(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Julian Barnes: Keeping and Eye Open: Essays on Art. Jonathan Cape, 2015 
When JMW Turner's painting Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying – Typhon Coming on exhibited at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1877, the bourgeoisie was already so familiar with the painting through its aesthetic and critic John Ruskin's poetic reproduction of it, that the museum felt obliged to equip the exhibition hall with copies of Ruskin's text. As the audience urged the text's image to its inner eye – "Purple and blue, the lurid shadows of the hollow breakers are cast upon the mist of the night, which gathers cold and low, advancing like the shadow of death upon the guilty ship as it labors amidst the lightning of the sea ”- they could glow up on the murky tableau that hung on the wall. How to experience this early example of a multimedia exhibition is not known, but most of the city's newspapers at least found that the painting did not meet goals compared to the description. It is difficult to imagine a similar situation today. In earlier, less reproduction-friendly times, the description was a virtue of necessity, and the critic's only opportunity to make the works visible to readers. In our photogenic time, the description is largely superfluous. Since Ruskin's time, this kind of descriptive prose has fallen into reputation, and within art criticism it is considered to belong to the very lowest cast. Like the literary critic's compulsory document of action, the one that stumbles through it is a stage of transport. At best, the description is a warm-up before the judgment is dropped. Wordlessly. For modernist critics with a penchant for rigorous, formal analysis, there was little that was more contemptible than descriptive critique based on a personal experience of art. After the 1960s, it has therefore sought refuge in fiction and in literary essay writing. Here in Norway, Ole Robert Sunde and Karl Ove Knausgård are examples of authors who often describe works of art based on the subjective experience. It is not surprising that writers have a penchant for visual artwork; the lingering descriptions often seem to be an attempt to fulfill a longing to move from the causal syntax of language, where one follows the other, towards the simultaneous tableau of the image where events occur side by side, and where the passing time ceases. "I would like to live in them for a century / among the kyrasses there, with my stomach full of hay seeds," writes Rolf Jacobsen about some Venetian weavers in the poem "In the tapestry hall". Tor Ulven has formulated a similar thought: «… but not only this, that it is easier to look at a landscape than to be in it, but something completely different, perhaps the fact that one can disappear in a landscape that does not exist, one that never has existed… »It is also not surprising that visual artists themselves have tended to be skeptical of the words. Henri Matisse believed that artists should have their tongues cut off. The unspoken Lucian Freud claimed that what he himself had to say about his work could be compared to a tennis player's grunt as he hit a ball. Georges Braque wrote that the only thing that counts in art is what cannot be explained. The descriptive. English author Julian Barnes seems to agree. About the English abstract painter Howard Hodkin, Barnes writes: "My increasing absorption of and in [his pictures], rarely translates into coherent comment… I can describe what I see in front of me like a novelist writing travel notes." There is a touch of coquettishness in this admission of inadequacy in the face of art, for Barne's artistic "notes" are very often brilliant. Barnes is best known for novels such as Flaubert's parrot og Levels of life, but has also written about art for the New York Review of Books and Modern Painters. 17 of these essays on artists such as Gustave Courbet, Paul Cezanne and Felix Valotton are now collected in the book Keeping an Eye Open: Essays on Art. In the introduction, he himself writes that the book is about how French painting in particular took the path from romanticism to realism and on to modernism. Fortunately, the book is more than this; a recurring theme is precisely the relationship between what one sees and what one can describe. The book is a good argument that descriptive depictions can be rewarding, yes, even life-giving, because in his anecdotal zeal and search for telling details, Barnes manages to give life to paintings that have long had a touch of museum varnish. The essays i Keeping an Eye Open are examples and defense of thorough, sustained observation. Especially the chapter on Edouard Manet, the French artist who is often regarded as the forerunner of modernist painting, convinces one that the descriptive critique still has its justification. Rifles and shoes. A large part of Barne's essay on Jellyfish deals with a version of The execution of Maximillian, which Manet painted in three editions between 1868 and 1869. We know little about the origins of the painting, writes Barnes, there are neither sketches nor biographical gossip that can enlighten us. Precisely this uncertainty gives the author the opportunity to read the picture with fresh eyes. The painting shows the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximillian standing in front of the execution platoon. The archduke was installed as emperor of Mexico in 1864 after the British, Spaniards and French – the then European creditor troika – invaded the country due to President Juárez's unwillingness to pay government debt. His career as emperor lasted for three turbulent years before Maximillian was shot by Republican rebels in 1867. In other words, it was an inflamed political situation that was the prelude to Manet's painting. But despite the fact that the motif is an execution, the picture is almost without drama. A contemporary critic accused Manet of giving slippers as much value as faces in his paintings, and that is precisely the footwear, suggests Barnes, who points to the modernity of Manet's image.
In his zeal and search for telling details, Barnes manages to give life to paintings that have long had a touch of museum varnish.
Unlike in Francisco Goyas famous The executions May 3, 1808, where the dark-clad soldiers' powerful boots and rigid postures as they fire the rifles testify to death squads that trample down every uprising, Manet's soldiers stand in the courthouse with loose and free leg position. Barnes describes the Mexican soldiers' feet in detail, in a passage that deserves to be quoted throughout its length: "the squaddy in the middle is idiosyncratically putting all his weight on his left foot, grounding only the heel of his right foot. These feet are clearly meant to be noticed, since Manet has embellished them with white spats… They are feet sinking themselves in for useful work, like when a golfer shuffles for balance in a bunker. You can almost imagine the [officer's] pre-execution peptalk about the importance of getting comfortable, relaxing the feet, then the knees and the hips, pretending you're just out for a day's partridge or woodcock… »Når imagillingen om golspilleren som sikter once a putt has first imprinted itself in consciousness, the image never becomes the same again; Barnes' description is a filter over Manet's painting. But it is not as difficult to be convinced that these feet are the key to the picture: This is not a troop of executioners, as with Goya, writes Barnes, but soldiers who perform everyday duties, one of which is the execution of an emperor. There is no morality in Manet's painting, neither in the motif nor in the picturesque execution: shoes, rifle, emperor, wall – they are all painted in the same flat, matte light. Recreate. The concentrated and detailed depiction encourages you to browse the rest of the picture with the same inquisitive gaze: You notice the small strap that is attached under the emperor's chin to prevent the sombrero from falling off, and which makes him appear like a child. This dull expression is reinforced by the fact that the officer on the emperor's left side (why are they holding hands?) Also does not seem to understand what is going on, as if they were watching their own execution from a distance. And the small group of people hanging over the wall at the courthouse – do they tear themselves unhappily in mourning over the emperor's fate, or do they regard it all scattered with their heads in their hands as drowsy glare cherubs on a cloud? In the end, describing is perhaps just an exercise in seeing. But to reproduce is also to recreate, and although much is lost in the translation from one medium to another, new images are produced through the text. Barnes assesses whether a work of art is successful by asking a few simple questions: Does it capture the interest of the eye, does it engage the brain, does it stimulate reflection, and does it move the heart? If Barnes' essay is subject to the same criteria, the answer is a resounding yes.
Helsvig is a visual artist and writer. sjhelsvig@gmail.com
