Customer Reviews

Still Life with Oysters and Lemon: On Objects and Intimacy

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mark Doty begins this book by describing a 350 year old Dutch painting "Still Life with Oysters and Lemon" that he has fallen in love with at the Metropolitan Museum. He then meanders to memories of his "Mamaw" from long ago in East Tennessee-- surely only Southerners call grandparents by that name-- to a poem by Cavafy, to buying an old Italianate Victorian House in Vermont with his partner who later died of AIDS. Along the way, Mr. Doty muses on the subject of balance: the desire to be in a relationship and the need to be free, the balance of order versus clutter, of staying rooted in one place and the need to travel-- and the joy of collecting simple, everyday imperfect things picked up in flea markets rather than perfect expensive objects.

There are so many good things to say about this little 70 page gem that one hardly knows where to begin. Too often I read a work of nonfiction and wish it had remained a short magazine article. That is not so with this book. I wanted it to go on and on. Whether or not the author is correct in his analysis of still life painting, he is completely convincing. Of course, his language is always both concise and beautiful and never gets in the way of what he is saying. Near the end of the book Mr. Doty says "What makes a poem a poem, finally, is that it is unparaphrasable. . . I may try to explain it or represent it in other terms, but then some element of its life will always be missing. It is the same with painting." Such a statement perfectly describes this little masterpiece.

Mark Doty has done the impossible. In STILL LIFE WITH OYSTERS AND LEMON he has not only written an extended essay (read epic poem) about his encounter with a simple Dutch Still Life painting, but he has also produced what must become the definitive map for looking, seeing, studying and describing the essence of art in a way that encourages us all to return to the pursuit of beauty. Doty has proved his credentials in art hisory and art technique so that he is able to find the essence of a still life, rhapsodize on the quality of light as captured by an everyday object that makes a centuries old painting seem immediate to our own home, and in doing so reveals his own history of memories, lovers, favorite objects, the passage of time as participants in the transitory moment we call life. So many art critics and art historians have attempted to find this plane of understanding and enlightment with only minimal degrees of success. As a curator and essayist about art I am humbled and in awe. Mark Doty is one of the finest poets in America today and knows his way with words, with phrases that illuminate his stances, with defining emotions inaudible to most of us. But this small book is more than an homage to a particular still life painting (though on that merit alone he wins the competition!). This is a tender, thoughtful journey toward discovering beauty that daily surrounds us, a call to accept the transitory nature in all things and to experience them while we may. No fatalism here, just a door opened to appreciate the cycle of being alive...which just happens to warmly include the aspect of dying as part of that totality. As in Still Life painting: artists have selflessly recreated moments precious to them, frozen them in time to stave off the finite, and in doing so have left us with miraculous images to incorporate into our psyches for perpetuating beauty. This book is a must for art students, for art lovers, and for everyone who yearns to understand the journey of the soul. As Doty informs us, paraphrasing poetry or a painting as focused as a still life is impossible; by nature the essence has been distilled. Writing a review of such a book is near impossible. Gift yourself with a book to which you will return as often as the author has returned to Still Life with Oysers and Lemon!

This is such a timely book for me because I was watching one of the plethora of decorating shows on tv one slow day, while cleaning and kept asking myself why so many homes by decorators have items that have no personal or deeply held memories for the people they are decorating for.

Its as if in this materialistic world we Americans live in, we see homes with 'filler' stuff. Stuff which is meant to make the place look special like in a magazine.

Thus I stood back and savored the pieces we have in our home and reminded myself of what Sister Wendy's works on art and artists had reminded me, which was to be still and realllllly look at a piece if art. Ponder the person who created it. Look at that painting and see the hidden treasures within it.

A book to love.

Wow what a book! As an artist myself I swooned over the entire opening when Mr. Doty describes being overtaken by the painting. Every artist longs for someone to be so smitten. Overall this book is such a rare treat in the seamless merging of art & poetry. I'm not sure where in this small treasure the switch was flipped for me from I'm-reading-a-book to I've never read a poem like this. It seems everything became a still life after his experience with the painting, every object thoughtfully pondered, every event given a new view. I don't think I've ever read a better description of light and clearly (thankfully) he got caught in it's magic. Thank you Mr. Doty for such a beautiful book!

In addition to fostering an appreciation of still life paintings in me, this book lit up my senses with the poetry of it all. Mark Doty, whose poems I have read and loved previously, has written a short book here that I could not stop reading. Every line I wanted to read and re-read to savor. Every line I wanted to mark or transcribe to enjoy again later. Like the painting masters he lauds, Mark is a peerless artist with words! What a joy -- full of the grace of life - this book was!

I found Doty's work to be disappointing. Mostly this is due to the fact that I think the ideas in the essay are wonderful. I love what he's attempting to do, this difficult "assay" at making very ephemeral sensations about art concrete, to make them comprehensible, to wrap his head and the reader's around them. The glorification of objects, of "bodies," is done wonderfully at times. At other times, to be completely honest, Doty's world was alive and magical to the point it gave me nausea. An example:

"Therein lies a large portion of the painting's poetry; these things form not a single whole but a concert, a community of separate presences; we are intended to compare their degrees of roundness, solidity, transparency, and opacity."

Okay, this is nice. Slightly meandering, but the form fits the function (I think), so that's just great.

Continuing with the same paragraph:

"They [the separate objects within the still life] are each a separate city, a separate child in a field of silent children. They speak back and fourth--do they?--across he distance between them. At dinner at my friends', I was seated with my back to the painting, but I felt its magnetism; I was trying to converse, I was conversing, but I felt still its pull, the strange silence of these separate things refusing to form a singular composition, as if it were my work to complete them, as if they needed and demanded me."

This is perhaps personal preference: That is simply too much for me. And this is a reoccuring problem. Further, some scenes are so hammered to death by Doty's detail of 'things' that I cannot inhabit them at all, there is no room for me, and thus I lose that interaction with art Doty is attempting to describe. I would assume Doty did this by intention, as another layer of his discussion of "bodies" and "things" and collecting them, and I think it's a compelling idea; I just don't think it works. I was disappointed that it didn't work, but it still didn't. Reading such sections became a chore.

Doty's structure throughout bends his central idea around many scenes and situations, which is wonderful, and by the time he gets to what I would call his climactic claim -- that still life distills the "I" to its quickest and most subtle: "a moment of attention, an intimate engagement" -- I'm completely on his side. In fact, beginning about halfway through with his description of an auctioneer and his relationship with his late partner, I was completely taken by the piece for a bit.

I would give this 3.5 stars if I could. I can't give it 4 because my overall sense after finishing was disappointment. I still recommend you read it.

I teach literature at an art school, and I'm reading this to add to a proposed course I want to teach. I am an author of fiction and also an artist--illustrator and painter. I find Doty's work visually evocative and sensually stunning. There are so many gorgeous lines, and heartbreaking passages--and all inspired by one little Dutch painting of lemons and oysters. That's just the thing, you see. An entire world can exist in one humble work of art, including all of the history, narrative, and sense memory it evokes. Highly recommended!

If you are not HUGELY into art history, theory, or painting, this will probably not be a very enjoyable read. I understand, though, that if you are, it is enthralling and marvelous and full of ideas that you have to go to art school to learn. I wish I went to art school before I read this book -- probably would have enjoyed it thoroughly; unfortunately, it was about as exciting to read as a slab of drywall.

I thought this book came in great condition for being "used". It looked like brand new, I am very satisfied with my Amazon purchase.

This was a well written book. Very moving! Makes you stand back, and take another look at still life.