I’ve been reading everything written by Kate Atkinson. Atkinson's humour and sense of language are just wonderful. Sometimes, I take notes, especially when it's about art. Here are a few of those pearls...
in A God in Ruins:
Izzie’s definition of art was broader than Sylvie’s definition, of course. “Art is anything created by one person and enjoyed by another.’
“The lark’s known for its song,” he said instructively, “It’s beautiful.” It was impossible to instruct on the subject of beauty, of course. It simply was. You were either moved by it or you weren’t.
“The purpose of Art,” his mother, Sylvie, said - instructed even - “is to convey the truth of a thing, not to be the truth itself.” Her own father, Teddy’s grandfather, had been a famous artist, dead long ago, a relationship that gave his mother authority on the subject of art. And beauty too, Teddy supposed. All these things - Art, Truth, Beauty - had capital letters when his mother spoke about them.
in Transcription
“Do you like art?” He asked abruptly, taking her off her guard.
“Art?” What did he mean by that? She had come under the wing of an enthusiastic art teacher at school, Miss Gillies. (“You have an eye,” Miss Gillies told her. I have two she thought.) She used to visit the National Gallery before her mother died. She disliked Fragonard and Watteau and all that pretty French stuff that would make any self-respecting sans-culottes want to chop someone’s head off. Similarly Gainsborough and his affluent aristocrats posing smugly with grand perspectives. And Rembrandt, for whom she had a particular disregard. “What was so wonderful about an ugly old man who kept painting himself all the time?
Perhaps she didn’t like art, in fact she felt quite opinionated about it. “Of course I like art,” she said. “Doesn’t everyone?”
“You’d be surprised. Anyone in particular?”
“Rembrandt,” she said, placing her hand on her heart in a gesture of devotion. She liked Vermeer, but she wasn’t going to share that with a stranger. “I revere Vermeer,” she had once told Miss Gillies. It seemed a lifetime ago now.