This is the second book I’ve read by John Berger this semester. The first, Ways of Seeing, was excellent, cogent, and topical, all without being too over-intellectual or stuffy. With that in mind, it seemed like an excellent idea to pick up another of his books, to continue to the authorial conversation. Unsure which to pick (he has several collections of essays), I selected somewhat randomly, and ended up with About Looking, which proved to be likewise cogently written, but not as consistently so, and certainly with a more academic vocabulary (this is not a good thing). There were a variety of excellent points and ideas brought up in the course of the book, but it really failed to make as significant an impact as his previous work.

I think that perhaps the reason the book doesn’t work as well for me is how it was collected. The essays are in no apparent order (neither subject nor date seem to have any influence), other than — and this may be my own perception — the longest essays are in the front, and the shorter, more cogent essays are in the back. He opens with a 28 page essay about how the perception of animals has changed in society, and the man-animal relationship has changed as well. He made some excellent points in it, in particular concerning the role of zoos in our urban society, as well as the social misperception of zoos. A zoo is a place to see what animals look like, not to see and be seen by animals. Of course, all his excellent points could have been said in half the space if he stopped beating around the bush for so much of the essay. It felt (and this sentiment extends to a lot of the essays) like he knew he had something he wanted to talk about, but wasn’t sure how to say it, and the essay is his process to get it out.

The rest of the book is a bit more directly topical, and the collection is loosely broken down into “Uses of Photography” and “Moments Lived”. The photography section I suppose is fairly clear, but what exactly does “Moments Lived” mean as a subject title? Apparently, it means “new takes on the motivations of artists,” if the actual content is any indication. I’ll get to it more in depth in a moment, but first, the photography section.

Technically speaking, these were four separate essays, written over the course of a decade (1968 to 1978), though not necessarily in chronological order. Subjectively speaking, it read like one long, rambling essay. As a photographer, I was a little taken aback by his somewhat antiquated views of photography. He talked at length about how they serve as a method to capture a moment in time, as a supplement (and sometimes replacement) to memory, unlike traditional painting. He is entitled to opinion, of course, but I am also allowed to completely disagree with compartmentalizing photography like that. The “capturing of memories” is a minor part of photography (though I will admit, it IS a pretty significant portion of the popular sentiment about photography). Photography can also be used as a very potent tool in creating abstract imagery, as well as creating a range of emotions that can be every bit as distinct and strong as a painting. As much as Berger was trying to tout the values of photography, I think in the end, he ended up doing it a disservice, which is unfortunate.

The majority of the book fell under the “Moments Lived” section, and was in my opinion the strongest writing in the book. in each essay, it was clear the author knew what he was talking about, and really brought some interesting insight into various works of art (mostly paintings, but some sculptural work as well). In particular, I really appreciated his juxtaposition of Francis Bacon and Walt Disney, with one taking a pessimistic conclusion and one taking an optimistic conclusion, both from the same underlying concept and intent. Also worth noting was a recurring topic between several essays on how birthplace influenced the art of several artists, both in subject matter as well as style. For instance, Courbet was born in the foothills of the Jura mountains in France. The most direct and obvious tie to this area is his predominant use of minimal horizon (very little sky is shown in the majority of his work), which directly relates to the towering mountains blotting out most of the horizon when he was growing up. Another example would be Fasanella’s cityscapes (in particular of Manhattan). They succeed in capturing the sentiment of finding privacy while simultaneously being on display that many other artists fail to capture, because quite simply, they’ve never truly lived in that fashion.

My favorite essay is the one he closed with, entitled “Field”. It had nothing to do with any artist, and most precisely captured the sentiment of the section title. The essay describes a simple, uncultivated field that sits amidst the trees near a set of train tracks that he has to pass on his way home from work. Occasionally, he has to wait for a train on the tracks, and when doing so, looks over and sees the meadow between the trees, a short distance away. He watches two birds playing, or butterflies doing what butterflies do, or a cat stalking some invisible prey, or any of a variety of simple things happening in the meadow, and feels as enriched and rewarded by it as he feels about any work of art.

The latter half of the essay completely misses the point, however, and relegates this sublime moment to a set of rules that must be applied for any sort of effect, which he partially uses as an excuse to not actually visit the field, lest the feeling be destroyed. After such a strong start, too. The first half of the essay struck a very strong chord with me, as it managed to at least partially describe a sentiment that I am constantly trying to explain. Walking around on the half-snow half-mud in Vermont in late March/early April, where the world is just starting to wake up again, and you can hear the trickle of a stream still partially obscured by ice in the distance. Wind playing with leaves on an empty street at dusk, where the lights are just starting to come on, but it’s still light out anyway, and there is a crisp, real taste to the air. Sitting in the grass in the shade of some trees, looking up through a gap in the branches and watching the clouds float by, while butterflies flutter nearby. Standing in the woods after a snowstorm, in that brief “warm” spell that sometimes follows snowstorms in New England, and listening to the snow drop off the overladen branches.

It’s experiences and sentiments like these that fill me with an enormous sense of personal peace and well-being, and I try to be receptive (not vigilant… that would defeat the point) to these moments whenever I can.

Despite its faults, I still feel this was a pretty good collection of essays, and I’m glad I read them. I would probably suggest this book to people who enjoy art essays (whether for school or personal enjoyment), but at the same time, I would probably also suggest AD Coleman’s Critical Focus as a counterpoint and companion to this book. Between the two authors, I think a really great creative sentiment can be painted.

While I found Vezzosi’s writing interesting and intelligent, and found the subject well researched and scholastic in tone, I can’t help but feel like this book should have instead been called “Leonardo Da Vinci: The Mind, The Man, The Myth”. What it comes down to is that despite all the research about Da Vinci that has been done over the years, very little is verifiably known: most of our “facts” about him are taken from journals (some his own, others from his contemporaries), which are ultimately an entirely subjective view. There is this notion of him as a seer and visionary, which is largely due to his self-portrait and the use of his likeness in Raphael’s painting of Plato. That’s not to say that he wasn’t visionary and innovative in his work and ideas, but rather that the assumption of a benevolent old man is ultimately conjecture.

Though a relatively small book, Leonardo Da Vinci: The Mind of the Renaissance is extremely dense, using a high quality paper to allow for high quality reproduction of his artwork. It is also dense in the another sense of the word, in terms of the amount of information that was packed into such a small space. Organized in a chronological/geological fashion, the book is broken down into several sections, starting in Vinci (his birthplace), and ending in Amboise (where he died). Considering that his works often spanned several years, this is really as good a method to organize his life as any.

Leonardo definitely had an interesting life. Despite being born as an illegitimate child, he was taken into his father’s house and raised largely as if he was. Really, the only aspect of family life that he was not able to participate in was the family business as Notary to several noble houses, including the Medici family. (The role of Notary required a level of gentility that his illegitmacy prevented.) He taught himself to write, which the author attributed a large amount of the mirror writing Leonardo is famous for (also, in conjecture, the idea was posited that he may have been dyslexic, which would also contribute to his adoption of backwards writing).

At the age of 17, he entered an apprenticeship in Florence, studying under the famous artist Verrocchio, during which time he became well respected among his peers, contributing to several remarkable works, including The Annunciation, and the Dreyfus Madonna (as well as the similarly composed Madonna with Carnation). He had already gained a mastery of painting at this time, but was able to refine that mastery while also learning more about sculpture, collaborating with Verrocchio to create Verrocchio’s David and Putta with Dolphin. Even after being admitted to the artists’ guild, he stayed with Verrocchio’s studio for several more years before finally heading out on his own.

Leonardo worked on several commissions while in Florence, working to curry favor with the Medici family, whom was the ruling family of Florence at the time. He achieved a moderate level of success, but after reaching something of a dead end, he found an excuse to travel to Milan, where he tried to get a position as engineer in the Ducal Court. His attempts did not succeed, but he did achieve moderate success as an artist in the area, until finally he began working for the Duke of Milan, Sforza, designing a giant bronze horse statue that was never completed. (This is a well known story: war broke out, and the 66 tons of bronze that Leonardo had managed to accumulate for the project was taken in order to make cannons.)

The entire region was embroiled in a variety of alliances, wars, invasions, and political intruiges, and Leonardo largely managed to play every side. He primarily worked for Milan and Florence, but he also worked for France and Pisa at several points, in various roles ranging from royal artist to war and civil engineers. He maintained ties with the Medici family, which allowed him to become an engineer/artist for Pope Leo X (a member of the Medici family), where he enjoyed relatively free reign over his projects (in fact, he worked for a man known as “il Magnifico”, the Pope’s brother). It was at this time that Raphael used Leonardo’s likeness for his fresco The School of Athens.

After il Magnifico grew ill and died, Leonardo decided that it was time to seek his fortunes elsewhere, taking the king of France up on a prior invitation to come and paint for him in Ambiose. Leonardo enjoyed his time in Ambiose, though he no longer was working with color as much as he had in the past, due to an injury to his arm (since he was ambidexterous, it really only hindered his work a little, but still enough to make it worth mentioning). He designed and (with the help of the King) initiated the building of a new city, Romolontino, in France, though work on it ultimately ended due to complications at the build site. Leonardo remained in Ambiose for the rest of his life. He remained well respected throughout these years, and purportedly, died in the presence of the King, whom had great admiration for the artist. (The actual accuracy of the legend is subject to considerable debate, apparently.)

I really enjoyed Leonardo Da Vinci: The Mind of the Renaissance, and found it quite informative about this master artist. I would recommend it to those looking for a grounding in the background of the arist and a general sense of what works he did, though for a more in depth look, I’m sure there are more robust works about Da Vinci, that would probably serve that purpose in a more complete and enriching fashion. Frankly, I’m not sure what I’m impressed more by: the works he completed, or the works that never made it out of his sketchbooks.

Vezzosi, Alessandro. Leonardo Da Vinci: The Mind of the Renaissance. New York: Henry N Abrams, Inc., 1997.

Considering that it is virtually impossible to define the Zen philosophy in a succinct fashion, it should be largely unsurprising that an art-form that grew out of Zen required an entire book to even begin to explain. That is not to say that the author evaded the question, far from it: the fault (if it could be called such) lies directly in the subject. I found the topic of wabi sabi fascinating, while at the same time finding my own tastes justified within a larger school of thought on art. It really all comes down to impermanence. In fact, that is the subtitle of the book: the Japanese art of impermanence.

Of course, that title might be a little misleading. While yes, they do discuss the tea ceremony and other transient events as art, there is a great deal more to wabi sabi than that. It is more an acceptance of your surroundings and letting nature have a role in the creation of things. The example used that really encapsulated the feeling for me best was when he was discussing ash-glazed pottery. The author described an old kiln that is still in use, though it only burns once a year. The pots are placed in or near the flue, and as the ash is pulled upwards through the chimney, it glazes the pots. Each pot is in a different spot in the kiln, and so the glaze is different for every pot. That act of abandoning the work and letting nature take its role in creation is wabi sabi in a nutshell, for me at least.

The words wabi and sabi both have extensive histories, during which time they have gained enough meanings to become too ambiguous to have a direct and literal translation. The basic gist when used together, is finding beauty in solitude and natural desolation. The author related a story of Sen No Rikyu, master of the tea ceremony, whom had a marvelous garden with flowers in it that his guests would pass through to reach the tea room. The Emperor, Hideyoshi had heard of the garden, and in particular desired to see the morning glories in it. He was invited to a tea ceremony, and upon his arrival discovered that all of the morning glories had been cut. Upon arriving to the tea room, he discovered a single, beautifully arranged morning glory adorning the tea room. This sort of attention and focus really appeals to me, aesthetically speaking, and grounds my sentiment that simplicity and letting things fall where they may can prove to be provocative and striking on a level that more complex and ordered images might not achieve. (A case in point: one of my favorite pieces that my mother has painted is a single maple leaf, done in ink and water color… she’s done a variety of more complex and detailed images, but my attention is invariably drawn to the leaf.)

Overall, the book manages to avoid being pretentious, which makes it a significantly better read than it could have otherwise been. There are a few points where the subject was treated a bit too much like a golden calf (notably, in the introduction itself), but they are thankfully few and far between. Mostly, the sentiment I gathered out of the book was that the author had a genuine interest in (and knowledge of) the material.

Wabi Sabi is broken into a few parts. It starts out with a reasonably in depth history of the art form, which grew out of Zen philosophy when Buddhism first started making a cultural impact in Japan. This was a fascinating topic for me, and really elucidated a lot about the origins of different forms of Buddhism. One thing that really interested me about it stems from an ongoing conversation I have had with my father about Baha’i Art. He is of the sentiment that there largely isn’t any currently being made, and that what is currently touted as such is really nothing more than ecclesiastic art. Reading about wabi sabi really drove home that idea. Wabi Sabi is essentially Zen Buddhist art. Yet it rarely if ever has anything to do with images of the Buddha or others. What makes it stem from Zen Buddhism is that it is a representation and extension of the philosophy that underlies Zen Buddhism, not that it depicts religious scenes, individuals, or icons.

The next section discusses the interrelationship between wabi sabi and the culture it originated in. I was less impressed with this section, though I can’t put a finger on exactly why. I think what it comes down to is that in trying to make a distinction between Japanese culture and American culture, the author relied too much on his own opinions, and less on objective observation and facts. It was clear that he had lived in Japan for several years, and disagrees strongly with the adoption of aspects of western civilization.

The third section discusses wabi sabi art specifically, and was pretty interesting. This is where the author talked about the ash-glazed pottery that so intrigued me, as well as going a bit more in depth about how the philosophy behind wabi sabi can be applied to various kinds of art. It was a little short, however, and made the next section somewhat jarring, since the fourth section quite literally laid down basic ground rules for using different materials in your designs. The whole notion of setting down firm rules of how materials must be applied seemed to go against the entire notion that he had been describing for the rest of the book. I think that there is a lot more flexibility to the form than what he laid out.

The fifth and final section was a personal diatribe on the state of things in modern western society, and an argument to justify why adopting wabi sabi principles is important. I largely agree with him: we are an increasingly disposable society, with huge amounts of luxuries and technology, all the while lamenting our unhappiness. In the current generation especially (the post-gen-x generation), there is an overwhelming sentiment of feeling spiritually lost, a disconnect with our surroundings and ourselves. I can’t help but feel that encouraging the sort of reconnection with nature that occurs in wabi sabi art would help that sentiment.

While it had very little to do with drawing explicitly, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in eastern art It was well worth the time to read it.

Juniper, Andrew. Wabi Sabi. Boston, Tuttle Publishing, 2003.