Painting and the Journal of Eugene Delacroix

Rating:
Summary: A remarkable mind
Review: I have a passion for original sources - as close as I can, reading the master's own words. This book is the only introduction I know to the original thoughts of this great painter.

Delacroix presents a paradox: a skilled, expressive writer who argues against writing as an expressive medium. In his day, there was some kind of contest. One would be superior, either images or words. Even if the one-must-win mind seems silly now, he surely wrote his point about writing much better than the writers drew theirs about drawing.

Back then, his use of color was considered brash or worse. A mind like his must have its own way, though, and his critics are mostly forgotten. There was very little outlet for his views of art, so he planned his own art encyclopedia. It was really to have been an encyclopedia of his own thoughts on art, but would still have been a magnificent work.

It would also have been 150 years ahead of its time. Like the Journal itself, this dictionary was to be highly non-linear. Instead of alphabetical or other order, it would present a structure relating each part to others through footnotes. Give or take a technological vocabulary, it sounds like a heavily linked hypertext to me. He also, without using modern words, expressed fractal, self-similar structures like the recursive branching of trees.

The Journal did not follow strict time sequence - events were reported in contradictory orders and also revised at various times. This is where Hannoosh's scholarship adds its value. She has not only made the text available to French-deficient readers like me. She has also unwound its convoluted structure, and pinned it to other historical sources.

The proper balance is delicate, though. I wanted to read Delacroix's journal, not a commentary on Delacroix. The translator and scholar makes the original accessible, but also injects her own voice. The last chapter or two is almost exclusively about Delacroix, not by him. Even though Hannoosh seems to be a fine scholar, it was not her words that I hoped to hear.

There is a brief pictorial section in this book - black and white (although Delacroix was a famed colorist) and of uncertain sharpness. I respect that. It indicates the structure of paintings noted in the text, but makes no pretense at being a proper rendering of Delacroix's work. If you want to study the images themselves, you really need another book. These reproductions support the text. But isn't that where we came in, discussing the text vs. the painted image?

The book has voluminous footnootes. It also offers the original French for many of the passages presented in English translation. Together, these cut perhaps half the apparent bulk from the text. That makes this book a brief and very informative lesson in a great man's thinking. Although a bit dry, I really do like this one.