rob-thompson.com

Why are we so gloomy these days?

A new study shows we are worrying and smoking more, and sleeping less. On the face of it, the recession would appear to be the obvious culprit. Yet most of us still have far more money and comforts than our grandparents ever did.

No, the real problem isn’t the money it s the uncertainty.

Caught between a recession and a recovery, we don’t know if stocks are rising or tailing, or whether we’ll still have a job next week. And that feeling of uncertainty as a recent experiment by Dutch researchers has powerfully shown, upsets people far more than the knowledge that something bad will definitely happen. In the study, some subjects were told they would receive an intense electric shock 20 times, while others were informed that only three of the 20 shocks would be intense. The subjects facing mostly mild shocks found the exercise far more stressful than the others. When people know the worst, they mentally adjust to it, whereas an uncertain future leaves people stranded in an unhappy present.

So it is with today’s prevailing angst that we used to be happy with much less than we have now, and we could be again – if only we knew we had to.

Originally posted 2009-10-03 15:43:15.

A Face to the World: On Self-Portraits by Laura Cumming

Self-portraits trick us by exploiting a basic human reaction. When we meet other people we immediately try to judge their innerselves from their facial expressions. Cruel or kind? Intelligent or stupid? Approachable or touchy?

Though a self-portrait is only ever an illusion, the illusion always carries a truth, the truth of how the artist hopes to be seen. This is the idea that Laura Cumming pursues in her book A Face to the World: On Self-Portraitswhich is a series of brilliantly acute case studies on the great self-portraitists of Western art, often posed as a series of questions.

Why, for instance, did Van Eyck, her first subject, paint a tiny reflection of himself in the Arnolfini portrait?
Why does Botticelli glance at us with such cold disdain from the edge of the crowd in his Adoration of the Magi
Why does Van Dyck paint himself accompanied by a gigantic sunflower?

Though A Face to the World is stacked with visual masterpieces, what Cumming says about them is always better than you could have imagined. It adds up to the most enjoyable art book I have read for years.

The book swarms with startling characters and remarkable incident. Cumming begins her discussion of Durer’s 1500 work (the alpha and omega of self-portraiture) by reporting that its gaze proved too much for one crazed observer, who in 1905 tried to gouge out its eyes with a hatpin. This is art history made as vivid as a giant canvas executed by a master. Her writing is precise, personable, perspicacious: she avoids jargon, while celebrating the specific skills of the painter. Cumming uses her intelligence less to impress us with her theories than to persuade us how great her subjects are.