There was a painting by the forgotten American still life painter John Frederick Peto at the Timken - a pile of old books - which interested me enough to get me rooting around online. (Yes, I routinely google artists I encounter in museums!) There I found "Take Your Choice" (1885), which I vaguely recall having seen at the National Gallery of Art, where it now resides. I don't know if the old book still life is unique to Peto, but this one of books for sale cheap has a pathos not foreign to the great still life vanities... but also the hope that some forgotten treasure (like Peto!) might be found, and given new life. (That bright sunlight, not something to which books are accustomed!) For these books are other people's books, people you haven't met or couldn't perhaps ever meet. In them the past (pun alert:) still lives, and so do alternative presents.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Still lives
I've been meaning to post this picture for a few days now; after a day spent with books, at home and in the UCSD library, its time has come.
There was a painting by the forgotten American still life painter John Frederick Peto at the Timken - a pile of old books - which interested me enough to get me rooting around online. (Yes, I routinely google artists I encounter in museums!) There I found "Take Your Choice" (1885), which I vaguely recall having seen at the National Gallery of Art, where it now resides. I don't know if the old book still life is unique to Peto, but this one of books for sale cheap has a pathos not foreign to the great still life vanities... but also the hope that some forgotten treasure (like Peto!) might be found, and given new life. (That bright sunlight, not something to which books are accustomed!) For these books are other people's books, people you haven't met or couldn't perhaps ever meet. In them the past (pun alert:) still lives, and so do alternative presents.
There was a painting by the forgotten American still life painter John Frederick Peto at the Timken - a pile of old books - which interested me enough to get me rooting around online. (Yes, I routinely google artists I encounter in museums!) There I found "Take Your Choice" (1885), which I vaguely recall having seen at the National Gallery of Art, where it now resides. I don't know if the old book still life is unique to Peto, but this one of books for sale cheap has a pathos not foreign to the great still life vanities... but also the hope that some forgotten treasure (like Peto!) might be found, and given new life. (That bright sunlight, not something to which books are accustomed!) For these books are other people's books, people you haven't met or couldn't perhaps ever meet. In them the past (pun alert:) still lives, and so do alternative presents.
