover edition is an unabridged republication of the Maeght publication, noting the discrepancies of dates, but not indicating the publication date of the Maeght portfolio. When Maeght first published these notebooks, the collection had several ambiguities of dates and sequence: There were the Notebooks of 1917-47 (also referred to by Maeght as those of 1916-1947 and 1917-1948), and the Notebooks of 1947-55; the whole was a portfolio, presumably of loose pages. If we compare some of the pages of the two notebooks as reproduced bound in the Dover edition, we wonder whether they are in the sequence in which they were conceived. For example: plates 18 and 47. The two plates appear to be mirror reflections in their identical design and similarity or handwritings; it seems likely that they were written, at most within days of each other, yet they are

ones by Van Gogh, Kokoshka and Henry Moore; but mostly they do not reveal anything important about the artist or his work. The reader loses even more confidence in the collector when he reads endless and irrelevant footnotes or tries to make comparisons between painters and finds no alphabetic index. Often the footnotes are mechanical identifications, e.g. is it important for the understanding of Rouault to know that it was a Mr. Gretry, born in 1741, who set the words of a childhood memory to music, and what of Vercingetorix, who the footnote reminds us, defeated Caesar in 51 BC? What do these two facts cluttering the references reveal about Rouault? So the reader may decide to skip the footnotes. Wrong again-for in that same clutter, we find a gem which should have been kept in the main text: 'Between the ages of 14 and 18, Rouault was apprenticed to a stainglass maker.' Here we have a lead to Rouault's later 'stainglass' style which may come as a surprise to some readers, who would like to learn more about that fact and could do without the two and a half pages describing what Mrs. Ingres spent on bacon, corn, her husband's hat and her gloves in July 1841.

Most baffling and symptomatic of the failures of this collection is the selection on Blake. The self-portrait is set on a page which may be his diary and where the tenacious reader may painfully decipher parts of a fascinating message of Blake's views on art and the model. Instead of helping the reader to decipher this text, Kinneir directs our attention only to the self-portrait and to her appended text, which is a letter by Blake of questionable centrality to his life as an artist.

There is no doubt good raw material here, if the serious student can find what he or she is looking for.

At least artists and others at the cocktail table can find delight in randomly opening the pages to the drawings. But it does seem like a high cost (price) for such return.

Illustrated Notebooks: 1917-55. Georges Braque. Dover, New York, 1971. 117 pp., illus. Paper, $4.00. ISBN: 0-486-20232-1. Reviewed by Inge Hoffman*

Here is a bedside book to be savoured slowly like bonbons for many years.

Dover is to be thanked for making available to the general reader, at a very modest price, a facsimile edition of private notebooks of the great Georges Braque. There are 113 pages of reflections and each page is embroidered by black ink drawings, allegedly spanning all of the painter's active painting life, from the age of 35 to 73. The pages are nearly opaque and sewn, a really superior paperback bargain.

In it the reader will find Braque's preoccupation with the definition of art; but it is hedged throughout by his distrust of 'definition': 'Peindre n'est pas depeindre...' (Painting is not depicting), 'Le conformisme commence avec la definition.' 'Une chose ne peut etre d la fois vraie et vraisemblable' (A thing cannot be true and likely at the same time). 'Le tableau estfini, quand il a efface l'idee ...' (The painting is finished when it has effaced the idea). 'Definir une chose, c'est substituer la d4finition a la chose' (To define a thing is to replace it with its definition).

The translations are the only additions of Dover's unabridged republication. They are prepared by Stanley Applebaum and, as can be seen, they are faithful, if uninspired, but never wooden. They are artfully and visibly stowed out of the way of Braque's original page layout.

The designs (familiar motifs of his paintings), and the differences in handwriting, may give the expert on Braque clues about when these pages were written and whether they are presented in the original sequence. But the 'innocent' reader is given little guidance by the publisher.

And here lies the flaw and of this and, primarily, of the original Maeght facsimile edition. The Dover edition is an unabridged republication of the Maeght publication, noting the discrepancies of dates, but not indicating the publication date of the Maeght portfolio. When Maeght first published these notebooks, the collection had several ambiguities of dates and sequence: There were the Notebooks of 1917-47 (also referred to by Maeght as those of 1916-1947 and 1917-1948), and the Notebooks of 1947-55; the whole was a portfolio, presumably of loose pages. If we compare some of the pages of the two notebooks as reproduced bound in the Dover edition, we wonder whether they are in the sequence in which they were conceived. For example: plates 18 and 47. The two plates appear to be mirror reflections in their identical design and similarity or handwritings; it seems likely that they were written, at most within days of each other, yet they are

ones by Van Gogh, Kokoshka and Henry Moore; but mostly they do not reveal anything important about the artist or his work. The reader loses even more confidence in the collector when he reads endless and irrelevant footnotes or tries to make comparisons between painters and finds no alphabetic index. Often the footnotes are mechanical identifications, e.g. is it important for the understanding of Rouault to know that it was a Mr. Gretry, born in 1741, who set the words of a childhood memory to music, and what of Vercingetorix, who the footnote reminds us, defeated Caesar in 51 BC? What do these two facts cluttering the references reveal about Rouault? So the reader may decide to skip the footnotes. Wrong again-for in that same clutter, we find a gem which should have been kept in the main text: 'Between the ages of 14 and 18, Rouault was apprenticed to a stainglass maker.' Here we have a lead to Rouault's later 'stainglass' style which may come as a surprise to some readers, who would like to learn more about that fact and could do without the two and a half pages describing what Mrs. Ingres spent on bacon, corn, her husband's hat and her gloves in July 1841.

Most baffling and symptomatic of the failures of this collection is the selection on Blake. The self-portrait is set on a page which may be his diary and where the tenacious reader may painfully decipher parts of a fascinating message of Blake's views on art and the model. Instead of helping the reader to decipher this text, Kinneir directs our attention only to the self-portrait and to her appended text, which is a letter by Blake of questionable centrality to his life as an artist.

There is no doubt good raw material here, if the serious student can find what he or she is looking for.

At least artists and others at the cocktail table can find delight in randomly opening the pages to the drawings. But it does seem like a high cost (price) for such return.

Illustrated Notebooks: 1917-55. Georges Braque. Dover, New York, 1971. 117 pp., illus. Paper, $4.00. ISBN: 0-486-20232-1. Reviewed by Inge Hoffman*

Here is a bedside book to be savoured slowly like bonbons for many years.

Dover is to be thanked for making available to the general reader, at a very modest price, a facsimile edition of private notebooks of the great Georges Braque. There are 113 pages of reflections and each page is embroidered by black ink drawings, allegedly spanning all of the painter's active painting life, from the age of 35 to 73. The pages are nearly opaque and sewn, a really superior paperback bargain.

In it the reader will find Braque's preoccupation with the definition of art; but it is hedged throughout by his distrust of 'definition': 'Peindre n'est pas depeindre...' (Painting is not depicting), 'Le conformisme commence avec la definition.' 'Une chose ne peut etre d la fois vraie et vraisemblable' (A thing cannot be true and likely at the same time). 'Le tableau estfini, quand il a efface l'idee ...' (The painting is finished when it has effaced the idea). 'Definir une chose, c'est substituer la d4finition a la chose' (To define a thing is to replace it with its definition).

The translations are the only additions of Dover's unabridged republication. They are prepared by Stanley Applebaum and, as can be seen, they are faithful, if uninspired, but never wooden. They are artfully and visibly stowed out of the way of Braque's original page layout.

The designs (familiar motifs of his paintings), and the differences in handwriting, may give the expert on Braque clues about when these pages were written and whether they are presented in the original sequence. But the 'innocent' reader is given little guidance by the publisher.

And here lies the flaw and of this and, primarily, of the original Maeght facsimile edition. The Dover edition is an unabridged republication of the Maeght publication, noting the discrepancies of dates, but not indicating the publication date of the Maeght portfolio. When Maeght first published these notebooks, the collection had several ambiguities of dates and sequence: There were the Notebooks of 1917-47 (also referred to by Maeght as those of 1916-1947 and 1917-1948), and the Notebooks of 1947-55; the whole was a portfolio, presumably of loose pages. If we compare some of the pages of the two notebooks as reproduced bound in the Dover edition, we wonder whether they are in the sequence in which they were conceived. For example: plates 18 and 47. The two plates appear to be mirror reflections in their identical design and similarity or handwritings; it seems likely that they were written, at most within days of each other, yet they are

*91 Washington Ave., Cambridge, MA 02140, U.S.A. *91 Washington Ave., Cambridge, MA 02140, U.S.A. *91 Washington Ave., Cambridge, MA 02140, U.S.A. *91 Washington Ave., Cambridge, MA 02140, U.S.A. *91 Washington Ave., Cambridge, MA 02140, U.S.A. *91 Washington Ave., Cambridge, MA 02140, U.S.A.

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.58 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 08:49:06 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions