The upside-down world: meetings with the Dutch masters

Uittreksel

"Arriving as a young writer in an ancient Dutch town, Benjamin Moser found himself visiting―casually at first, and then more and more obsessively―the country’s great museums. Inside these old buildings, he discovered the remains of the Dutch Golden Age and began to unearth the strange, inspiring, and terrifying stories of the artists who gave shape to one of the most luminous moments in the history of human creativity. Beyond the sainted Rembrandt―who harbored a startling darkness―and the mysterious Vermeer, whose true subject, it turned out, was lurking in plain sight, Moser got to know a whole galaxy of geniuses: the doomed virtuoso Carel Fabritius, the anguished wunderkind Jan Lievens, the deaf prodigy Hendrik Avercamp. And through their artwork, he got to know their country, too: from Pieter Saenredam's translucent churches to Paulus Potter’s muddy barnyards, and from Pieter de Hooch’s cozy hearths to Jacob van Ruisdael’s tragic trees. Year after year, as he tried to make a life for himself in the Netherlands, Moser found friends among these centuries-dead artists. And he found that they, too, were struggling with the same questions that he was. Why do we make art? What even is art, anyway―and what is an artist? What does it mean to succeed as an artist, and what does it mean to fail? Is art a consolation―or a mortal danger? The Upside-Down World is an invitation to ask these questions, and to turn them on their heads: to look, and then to look again. This is Holland and its great artists as we’ve never seen them before. And it’s a sumptuously illustrated, highly personal coming-of-age-story, twenty years in the making: a revealing self-portrait by one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation."-- Provided by publisher.

Inhoud

Introduction: The way it had to be -- Where to start. Rembrandt: the shadow master ; Jan Lievens: not Rembrandt ; Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck: who is an artist? ; Carel Fabritius: the thunderclap ; Johannes Vermeer: the fingerprint beneath the frame -- The picture about anything. Gerard Ter Borch: the human condition ; Pieter de Hooch: a peaceful room in a peaceful land ; Gabriël Metsu: mammonomania ; Jan Steen: the airborne peacock -- Wall power. Hendrick Avercamp: the mute muse ; Frans Hals: at the crossroads ; Pieter Saenredam: infinity in the making ; Paulus Potter: the innocent eye test ; Jacob van Ruisdael: a tragedy for trees ; Albert Eckhout: the past in the land of the future -- Mayflower and May flowers. Rachel Ruysch: my manly art heroine ; Adriaen Coorte: art is -- Afterword: Going back home.