I just watched a great documentary about the life and work of Lucian Freud. I've always admired his work, ever since leafing through large, expensive art books with a History of Art student when I was in my late teens. I remember feeling the contradictory emotions of both curiosity and revulsion. The pasty, all-too-real depiction of the human form was attractive, interesting, inviting, but at the same time, a destroyer of the illusion. Bodies like that were kept in the dark, under duvets, not sprawled out on beds with dirty sheets. He showed what we don't want to acknowledge: the absurdity of concealment, social masks, and our basic animalism. In his paintings there's nowhere to hide and it's unnerving. Who has the temerity to be viewed under the skin? The outside is the inside: everything bleeds out.
For me, great works of fiction, poetry, art, music, have an inherent subtext of the unsaid and it's what clings to your bones. I re-read "Death of a Salesman" just recently and everytime I read it or see it, I feel closer to a greater truth, something I couldn't have seen when I was 16. A few days later, I was re-ordering books on one of my shelves, muttering to myself how bad it is to have so many left unread. I really should read these, and these, and this, too, when it occurred to me: at what stage in life will I have to come to the acceptance that I will not read them, that I just will not have the time to? Willy can't accept or see, that he will not achieve the greatness he thought he was bound for and instead of being utterly crushed, he projects his hopes upon Biff, his son, making life that little bit more tolerable. He lives in denial, but it's the only way for him to live, and to die.
Willy represents a great truth about humanity: we lie to ourselves because the truth is so...concrete. Optimism is better than banal acceptance. Freud sees the acceptance of the truth in all its ugliness in much the same way as Miller: it's just the subjects who don't.
No comments:
Post a Comment