XX

S

ee Anne, I commanded myself.

Beatrice was gone. Amends could maybe be made. I could learn the details. They could not be set to rights but maybe they could be understood. The past is but the past.

I've never been precisely clear on why I loathe the Uffizi yet love the Louvre. Paris and I have always had a close relationship. We are friends. Perhaps therefore I am unjustly oblivious to her faults while I remain hypercritical of Florentine failings. I expect more from Firenze. She has a reputation to keep up. Paris, on the other hand, is entirely fluid and fanciful going through upheavals downswings while all the while remaining Paris. Paris would never help me move but when she came by the next day and plopped grinningly down on my couch, she would make the place suddenly feel perfect. Florence is that old professor that wore the bow tie to class each day. I don't want to know the delicacies of the retired, refined teacher. The Uffizi is the laundry basket of Florence, filled with bow ties.

While I cherish the works on the walls of art museums, the context inspires me to mourn. They are so many cemeteries where we go to pay our due respects. Crowds file past while reverentially murmuring obligatory testaments. Sometimes it is more morgue as grisly gatherers point and identify the cadavers that they can.

I will not fault the cattle for the progress of the herd. I will not even blame the blue blazered cowboys. Anne was such a tourist wrangler at the Uffizi. She carried with her many tall tales gained from long silent days on the gallery floor ranges.

Indeed, I will not fault anyone for taking pilgrimages. I was digging holes about Baden-Baden when some infidel fired a shotgun blast through the cartoon of The Virgin and Child with St Anne and John the Baptist. Instantly I cancelled excursion plans for elsewhere and, at first opportunity, I was railing toward London. It might have been artifice that propelled me there as though a close relation had been wounded but consciously I believed it to be an earnest impulse. Horrified and fearing the worst, I could not rest until I knew the extent of the injuries. Outrage contributed. The responsible fiend was neither Philistine nor Sammite. It should be noted, should the term 'Samnite' have not gained global currency by the time the reader has reached this point, that as a Philistine is one who does not have any cultivated tastes, a Samnite is one who has full knowledge of what culture has to offer but refuses to acknowledge its merits or value. The tribe of this vile evildoer against art and aesthetic though should be the Samaritans for those ancient peoples were so wretched that when a single one showed himself to be reasonably charitable, it was so remarkable that he gained the definite article for himself.

Art museums are a necessity and a blessing. I would not relish having to knock on the door of some Hollywood starlet asking to see her Michelangelo drawing. Curators recognize their dual role as custodians and shepherds and achieve great things.

What I bemoan is the obvious inability to have everything that I want precisely when I wish it (and not have to worry about storage in the meantime). Ideally, I'd also be able to be there the day after a work was finished to see it in its original context and ambiance but perhaps that is asking for too much. It is an essential truth of the visual arts that what we see around a painting (and more so a sculpture), affects our appreciation of the work. The same is true of music and sounds but it is easier for us to shut out invasive audio. Often times, too, seeing music performed enhances it and perhaps it is intended that way. I doubt that Classical composers ever imagined their audience able to sink into an immersion chamber to have cleaned, perfect music fed directly to them. No. Consider the moment when the chorus bursts out with O Freunde! Nicht diese töne! Do not the widely opened mouths and throbbing throats of the choir have a terrific sensible affect upon the experience?

Much of what I am saying here is so much hyperbole. When I paint, as most painters paint, we don't see what is behind the canvas. We concentrate entirely on the confined shape and compose based upon the confines of the frame. We do not even work with a frame in mind. Yes, a good wall fresco is entirely in tune with its space. The composition for such works is dependant upon the local architecture. Sometimes sculptures are crafted with a specific space in mind and very often with a specific intended vantage point. For the vast majority of art works though they are designed to be self-contained.

Walking the stately galleries of the Uffizi, I could not help but be overwhelmed and thereby under whelmed. All that beauty and genius, hung alongside mediocrity and some works that were there more for their importance in history than for their technical brilliance, removed my ability to isolate the works and see them as separate accomplishments. I walked through the crowds and did not even see the hundreds of faces. Sometimes a striking costume, a beautiful face, or a pair of shapely calves would catch my eye. I would stop to assess the merits of the beauty but no time was ever applied to understanding the person that carried the attractiveness.

Look at one.

Move on to the next.

Judge people instantly by their clothing and demeanor.

When I located the blue-blazered Anne, she was professionally judging people by their covers. She was, no doubt, fleshing them out as all manner of exotic characters for the fluid stories of her imagination. They were, I believe, improved in the translation.

When Anne saw me, she neither smiled nor frowned, which had the effect of the latter on me. Even her greeting was hesitant and unsure. Maybe, I deluded myself; she was uncomfortable speaking to a friend at her workplace, especially in English. I remained an arm's length away while trying to lighten the atmosphere with trite witticisms at the expense of the Old Masters. Anne though, today, would not play and asked me to meet her outside in five minutes. I protested half-heartedly about my admission fee before making for the rendezvous.

So there we were, a short time later, seated on the low steps of the sculpture arcade in the Piazza della Signoria. Anne pulled her knees to her chest, pulling the Navy Blue skirt tight about her pale legs. Despite the sculpted beauty surrounding us, and her words being directed at me, her attention was wholly fixed upon some cluster of insignificant pebbles before her. I knew that something ill had occurred even before she named me.

"Do not come here anymore. I'm sorry. "

My head tilted but I also could not take my eyes off the pathway.

"We cannot…" she struggled to continue. "I'm sorry. We cannot be friends any longer."

It had nothing to do with art.

XXI