In high school, I read To The Lighthouse for the first time. I was blown away. I became a lifelong Virginia Woolf fan. Turbulence and force of emotion boiling hard behind graceful language. A well composed arioso of words, intricate. A delicate flowing lace surface for the mass of passion. While often tense, the scenes themselves, sea air, good food, coastal bric-a-brac collected by children from tidepools and along beaches, are a gauze of beauty. The lighthouse watching over. Stoic, seeing all.
When I was a kid we rented a week at the Jersey Shore each summer. It was one of my favorite weeks of the year. A couple years ago, Kay and I rented a house in Ocean City, and took our kids. The house had a framed poster, Avis de Coup de Vent les Poulains by French photographer Philip Plisson. I’ll stay away from talk about the artist. From the little I know, it seems, he may be a pretty reprehensible guy. But, it’s a really cool photo. Beautiful in a lot of ways, and our kids got a kick out of it too.
George, our youngest at the time, was really drawn in by the picture. The image is kind of confusing. It's not a scene in which you can easily place yourself. In this kind of visual, titanic natural drama, the scale is planetary rather than personal. It leaves you kind of topsy turvy. George kept going back to it, needing more explanation. At first these kinds of pictures seem straightforward. It’s a fun picture, exciting and unique, meme worthy, but I think you can say more about the usefulness of turbulence in a picture like this.
Some day you’ll feel something like that picture, son. Before too long you’ll be a teenager. Your thoughts and emotions may boil or rage. They will for everybody; sometime, or even a lot of the time. Plisson and Virginia Woolf say it in their art. They say, I’ve been there too. Like graffiti scratched into a picnic table, “Virginia wuz X.” Let me share those things that are within me, and also within you. Woolf shared tacitly. Sometimes you bottle it all up, and it drives from beneath the surface. Plisson’s waves are more boisterous. Sometimes things storm up, and overwhelm.
You find something related in lighthouses. Standing tall, and looking out. Lit like perpetually swinging moons. Beacons accompanying tides. Their object quality is of the ever present. You see them from far. We all see them. Year after year, and season after season.
Now, maybe I’m just playing with gushy language. Not sure. I guess I’m in that mood. It’s midsummer, a little hot, a little dreamy, and I have Woolf on my mind. But I want to mention Edward Hopper's paintings too.
When I was a kid we rented a week at the Jersey Shore each summer. It was one of my favorite weeks of the year. A couple years ago, Kay and I rented a house in Ocean City, and took our kids. The house had a framed poster, Avis de Coup de Vent les Poulains by French photographer Philip Plisson. I’ll stay away from talk about the artist. From the little I know, it seems, he may be a pretty reprehensible guy. But, it’s a really cool photo. Beautiful in a lot of ways, and our kids got a kick out of it too.
George, our youngest at the time, was really drawn in by the picture. The image is kind of confusing. It's not a scene in which you can easily place yourself. In this kind of visual, titanic natural drama, the scale is planetary rather than personal. It leaves you kind of topsy turvy. George kept going back to it, needing more explanation. At first these kinds of pictures seem straightforward. It’s a fun picture, exciting and unique, meme worthy, but I think you can say more about the usefulness of turbulence in a picture like this.
Some day you’ll feel something like that picture, son. Before too long you’ll be a teenager. Your thoughts and emotions may boil or rage. They will for everybody; sometime, or even a lot of the time. Plisson and Virginia Woolf say it in their art. They say, I’ve been there too. Like graffiti scratched into a picnic table, “Virginia wuz X.” Let me share those things that are within me, and also within you. Woolf shared tacitly. Sometimes you bottle it all up, and it drives from beneath the surface. Plisson’s waves are more boisterous. Sometimes things storm up, and overwhelm.
You find something related in lighthouses. Standing tall, and looking out. Lit like perpetually swinging moons. Beacons accompanying tides. Their object quality is of the ever present. You see them from far. We all see them. Year after year, and season after season.
Now, maybe I’m just playing with gushy language. Not sure. I guess I’m in that mood. It’s midsummer, a little hot, a little dreamy, and I have Woolf on my mind. But I want to mention Edward Hopper's paintings too.
I've been working out a painting with a New England sky. In the process I've been looking at a lot of Hopper paintings. His lighthouses are certainly quieter of image than Plisson’s. And, by virtue of their form, they’re less talkative than Woolf’s stories. Hopper's paintings, like lighthouses themselves, are taciturn monuments. Their affection is artistically contained. Hopper pictures are a specific kind of quiet. It’s the quiet of a book on a shelf. The book itself. Once you've read the novel, you close it, and put it away. It sits there still. But you know what’s in those pages. The whole world of that lighthouse. In To the Lighthouse there is the Ramsey family’s whole world. The harsh coastal weather, summer guests and meals, their thoughts, dreams, and disappointments. All on those pages sitting quiet for the moment. Hopper's lighthouses are something like that.
With his paintings, you don't have to try hard to get into the mindset. They are easier to enter than Plisson’s picture. But they’re not at all simplistic. They just don’t need all the bluster. You know, somehow, it’s all in there. Great paintings easily grab your gut. And, if you sit with them, like great novels, they get better and better.
For young me, Hopper paintings were comfort food. The kind of paintings I grew up on, they were plain enough, and they just felt right. As I get older, I appreciate them more and more. Like books you’ve read. When you know what’s in there, the book on the shelf helps you know you're not alone
I like to think about that poster, hanging in that rental house. The rip-roaring image hangs there quietly on the wall. Little kids, eager to get out and down to the beach, run by holding plastic sand toys. Their parents are sunblocking, gathering flip flops, and packing beach bag lunches. Season after season, one rental week, one vacationing family after another.
In the evening, sun tired, bronzed, rinsed with bits of sand still clinging to toes, ears, knees, and scalp, kids can ask their parents about the picture. About the big waves, and the little light house. About the kinds of storms you can stand up against. And this is my thought today, on happy Fourth of July, 2023.
With his paintings, you don't have to try hard to get into the mindset. They are easier to enter than Plisson’s picture. But they’re not at all simplistic. They just don’t need all the bluster. You know, somehow, it’s all in there. Great paintings easily grab your gut. And, if you sit with them, like great novels, they get better and better.
For young me, Hopper paintings were comfort food. The kind of paintings I grew up on, they were plain enough, and they just felt right. As I get older, I appreciate them more and more. Like books you’ve read. When you know what’s in there, the book on the shelf helps you know you're not alone
I like to think about that poster, hanging in that rental house. The rip-roaring image hangs there quietly on the wall. Little kids, eager to get out and down to the beach, run by holding plastic sand toys. Their parents are sunblocking, gathering flip flops, and packing beach bag lunches. Season after season, one rental week, one vacationing family after another.
In the evening, sun tired, bronzed, rinsed with bits of sand still clinging to toes, ears, knees, and scalp, kids can ask their parents about the picture. About the big waves, and the little light house. About the kinds of storms you can stand up against. And this is my thought today, on happy Fourth of July, 2023.