Adolescence — Milton Avery

4 thoughts on “Adolescence — Milton Avery”

1. I think future paintings of readers will show them in a somewhat more prone position, laptops on readers’ bellies, arms cramped T-Rex style with fingers on the keyboard/trackpad.

   If the elegance goes out of reading, will it still be a subject matter worthy of artistic reproduction?

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   1. Hmmm…I don’t know—I mean, I read on a Kindle Fire half the time and it might not look quite so different from this.
      But, I do agree that how books are integrated into artistic representation will change. This Avery painting from the ’40s depicts reading the same way that Renoir or Van Gogh might have depicted reading in the century before. But Renaissance and even Baroque paintings of readers tend to represent “books” rather than “reading” — where the book is clearly some object of authority. Renaissance and pre-Ren paintings are also far more likely to represent someone (usually a saint) *writing* the book. So, clearly there will be a shift.
      I’ve been posting artistic representations (usually paintings) of books and reading for about six months now—one every day—and I’ve posted very few contemporary paintings—I think Lucian Freud is about the most up to date. So I’m interested in what’s out there—if anything.

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2. I just find that laptop reading posture intriguing. I sometimes feel like an R. Crumb “Keep on Trucking” cartoon when I find myself in that position trapped in an Internet-induced daze. Interesting point about books as objects of authority. Seems like the more we move into Modernism, the more the book becomes an accessory. But that doesn’t mean that it loses its vital function of making possible a moment of beauty. People reading is just plain interesting to look at (undergroundnewyorkpubliclibrary.com [photos only]). I can think of a pretty recent example in painting: Gerhard Richter’s “Lesende” (Female Reader): http://www.artchive.com/artchive/r/richter/richter_reading.jpg from 1994. I wonder, though, what it is that she’s reading? Loose-leaf printouts? A magazine? Definitely a book, though, I think.

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3. By the way, I really appreciate your series of paintings about books and readers. It’s way more effective to spread them out like that so that they can linger in your brain and accumulate. Compare that to the typical picdump post that you finish off in about 30 seconds, go: “neat” and then forget about. I like the idea of finding something that works slowly and complements contemplation on the Internet.

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