One of the most difficult challenges for any writer is to try to evoke the spirit of a nation - in a balanced but insightful way. Chauvinism comes all too easily - be it of the American, English, French or even Scots variety.
But summoning up the soul of a country with appropriate text is a much greater challenge – and may well be best done by an outsider who knows the country well…Think Madame de Stael and Germany; de Tocqueville and the USA
This
train of thought is sparked off by my reading – almost in one go – a delightful
book called “The
Story of Scottish Art” – explored
in this nice video. The author is himself a painter and uses a lot of
examples (carvings as well as paintings) to illustrate the text - as well as
his own water-colours. The book is based on a BBC series.
One of the things which endeared the book to me was the way he skilfully wove together aspects of the painters’ lives with developments in the nation.
Painting
is a good “handle” on a country – but it’s rarely used. Peter Robb’s Midnight
in Sicily gives a “food and Mafia” take on that country; and Simon
Winder’s “Germania” and Neil
McGregor’s “Germany; memories of a nation” cultural takes on Germany – but skate over painting.
In
2007, I found myself leading a project in Sofia, Bulgaria and quickly became so
taken with the paintings – particularly from the interwar period - I came
across in its fascinating small galleries that I started to collect them. Naturally
I wanted to know something about the artists – and found myself traipsing into
antiquarian bookshops in search of information. The result was initially a
small book of 50 pages – and, by 2015 or so, a larger one of 250 pages Bulgarian
Realists – getting to know Bulgaria through its Art
This particular book started its life quite literally as a
scribbled list on the back of an envelope - of painters whom a gallery friend
thought I should know about in 2008 or thereabouts…..
It eventually became a list of 250 or so Bulgarian artists of the “realist” style which I developed to help me (and visitors) learn more about the richness of the work (and lives) of artists who are now, for the most part, long dead and often forgotten.
But it also got me wondering about who is best placed to try to evoke the spirit of a nation….Social historians? Anthropologists? Artists?
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….about a man who, upon being shown the pictures of those worshippers 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……
As I read Lachlan Goudie’s little vignettes of painters in “The Story of Scottish Art”, I realised that painters have always occupied an important position in social networks – often poor themselves, they rub shoulders with a wider range of people than most of us. In the early days, of course, they would focus on religious figures and then society people. But from the mid 19th Century, artists such as David Wilkie were able to celebrate ordinary folk in their paintings.
Nowadays, of course, we rarely see faces any more in paintings – just blobs and abstractions. Perhaps our artists are telling us something?
But my question is, I think, a good one – who is best placed to gives us insights into a country’s soul? Poets? Writers? Painters? Anthropologists? Historians? Social historians? Travel writers? Sociologists? Or who?
Further Reading
Watching
the English by anthropologist Kate Fox is one of my favourites – for that
country.
Theodor
Zeldin is probably the best on the French.
Perry
Anderson’s article A New Germany? offers a great
intellectual and political history of contemporary Germany. But otherwise, it’s
not easy to find a serious book about modern Germany (although many good -histories)
Gordon Craig’s magnificent “The Germans” came out in 1982 and John Ardagh’s “Germany
and the Germans” in 1987 – since then there has be no real update to their insights
into the German soul - Gitty Sereny’s “The German Trauma – experiences and
reflections 1938-2001 and Fritz Stern ‘s “Five Germanies I have known” (2007) notwithstanding
On
Italy,
people are spoiled for choice – not just Barzini’s classic “The Italians”
(1964) but Foot, Gilmour, Ginsborg, Hooper, Jones and Parks all giving a sense
of the modern Italians….You pays your money….
The
background to social
history is laid out in this article
7
social historians
lay their claims here
A
book on The anthropology of Ireland demonstrates its possibilities
And the others?
