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Creativity flowers in geriatric wonders
By Brooke Allen |
January 23, 2011, Sunday
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THE question of "old-age art" is mysterious and perennially fascinating. Creative artists who continue to work late in life so often seem to undergo a sea of change: a distillation, a new intensity, a sloughing off of excess and ornament in favor of deep essentials. W.B. Yeats, himself a notable example of the phenomenon, provided an image for it: "Though leaves are many, the root is one;/Through all the lying days of my youth/I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;/Now I may wither into the truth."
Having published his first novel back in 1966, Nicholas Delbanco admits to taking a personal interest in this aging process. His new book, "Lastingness: The Art of Old Age," touches on the late works of a number of great elders, including such geriatric wonders as Matisse, Monet, Sophocles, Sibelius, Picasso, Thomas Hardy and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Why do some artists (Delbanco mentions Saul Bellow, James Baldwin and Norman Mailer) mature early and then run out of steam, producing only second-rank work in their last decades, while others gain momentum and occasionally even peak in old age? What, if anything, do the many examples of great old-age art have in common?
Delbanco raises a number of questions but fails to answer most of them, skipping restlessly over the surface of his subject. He relates all the well-known events of Franz Joseph Haydn's long career but never bothers to analyze the progress of his output - nor does he even mention the interesting fact that Haydn was one of the very few major artists (John Updike was another) who never seemed to develop a "late style" in old age.
Delbanco treats his material in anecdotal fashion and draws few conclusions from his research, though clearly some generalizations can and must be made. Look at Michelangelo's half-finished "Slaves," apparently struggling to escape their blocks of marble; Titian's "Death of Actaeon"; Verdi's "Otello"; Liszt's "Czardas Macabre"; Francis Bacon's minimalist late works. All these suggest that the aesthetic of old age involves a slimming down and stripping away. He discusses the same qualities in "The Winter's Tale" (though Shakespeare, dead at 52, was not quite old even by 17th-century standards): "The late plays," Delbanco observes, "are less sequence-bound or yoked to plausibility. It's as though the peerless artificer has had enough of artifice."
This is true, and Delbanco offers one intriguing explanation. In youth, he posits, "it's the reception of the piece and not its production that counts. But to the aging writer, painter or musician the process can signify more than result; it no longer seems as important that the work be sold." It is a profound observation; with time and age, the act of showing becomes increasingly subordinate to the act of making, and gratification turns ever further inward.
There is clearly a major book waiting to be written on old-age art, but "Lastingness," more amuse-bouche than meaty repast, is not the one. Still it is absorbing. If "Lastingness" serves no other purpose than to raise a few of these questions in the general reader's mind, it will prove to have been a worthwhile exercise
Having published his first novel back in 1966, Nicholas Delbanco admits to taking a personal interest in this aging process. His new book, "Lastingness: The Art of Old Age," touches on the late works of a number of great elders, including such geriatric wonders as Matisse, Monet, Sophocles, Sibelius, Picasso, Thomas Hardy and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Why do some artists (Delbanco mentions Saul Bellow, James Baldwin and Norman Mailer) mature early and then run out of steam, producing only second-rank work in their last decades, while others gain momentum and occasionally even peak in old age? What, if anything, do the many examples of great old-age art have in common?
Delbanco raises a number of questions but fails to answer most of them, skipping restlessly over the surface of his subject. He relates all the well-known events of Franz Joseph Haydn's long career but never bothers to analyze the progress of his output - nor does he even mention the interesting fact that Haydn was one of the very few major artists (John Updike was another) who never seemed to develop a "late style" in old age.
Delbanco treats his material in anecdotal fashion and draws few conclusions from his research, though clearly some generalizations can and must be made. Look at Michelangelo's half-finished "Slaves," apparently struggling to escape their blocks of marble; Titian's "Death of Actaeon"; Verdi's "Otello"; Liszt's "Czardas Macabre"; Francis Bacon's minimalist late works. All these suggest that the aesthetic of old age involves a slimming down and stripping away. He discusses the same qualities in "The Winter's Tale" (though Shakespeare, dead at 52, was not quite old even by 17th-century standards): "The late plays," Delbanco observes, "are less sequence-bound or yoked to plausibility. It's as though the peerless artificer has had enough of artifice."
This is true, and Delbanco offers one intriguing explanation. In youth, he posits, "it's the reception of the piece and not its production that counts. But to the aging writer, painter or musician the process can signify more than result; it no longer seems as important that the work be sold." It is a profound observation; with time and age, the act of showing becomes increasingly subordinate to the act of making, and gratification turns ever further inward.
There is clearly a major book waiting to be written on old-age art, but "Lastingness," more amuse-bouche than meaty repast, is not the one. Still it is absorbing. If "Lastingness" serves no other purpose than to raise a few of these questions in the general reader's mind, it will prove to have been a worthwhile exercise
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