Musings from Brian J. Noggle

I saw someone–perhaps the Ace of Spades Midmorning Art Thread–mention Edward Hopper. Of course, I knew about “The Nighthawks”, which the particular post mentioned. So when I got a chance to pick up this book at Hooked on Books, I did.

The book mixes biographical text with large renderings of the paintings as well as some detailed close-ups. It definitely uses the page effectively; some books have fairly large margins and tiny reproductions of the art, but this book really illustrates how to do a monograph. Of course, it is from the 21st century. Clearly, printing has improved since the 1970s and 1980s, when a lot of the monographs I review were published.

The author of this book talks about how grim and isolated, how despondent the people in the paintings are, and he lays out a good argument for that, but I think the scenes are not quite as bleak as the author would have us believe. They’re scenes of working people, often urban or newly developed areas, and they depict not portraits but moments in time in the urban landscapes and in the peoples’ lives. The almost impressionistic blurring of the lines works well, and this author indicates that Hopper might have influenced Noir cinema instead of vice versa.

So I liked the book. Of course, I live in the country now, so city living is but a memory, which might be why I like the gauzy focus urban paintings–paintings from a time way past when I lived in the city, but how I imagined myself in that city even as I lived there and even now.

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You know, ABC Books has amongst its dwindling artists section a thick volume on Watteau, and I felt a bit like a traitor when I bought this book at Hooked on Books two weeks ago. Of course, that’s odd, since I was a Hooked on Books patron before I even moved here, twenty-some years ago when I came to Springfield with my beautiful-then-girlfriend. So perhaps I should feel like a traitor to Hooked on Books for buying so much at ABC Books, but Hooked on Books has changed hands once or twice since then, and ABC Books has not changed hands since I’ve known of it.

At any rate, watteau to say about this artist. A late seventeenth and early eighteenth century French artist–Voltaire might have thought him old school. You know, if I read and remember enough of these monographs I will see he’s more Gainsborough than Caravaggio. The brief text introduction in the book explains how he was misunderestimated in his age, but how he’s really a towering figure. Except fewer people remember his name than Caravaggio, probably.

Not bad to look at; group scenes where you can tell the subjects are people. I don’t know that I would hang any reprints of his work in my home if I were to come upon one somewhere. But I probably wouldn’t, as, c’mon, it’s Watteau.

The book, though, is nominally a Harry N. Abrams book, but it’s also credited to Aurora Art Publishers, Leningrad. Most of the pieces depcited on the plates were in Soviet museums, and this was a nice, artificialish “We like art, too” reach across the Iron Curtain where the book was published in the Soviet Union, but the art images are all pasted in by work-from-home people circa 1979. I have mentioned before that I dated a girl in the 1990s who caught on with one of these publishers who would send her books and art plates to paste into them, and the girl would get dinged on quality control if the plates were a little crooked, so it wasn’t something you could do while watching television (as the ads in the magazines promised).

You know what? I have forgotten Watteau since I started typing this review. Which explains why it’s the only monograph left at ABC Books besides the $30 “comic” art one (which I will probably buy in 2022). So, consider that the ultimate meh.

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C’mon, man, it’s like Checkov’s gun. If the man buys a twee collection of tweerific baby pictures as an artist’s “monograph” on Saturday, you have to know he’s going to browse it during the football game the next day. And, the best part is that this book, which counts in my simple annual total as much as Wuthering Heights or David Copperfield. Well, no, that’s not the best part.

All right, all right, all right. Anne Geddes has made a life of making books like this, books with staged photos of infants and newborns. She got her start at the turn of the century with calendars and whatnot, and one of her books was featured on Oprah. Which was a television program of some influence, although it’s mostly forgotten now.

So if you dig pictures of babies dressed like butterflies and perched on something looking like a tree branch or babies made to look like flowers posed in a field, this is definitely the book for you. Or if you’re interested in spending $4 to get a quick entry onto the annual reading list.

The best part about this book, though, was my family’s reaction to it and to my reading it. My beautiful wife recognized the photographer’s name and said the photographer’s works creeped her out. And as I sat on the sofa, watching the Packers victory this weekend, my youngest sat next to me, playing on his Nintendo Switch, and every couple of pages, I would say, “Aw, look at that baby dressed up like an insect!” and show it to him, and he would look but shake his head. That alone was worth the price of the book and the hit my reputation took for reading it.

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I bought this book earlier this month, and I kept it where I could see it. As you might remember, gentle reader, I like to read a Christmas novel every year in the holiday season. But I sometimes have difficulty finding one in the Nogglestead stacks when the time is right. I mean, I buy them when I see them at book sales and whatnot, but the Nogglestead to-read shelves are a dense jungle, and if I have to find something, I generally cannot, but then when I am not looking for it, it is right there.

At any rate, this book has a bit of a dark premise: A couple has split up right before Christmas. Although good Christian kids who dated in high school, they split when they went to separate colleges. But she loses her mother, and when he loses his father, their shared grief and past leads them to one night of passion pregnancy and guilt. He drops out of college to take over his father’s auto parts store, and she drops out of school to be a mom. Although they start from humble beginnings, they build a good upper middle class life together as the parts store prospers under his guidance, and they have a total of three children. But the woman mourns the loss of her youth and her college degree, and when her school rival for her husband’s affections returns to town, she becomes suspicious and throws him out.

Through a series of flashbacks, many revolving around the central gimmick that he has given her a Christmas ornament every year of their marriage, we get this story and its lead-up. Although she really loves him, she hasn’t forgiven herself or him for that one night that led to their successful marriage, and she self-destructively breaks it up. But, c’mon, man, this is a Christmas novel, so, spoiler alert, they get back together at the end.

A nice bit of Hallmark Channel movie in a book form. It’s got a little depth to it, unlike some Christmas books, and I kind of felt bad for the protagonists until they reconciled.

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Well, this is a later (well, middle, since the series goes on for another 20 years) Mack Bolan book. He is again dealing with terrorists looking to build a nuclear weapon, and this book hopscotches across the world (Scotland, Turkey, the Caribbean) as Bolan chases leads and shoots people and blows up things. He has the assitance of a Russian agent for a while (spoiler alert), and discovers that a Caribbean dictator deposed by the US has commissioned the device so he can get his revenge by blowing it up in an American city.

Kind of a meh book, to be honest. A bit sweeping for a Bolan book, but I guess by 1997, even the pulp was packing it on.

This book leaves me with but four Executioner titles in my to-read shelves, which means I have to start thinking about what other series in the line I should start after. I’m thinking SuperBolan because I’m a glutton for punishment.

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