Ilse’s Reviews > Keeping an Eye Open: Essays on Art > Status Update
Ilse
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Colour was regarded as suspect by classical Cubism: it was 'anecdotical', it blurted, it carried too much information, it distracted from the pursuit of form. So it had to be whipped into line - literally: that old French battle between colour and line was now taking a new turn. By 1910-1911 you could have any colour you liked, so long as it was grey, brown or beige.
— Jun 12, 2026 04:12AM
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Ilse’s Previous Updates
Ilse
is on page 202 of 276
Braque was like some hilltop castle that Picasso was constantly besieging. He bombards it&each time the smoke clears,the castle is as solid as ever. Thwarted,he declares the site of no strategic interest anyway.Braque,he says, merely has 'charm'; he has gone back to 'French painting', becoming the 'Vuillard of Cubism'.He tells him his pictures are 'well hung.' Braque replies that Picasso's ceramics are 'well cooked'.
— Jun 16, 2026 03:23AM
Ilse
is on page 142 of 276
Bonnard is the painter of the Great Indoors, even when he is painting the Great Outdoors. One London critic,infuriated by such dense luxuriance, described the gardens glimpsed through Bonnard's windows as 'over-planted'. At last, a painter brought before the tribunal of Gardener's Question Time ('And whiles we're about it,that Douanier Rousseau's feller's bin plantin' too many of them giant succulents on his patch').
— Jun 07, 2026 10:06AM
Ilse
is on page 106 of 276
Cézanne was well read in the classics; and also proved that it is possible, if rare, to be a Balzacian, a Stendhalian and a Flaubertian all at the same time. Monet called him 'a Flaubert of painting': certainly, Cézanne had the monkishness required; also the belief that the artist behind the art should remain obscure. Though he was also - unlike Flaubert - rather prudish and proper when it came to women.(1/2)
— May 22, 2026 03:05AM
Ilse
is on page 105 of 276
Zola needed his literary success to be expressed in material terms: big house, fine food, social advancement, bourgeois respectability, whereas the better known Cézanne became, the more he avoided the world. In his later years, the painter was living in a quarry, seeing as few people as possible, and reading Flaubert. In the modern world, one of St Antony's temptations would be that of artistic success.
— May 20, 2026 02:50AM
Ilse
is on page 8 of 276
Flaubert believed it was impossible to explain one art form in terms of another & great paintings required no words of explanation.Braque thought the ideal state would be reached when we said nothing at all in front of a painting.But we are very far from reaching that state.We remain incorrigibly verbal creatures who love to explain things, to form opinions.It is a rare picture which stuns,or argues, us into silence.
— Jan 21, 2026 08:47AM
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Irena
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Jun 12, 2026 09:26AM
Just so in the news Barnes received Spain's top literature prize Princess of Asturias Award for Literature.;)
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Heh. This explains why I see so many paintings and think, "Nice composition, if only it weren't so brown..."
Irena wrote: "Just so in the news Barnes received Spain's top literature prize Princess of Asturias Award for Literature.;)"That's wonderful news, thank you for sharing, Irena! A well-deserved recognition, this fangirl of Barnes would say in all objectivity ;D. I love his essays, and already want to revisit this wondrous collection soon - it makes me smile to read he also has a weak spot for Georges Braque ♥.
The jury put it pitch-perfectly:
According to the Princess of Asturias Award jury, Barnes is an ‘extraordinary storyteller and essayist, endowed with humour, irony, and, in his own words, a ‘melancholic optimism and cheerful pessimism.’’
Is Barnes in your personal pantheon of favourite writers too?
Mir wrote: "Heh. This explains why I see so many paintings and think, "Nice composition, if only it weren't so brown...""Mir, same for me! I had been wondering about those browns simulteanously popping up in the cubist paintings of Picasso and Bracque - I saw them paired in several museums which made the chosen colour palette even more striking. Reading that is was not a matter of incidental availability of paint but embedded in a long-standing discussion in French art was quite eye-opening :).
Ilse, I love how he puts it: "melancholic optimism and cheerful pessimism". Thank you for sharing this formula! I can't say Barnes is my favorite writer. So far, I've only read "Arthur & George" and "Flaubert's Parrot". He is definitely the writer whose work I respect, sometimes enjoy and admire, but it's always on a rational level rather than on an emotional one. Maybe I haven't yet read his book that would make me loose my head and fall in love with his wrting.;)
Yes, that suspicion of colour in cubism is very noticeable, colour carries too much information - wow, that is something to chew over and digest, thanks!
Irena wrote: "Ilse, I love how he puts it: "melancholic optimism and cheerful pessimism". Thank you for sharing this formula! I can't say Barnes is my favorite writer. So far, I've only read "Arthur & George" and "Flaubert's Parrot". He is definitely the writer whose work I respect, sometimes enjoy and admire, but it's always on a rational level rather than on an emotional one. Irena, it wasn't love at first sight for me either, on the contrary (I started with A History of the World in 10½ Chapters and thought it pretty bland until the last two chapters), and like you, I (mostly moderately) enjoyed reading him without his work really touching me. It might have been Levels of Life - of which the third part left me devastated - that changed my feelings for his writing. I cannot deny that what I read from his fiction resonated less with me than his essays, in which I underscore many lines because they make me smile or are so finely crafted (I thought Through the Window: Seventeen Essays simply divine :)). (besides, "Arthur & George" is still waiting here on a shelf; 'Flaubert's parrot' I loved, but it came on top of an already existing adoration for Flaubert, so it seems unfair to count that in which books of Barnes I liked most :).
Jan-Maat wrote: "Yes, that suspicion of colour in cubism is very noticeable, colour carries too much information - wow, that is something to chew over and digest, thanks!"It's remarkable to see how Braque from vibrant fauvist colours went into a less heated palette (rich browns, greens and greys) to almost neutral, monochromatic greys - and in the last phase swung back to rich and atmospheric colours. It is interesting to see those different views on colour within cubism - think of the radical opposite view of Robert Delaunay, aiming at pure expression of colour and light and the 'chromatic cubism' or 'orphism'.
Thank you for sharing this, Ilse! I will leep in mind I must read his essays sometime. I think I read "Arthur and George" after watching miniseries on BBC (liked both, but it was interesting to compare how the series sacrificed some of the facts of this real life story for the sake of making it more cinematic and satisfying than it was in reality).
