Remember:
mechanical forces will always seek out the path of least resistance.
’
Some students leaned forwards, pressing dangerously close to the van Eyck. My impulse to intervene and ask them to take a few steps back was crushed by my fever to hear more.
‘Over time,’ the art restorer continued, ‘I hope you will all learn to identify fake craquelure, which forgers add to a painting in order to give it the illusion of age. They scrape the edge of the canvas on a table, bake it in the oven, and sprinkle sugar on top until the surface cracks in just the right way. There are other techniques too, but this is one of the simplest and most effective.
‘Yet in the words of the great Friedländer,
Forged craquelure is arbitrary, monotonous and pedantic—whereas natural craquelure throbs with rich variety
. So, to conclude: craquelure grants a painting its history, its authenticity, a whole topography the painter himself could never have envisioned . . . ’
When they left the room twenty minutes later I closed my eyes in order to process her words. Like a hot grille, the image of the van Eyck pressed into my eyelids despite the cracks being indistinguishable from where I sat in my chair. After hundreds and hundreds of hours in the Gallery, how had I failed to consider something so vital? I had always been drawn to decomposition, to the knowledge that everything in the universe tends from order to disorder, and the thought of the arrow of time also moving through paintings overwhelmed me. Painters create order from disorder, but the moment that order has been created, the slow march towards disorder begins again.
I’d been handed a secret. Visitors could stand and admire what they saw on the walls, point out to one another the various colours and compositions, but my inner lens would now be focused on something more hidden, an intimacy between me and the paintings that a thousand gazes could not disturb. I had always sought quiet in the world and there were few movements quieter, I realised, than paint cracking over time.
Days after the art restorer’s visit those three syllables—cra-que-lure—continued to rumble in my head. The allure of the crack, the lure of the crackle, the lair of the kraken. The crack of dawn, the crack of doom.
Little by little, I began to notice small changes in mood. At home, I felt ever more susceptible to things around me, above all to the abundance of creams, oils, facial masques and body lotions that Jane kept in our bathroom, combatants against the passage of time. Ever since I’d known her she’d been spending a small fortune on this mission to keep her skin supple and smooth, tender and silky for
the one
, and now each time I entered I felt the jars and bottles mocking me with their sweet pungent scents. In the past she’d been drawn to unavailable characters—men paralysed by depression, addicts or alcoholics, urban hermits or living overseas; there was always something safely in the way, an expiry date stamped on the package. And once one man was out of the picture, it took a while to erase the rough Braille he’d left on her looks and perfect herself for the next. But now, perhaps, if she
had
met
the one
she could relax the campaign.
Meanwhile, in our flat, the moths continued to gather thickly. Jane laid out more traps, now in all the rooms, strips on the tops of cabinets, dressers and wardrobes. Yet the ones on my landscapes weren’t decomposing rapidly enough, stubbornly resisting disintegration as if aware they would be replaced the moment they showed so much as a tear. Morning and night I would check for developments but no, these little brown torsos and wings remained intact, holding fast, in one final stance, to their makeshift landscapes.
At work I found myself challenged by ever greater feats of self-control. My patience was tested in new ways. For instance, I was both startled and not a little annoyed to note the presence of a new painting in
mechanical forces will always seek out the path of least resistance.
’
Some students leaned forwards, pressing dangerously close to the van Eyck. My impulse to intervene and ask them to take a few steps back was crushed by my fever to hear more.
‘Over time,’ the art restorer continued, ‘I hope you will all learn to identify fake craquelure, which forgers add to a painting in order to give it the illusion of age. They scrape the edge of the canvas on a table, bake it in the oven, and sprinkle sugar on top until the surface cracks in just the right way. There are other techniques too, but this is one of the simplest and most effective.
‘Yet in the words of the great Friedländer,
Forged craquelure is arbitrary, monotonous and pedantic—whereas natural craquelure throbs with rich variety
. So, to conclude: craquelure grants a painting its history, its authenticity, a whole topography the painter himself could never have envisioned . . . ’
When they left the room twenty minutes later I closed my eyes in order to process her words. Like a hot grille, the image of the van Eyck pressed into my eyelids despite the cracks being indistinguishable from where I sat in my chair. After hundreds and hundreds of hours in the Gallery, how had I failed to consider something so vital? I had always been drawn to decomposition, to the knowledge that everything in the universe tends from order to disorder, and the thought of the arrow of time also moving through paintings overwhelmed me. Painters create order from disorder, but the moment that order has been created, the slow march towards disorder begins again.
I’d been handed a secret. Visitors could stand and admire what they saw on the walls, point out to one another the various colours and compositions, but my inner lens would now be focused on something more hidden, an intimacy between me and the paintings that a thousand gazes could not disturb. I had always sought quiet in the world and there were few movements quieter, I realised, than paint cracking over time.
Days after the art restorer’s visit those three syllables—cra-que-lure—continued to rumble in my head. The allure of the crack, the lure of the crackle, the lair of the kraken. The crack of dawn, the crack of doom.
Little by little, I began to notice small changes in mood. At home, I felt ever more susceptible to things around me, above all to the abundance of creams, oils, facial masques and body lotions that Jane kept in our bathroom, combatants against the passage of time. Ever since I’d known her she’d been spending a small fortune on this mission to keep her skin supple and smooth, tender and silky for
the one
, and now each time I entered I felt the jars and bottles mocking me with their sweet pungent scents. In the past she’d been drawn to unavailable characters—men paralysed by depression, addicts or alcoholics, urban hermits or living overseas; there was always something safely in the way, an expiry date stamped on the package. And once one man was out of the picture, it took a while to erase the rough Braille he’d left on her looks and perfect herself for the next. But now, perhaps, if she
had
met
the one
she could relax the campaign.
Meanwhile, in our flat, the moths continued to gather thickly. Jane laid out more traps, now in all the rooms, strips on the tops of cabinets, dressers and wardrobes. Yet the ones on my landscapes weren’t decomposing rapidly enough, stubbornly resisting disintegration as if aware they would be replaced the moment they showed so much as a tear. Morning and night I would check for developments but no, these little brown torsos and wings remained intact, holding fast, in one final stance, to their makeshift landscapes.
At work I found myself challenged by ever greater feats of self-control. My patience was tested in new ways. For instance, I was both startled and not a little annoyed to note the presence of a new painting in
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