Читать книгу The One Before - Juan José Saer - Страница 11

A Layman’s Thoughts on Painting

I think more about frames than paintings. My preference: altarpieces and images of the Way of the Cross. Between each station on the Way of the Cross is the empty wall. It goes unrecognized as the true frame holding in the pathetic magic of feeling without allowing it to spill from its borders toward the ocean of oil that is indeterminacy. The frame shows that Christ was crucified; it preserves his sacrifice for us and saves us from the confusion of his hesitations, his stubbornness, and his fear. We owe the frame perspective, perfect profiles, and the most surprising accomplishment of painting: concrete abstraction.

The docent of the municipal museum thinks I’m crazy because he’s seen me looking at the empty wall. It looks white in the sense of white-hot; the red, symbol of heat and passion, becomes invisible through abundance and excess. So much of the same feeling neutralizes itself and blinds the rest and then we feel unworthy to keep looking. How can I explain such a thing to my friends who are painters? Each picture looks to me like a white wall that has been diminished, attenuated. Perhaps the word “cut” would serve, as when we say to cut wine with water. Thus, the art of painting is for me the art of reduction. Let us honor the frame, because from uniformity it creates the variety of the passion. Rainbows reign in the sky for a moment and then fade, in the afternoon, into the arms of a night darker and more indistinguishable than fire.