Books
have been appearing in recent years celebrating the simple pleasures of life
(such as swimming, walking, eating, not talking) and bearing such titles as Wanderlust
– a history of walking; “Cooked; a
natural history of transformation”; and A
Book of Silence
Not
that there is anything novel about this – Henri Bergson wrote an entire tract on
Laughter in 1900
(popularised in the 1960s in Arthur Koestler’s The Act of
Creation). And
artist and art critic John Berger’s most famous book is entitled Ways of
Seeing (1972)
Faithful readers will know that I have been working on a new (and enlarged) edition of Introducing
the Bulgarian Realists which adds cultural and historical
references and a lot more painters.
So
it wasn’t surprising that I had dreamed up a new title – “Exploring Bulgaria – a
cultural romp”. I briefly entertained the idea of making the subtitle “a
sensual romp” before realizing that this would attract the wrong sort of
reader! As the book includes short sections on such things as wine, food, video
and cinema I even thought of the title “Using Your Senses ”!!
It
was, however, only when I was going through a catalogue at the weekend - and found myself
constantly having to add the phrase “a superb but forgotten painter” to the names
in my book - that I realized that the book's sub-text is ….memory……and forgetting…and not just in Bulgaria
Like
many other European countries, Bulgaria has had periods during which a “veil of
silence” has been drawn over parts of its history – with September 1944 being
the point at which individual memories became selective. By contrast memories
of the struggles which brought independence from the Ottomans in 1878 have
always burned brightly…..
It
is our fate to be forgotten when we die – but one of the nice features of
present-day central Sofia are the crimson plaques which now grace the street
corners, reminding us of the events and individuals who played a role in Bulgaria’s
history. Not just Tsars and Russian generals but poets, revolutionaries,
politicians ….even an English one (William Gladstone). A small station on the
gorge which winds through the hills outside Sofia on the way north to Russe
bears the name (Thompson) of an Englishman (Frank) parachuted into the country
during the second world war who was quickly captured and shot. His brother (EP)
went on to become a famous British Marxist historian!
But it
was only yesterday when I was about to send the text to the printer that it was
brought home to me that the whole book is, in a sense, an ODE TO FORGETFULNESS
and that my references to Bulgarian events and people are simply one of myriad
examples about what I’ve now started to call “Memory’s Veil” – the highly
selective way all of us – in whatever country - remember people and artistic
talent
Some
of you may know the author Nassim Nicholas Taleb whose book The
Black Swan became a best-seller a few years ago. In it he makes a profound
point about the process by which artistic “genius” is recognised (or not – the latter being more often the
case)
More than four centuries ago, the English essayist
Francis Bacon had a very simple intuition. The idea is so trivial that he puts
to shame almost all empirical thinkers who came after him until very recently…..
Bacon mentioned a man who, upon being shown the pictures of those worshipers
who paid their vows then subsequently escaped shipwreck, wondered where were the pictures of those who
happened to drown after their vows.
The lack of effectiveness of their prayers did not
seem to be taken into account by the supporters of the handy rewards of
religious practice. “And such is the way of all superstition, whether in
astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like”, he wrote in his Novum
Organum, written in 1620.
This is a potent insight: the drowned worshippers,
being dead, do not advertise their experiences. They are invisible and will be
missed by the casual observer who will be led to believe in miracles.
Not
just in miracles, as Taleb goes onto argue…..it is also the process which
decides whether an artist is remembered. For every artist of genius, there have
been many more with the same talent but whose profile, somehow, was submerged….
Art,
of course, is the subject of high fashion – reputations ebb and flow…..we are
vaguely aware of this…but it is money that speaks in the art “market” and it is
the din of the cash register to which the ears of most art critics and dealers
are attuned……
One
of the few other people I know who celebrates unknown or, rather, forgotten
artists is Jonathan in Wales who runs a great blog called My Daily Art Display which
fleshes out the detail of the lives of long-forgotten but superb artists…..
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