Page 31 - Studio International - December 1971

intensely on the scene, blotting out with its framed pictures on the wall; a concatenation of facilitate. And where those activities are
brightness most of the lines between the paving elaborately flowered wallpaper, a worn brocaded concerned, the lovely chiaroscuro effects in a
stones. The wickerwork of the basket on the armchair with used clothing on it, a six-inch number of other pictures seem especially
man's back and the side of his head are crisp in tasselled frieze hiding the rim of a knick-knack- charged with significance. In a picture as lovely
the light, but shadow hides his eyes and a covered mantelpiece, a pair of old boots under as any of Chardin's, light picks out a basket of
drooping moustache conceals whatever the chair, and an alarm clock high on a shelf, loaves and groceries in a corner, a dresser-top
expression his mouth may have. The girl's face, doesn't invite one's amused patronage or covered with cooking items, and dishes and
in contrast, is framed against a black doorway wincing away from a persisting badness of folded cloths on a table next to it, in a symbolic
in the rear of the courtyard, and in contrast with design. In all four of the pictures that I have juxtaposition of the raw materials, the means of
her formal-looking dress it is incongruously just mentioned (respectively Al2; A64; W20 transformation, and the place of consumption.
youthful. The opportunities for irony are and C18) the elegant or would-be elegant items In another, an elegant bed emerges like an island
obvious, but they are not taken. The two inspire one rather with a sense of their loved from a darkness that fills almost the whole
figures stand relaxedly, self-confidently, she a meaningfulness and life-enriching qualities for lower half of the frame and surges part way up
little taller than him but perfectly poised and the rooms' inhabitants, the esthetic the majestically swelling coverlet (the four
very feminine, he very masculine, the two of incongruities keep before one's eyes the mentioned here are, respectively, A4; W19; W91
them meeting as individuals and equals—and individually made ideals of domestic harmony and A15). In another again, a bourgeois dining-
doing so, obviously, to a considerable extent and security embodied in those rooms, and the table set for one person blazes out of the semi-
because of the city trades whose ostensibly minor untidinesses remind one both of the darkness and is echoed by a handsome
trammelling insignia they wear. It seems human tendencies towards chaos that have in lampshade overhead, embroidered with heroic
appropriate, too, in view of Atget's general fact been held in check here and of the figures. The whole complex of crisply defined
emphasis on enlargement, enrichment, and fundamental human activities that the rooms wine-bottles and wicker bread-basket and other
nourishment in the city, that stretching in
pleasantly flowery, slightly out-of-focus tall
letters across the whole width of the rear wall of
the courtyard above the couple's heads is the
word Dégustation'
VII
Yet distinguished as are Atget's portraits, it is
not really paradoxical that his subtlest and
richest evocations of individual lives in the city
should come by way of studies of the inanimate;
I mean, of domestic interiors. Such studies are
not as common in art as they deserve to be —
indeed, there seem to be few of the first order
to set beside those of Van Gogh and Bonnard—
and a special kind of alertness would seem to be
required for them. What has to be sensed by the
artist, I think, is both the peculiar kind of
triumph that the domestic mundane can
represent, and also a larger cultural dimension.
As to the latter, I have touched already, apropos
of that much beflowered interior by Atget, on the
way in which a room can be simultaneously an
expression of its occupants and (by way of the
artifacts present in it) a revelation of cultural
forces that have helped to make those individuals
what they are; and what an alertness to this sort
of thing can result in, we have the brilliant
photographs of Evans in The American People,
as well as Atget's own, to remind us. But it is the
other aspect that concerns me now, the aspect
that is missing altogether from that book by
Evans. When one turns to Atget's kitchens and
bedrooms and dining-rooms, it is the moral
beauty and blessedness of order that speaks out
in them, however humble the objects or
incongruous the juxtapositions. In Atget's
presentation of them, a cooking-stove with an
earthenware casserole on it can cohabit
perfectly decently with an ornament-laden
mantelpiece above it and a bed adorned with an
elaborate lace coverlet; worn boots and a slop-
pail with the lid off can stand on a shelf under a
wooden wash-table and clothes hang jumbled
on top of each other on nearby hooks without
squalor and without any undercutting of the
243