Originally published at These are just words. You can comment here or there.

I’ve been reading a lot of books recently, both fictional and autobiographical. I’m currently half way through Simon Schama’s “Power of Art”, which looks at the careers of eight different artists, using one key work from each as a focal point - masterpieces made under acute stress, be it from patrons (in the case of Rembrandt), political moments (David, Turner, Picasso), from self-vindication (Caravaggio and Bernini) or from their own inner demons and sense of what art should be (Van Gogh and Rothko). It really is fantastic, and the stories and imagery is amazing. It’s also an incredibly heavy book, as all 450 pages are printed on photo paper - it feels like it’s made of lead!

There are loads of things that it makes me want to talk about, such as… what is art? What is it really for? I’ve never been one for literal interpretations of artwork, but sometimes it seems like the sheer subjectivism of a piece of artwork leads to everything being art - a very modernist ideal, I’m sure. But if that’s the case, then what is art really for, given that you can gaze at anything, like… I don’t know…. the gauze covering a speaker cone, and see some kind of constructivistic truth.

But anyway, that’s not what I want to write about. What intrigues me about the Power of Art, as well as the other auto-biographies that I’ve been reading recently, is the human side. The stories of lives lead in times that are long gone, in places that I’ll never see. Caravaggio in Malta, Bernini sending a servant to slash the face of his adulterous mistress, David’s “A Marat” and the Charlotte Corday story behind it, Patrick Moore dancing a waltz with his beloved Lorna. Etc etc.

It just makes me wonder about all the people and drama that I’ll never know about. How many people who would’ve been my best friend are long dead, forgotten in time? What is their story? Who will ever really know mine? I can’t help but think of the Smiths lyric (which in turn is lifted from a film called “The Man Who Came To Dinner”)

“So we go inside and we gravely read the stones
all those people all those lives
where are they now?
with the loves and hates
and passions just like mine
they were born
and then they lived and then they died
seems so unfair
and I want to cry”

I got a strong sense of that while I was walking through the Louvre, in Paris last year. So many people. So many stories. So many scenes. And I can only begin to grasp an infinitesimal fraction of them. I suppose my fascination for this is one of the reasons why I studied History at A-Level. It just seems really sad that there is no way I’ll ever be able to improve on a fraction of an almost infinity.

Ah well. Here is a video of Ted Chippington:

Look at me with my embedded Youtube videos. I’m sure it’ll go horribly wrong.