Introduction to my book Art: Behind the Scenes (see below for details)

Introduction

When I was a child, my grandfather gave me Hendrik Willem Van Loon's
history book, The Arts, and the preface, especially, stayed with me.

Van Loon wrote of a train ride through farm country where he saw
two small children coming out of their house: A girl carrying a portfolio
and the boy a fiddle case. For twenty years Van Loon said he wanted to
write a book on the arts, but couldn’t decide on a “fixed point” (xxii) -
the reader to write for - until he saw those children.

My “fixed point” for Behind the Scenes is not only the student of
art, but also those who think of art as a remote subject. The book aims
to avoid the dry-as-dust information found in many art histories.

If you think of an old photo album in the attic and nearby letters
that relate to them, you have the idea of Behind the Scenes. Besides
describing old and modern masters, this book aims to make known the
hearts and minds of painters by their own word or through the eyes of
those who knew them.

An art critic by trade, I routinely speak for artists’ work, interpreting
and assessing it. But a statement in landscape painter John
Constable's lecture to the Royal Institution of Great Britain in 1836
haunts me: "I am anxious that the world should be inclined to look to
painters for information on painting." (qtd in Goldwater and Treves
270).

He’s got a point. How else to know that Peter Paul Rubens'
signature show of fleshy females does not reflect his personal tastes,
that he was a physical fitness fanatic who railed against excessive
eating? (qtd in Goldwater and Treves 149). Or that Giulio Romano's
macabre paintings have nothing to do with his personality (Vasari. Vol
2, 233)? Or that Alonso Cano, an ordained priest who painted pictures
of supreme serenity, was an ill-tempered man suspected of murdering
his wife (Chilvers 77)?

Such contradictions testify to the purpose of past art, and self-
expression wasn't it. These stories make clear that while art's purpose
has varied over the years, artists have suppressed their natures to fulfill
the need. Pablo Picasso said as much in an interview given to Lettres
Francaises in 1945:


Joan B. Altabe 15

What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who has
only his eyes if he's a painter... On the contrary, he's at
the same time a political animal, constantly alive to
heart-rending or happy events, to which he responds in
every way. (Wein and Gelman 33).

To the one hundred artists in this book and to those who read it,
this one’s for you.

Joan B. Altabe

Fall 2003