La raie (The Skate) by Jean-Simeon Chardin, 1728
It's Lent, almost Holy Week, and I've written almost nothing about that. Here's an essay from nearly ten years ago - May of 2001 - when I was more religious and writing for a monthly Anglican newsletter. I was reminded of this piece by my recent visit to the Met last weekend, by the study skins of rabbits at the natural history museum, and some recent reflections on art and death by my friend Lucas Green at (p)(b). Re-reading it also shows me I've made some progress in the past decade at enjoying life more, not giving myself quite such a hard time -- and I think that shows in a more relaxed and fluid writing style now, too.
The Cat and the Ray
Her bright rose-and-yellow flowered shirt and tight silver capri pants are striking enough, but it’s the faux-alligator high-heeled mules that really get me. Stealing glances at the woman standing next to me on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum, I catch myself smiling. It’s a hot, steamy day broken by intermittent thunderstorms. I take a quick inventory of the crowd sharing this perch above Fifth Avenue: one third seem to be smoking, one third eating ice cream bars purchased from the enterprising street vendors, and the other third are talking on cell phones. There are art lovers of every race, age, style and attitude. I watch a very old couple helping each other up the long flight of wet granite steps, she in a dramatic stole and skirt and he in a fancy tie. Under their open, floral umbrella, they turn bright faces to each other, talking animatedly about what they are planning to see, and I smile again, infected by their enthusiasm.
A friend and I have come to New York to see an exhibition of paintings by Jean-Simeon Chardin, born in Paris in 1699. During his middle years, Chardin turned to portraits and genre paintings: scenes of calm, intimate domesticity. But he began and ended his artistic career as a painter of still lives. To no paintings do the French term, nature morte, better pertain. Chardin not only depicted, with astonishing skill, the inanimate objects of everyday life -- a tall jar of olives swimming in their brine; a delicate porcelain cup of steaming tea; a paper-covered jar of preserved apricots -- he also painted, with shocking ease and palpable reality, dead things.
In this gallery there is a painting of a side of meat, suspended from a hook; a plate of plump, damp kidneys. Fish languish, limp-tailed, on platters; ducks and pheasants hang from trussed feet, their brilliant plumage ruffled by gravity, necks askew. Most disquieting are two portraits of dead hares lying next to open game bags and powder flasks. I watch as people enter the room, see the two hares, and physically recoil – and then take themselves in hand and approach, closer and closer, to examine the smudge of blood by a delicate nose, the heart-rending softness of fur, the limp weight of small, still limbs.
But it's Chardin’s large “Still Life with Ray” that stops me in my tracks. A huge, white, diamond-shaped ray, slit up the belly, with a terrifying, almost human face, hangs from a metal hook. An array of masterfully painted wooden, ceramic, and metal objects lie below it on a kitchen table, where, on the left, a gleaming-eyed tortoise-shell cat stalks a plate of glistening, opened oysters. The effect is one of horror, and impossible harmony. Visceral, creepy, and deeply emotional, the painting gets under your skin, and there it remains. Never has anything seemed more dead than this gruesome ray, or more alive than the wide-eyed cat, about to pounce.
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We’re halfway around the year from that early fall day. Thinking back to Chardin’s paintings, I realize that Lent has a quality of nature morte about it. We resist, recoil, and then move closer. Examining the minutiae of our lives, we make choices, exchange one thing for another, give others up. Time slows, the arrangement settles, and becomes fixed.
Chardin painted the same subjects when he returned to still life in his later years, but he no longer dissected death through its details. His late paintings of hares and game birds are all atmosphere, and acceptance. They are transcendently beautiful – but I found I missed that cat.
Perhaps there is another way to approach this period of Lenten introspection. Only a few of us look back at life regretting that we lived too much or too intensely. Far more of us wish we had taken more risks, and tried harder to follow the dreams of our heart rather than someone else’s notion of what we should be. We wish we had laughed more, reached for more oysters, gotten up in the night to look at the stars. It’s sad to realize, too late, that we’ve plodded through life in sensible shoes, rather than teetering, once in a while, in faux-alligator high-heeled mules.
What does it mean, “to have life abundantly?” Not self-indulgence or extravagance. I am pointing toward our tendency –- my tendency -- to be too hard on ourselves; to give up because of the perceived limitations of personality, age, or infirmity; to follow convention; to say “oh no, I shouldn’t” when in fact we can, and should. For a whole variety of reasons that seem rational and prudent at the time, we move away from life instead of embracing it fully, with joy, in all its pain and beauty. And that, not death, is the true tragedy.
As I left the art museum late that day, so did a blind man, his outstretched cane tracing a wake in the water pooled on the wide granite landing. I watched as he felt his way down the steps and melted into the city throng -- and saw that he was smiling.
