...just a homely old woman, doing a task she's done thousands of times in her life. Look at the way she sits, the perfect grace of her hands as she holds the egg and spoon. The expression on her face is both weary and contemplative. It's the look of someone who could tell you a great deal about life, but she won't, because she knows that every true thing she could tell you is contradicted by another truth--and anyway, the truth won't save you from anything. She is past mourning for you, long past mourning for herself. A part of her has already left the world. The boy can't even begin to imagine what she sees when she looks at him.
An Old Woman Frying Eggs, Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, 1618
19 comments:
"... someone who could tell you a great deal about life, but she won't, because she knows that every true thing she could tell you is contradicted by another truth--and anyway, the truth won't save you from anything."
Mmmm. Yes. Yes. Yes.
This is a beautiful post.
Anonymous is actually Bozo. Whoops.
Doesn't it look like the old woman is looking past the boy and into some dim implacable future. That's where the truth of life lies, not in the innocence of the boy. The boy too seems to look on uncomprehendingly.
And look at the crescent shadow under the knife. Wow.
It's an amazing painting. I don't think the woman's homely, though.Her face is intelligent and engaging which is my books equals beauty.
Nika
You're right, Nika, she is beautiful.
Bozo, I had to click back and look for the knife shadow. What an eye you have. That detail is amazing.
She's looking past the boy, but I imagine her turning to him in the next moment. The boy's presence somehow enhances the character of the woman. It's not just the contrast of youth and old age--his youth seems to call forth something in her.
Jaime, I can't help wishing there was something that could save us.
Hmm, save us from what, I wonder?
Suffering. I'm a cynic, of course.
I don't think you're a cynic. I think you wish you were a cynic. Then maybe it would all hurt less, no?
But that's overstepping a bit, perhaps ... Eh, I'm hitting "publish" anyway.
Much love.
No, not overstepping. My cynicism is actually more aspirational than operational, as the Homeland* Security folk say.
Love in return,
M
*I first typed "Nomeland Security folk"--now I can't stop thinking about tiny gnomes prowling the airport with sniffer dogs.
Ha - love it!
'Course you had to know someone, somewhere, thought of it first.
If you Google it, there's much more where that came from (but not as cute).
That's great. Now the gnomes in my head are wearing sunglasses...
I don't know what this will say to you (beautiful analysis btw), but this painting along with "The Potato Eaters" were the illustrations for our Sociology book in what amounts to US's 10th grade (we were about 15-16). It all had to do with the proletariat and the socio-economic structure acording to Marx. Our eyes were glazing I recall...but it stayed.
"truth won't save you from anything" indeed! :-)
I think it tells me that high school in Greece was very different than high school in the U.S. Discussions of class, as I recall, were almost unknown in my high school. Race, yes, but class? Never.
I'm so glad you're doing these art posts, M. I sense a larger project in the offing...
But I hope you do not feel like your old woman. I'm not sure I would want to be "past mourning," even if it meant saving myself the pain. And now a line of poetry is going through my head -- oh yes, just looked it up, it's the epigraph from Tony Kushner's "Angels in America":
In a murderous time
the heart breaks and breaks
and lives by breaking
from Stanley Kunitz, "The Testing-Tree"
How I love that I can post this here and no one will think it pretentious... Thank you for making this space happen.
Thank you, Alyssa, for that wonderful quote from Kunitz, which I hadn't thought about in a long time. I loved "Angels in America."
Art does seem to be increasingly important to me. I've always felt a little frustrated by being confined to working with words. Don't know what might come of it, but it is a joy to play the images.
Oh my goodness, Maria, I went and read the whole poem and that quote is more appropriate for you than I thought. It's a long poem, and it comes at the end of it, after a fever dream -- here it is with what follows:
In a murderous time
the heart breaks and breaks
and lives by breaking.
It is necessary to go
through dark and deeper dark
and not to turn.
I am looking for the trail.
Where is my testing-tree?
Give me back my stones!
More trails!
More beautiful, sexy mushrooms!
MORE.
That's an inspiration, Alyssa. I think I should conjure on it a while, as my grandmother used to say...
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