It tells a story. Or several.
I've loved this picture ever since I first stood in front of it in Munich with my mouth hanging open. It's only just occurred to me to figure out why, and it has nowt to do with the quality of the brushwork or composition or whatnot, because I know as much about all that as your average hippo does, and certainly less than a painting elephant in Thailand.
I think the reason has some relevance to preferences in poetry: it's to do with narrative. I did figure out long ago that I need a picture to have a narrative element, and preferably one involving living creatures. I used to put my indifference to Gainsborough portraits down to the fact that the subjects were all toffs, and to my suspicion that he himself was indifferent to them, and couldn't wait to collect the dosh and be off to paint something he liked better. But now I think it's that they have no narrative. They are just sitting there being painted: I can't imagine them having a life outside the painting.
Not all portraiture is devoid of narrative. Hockney's double portraits tend to crackle with unresolved tension between the subjects, as in the Celia & Ossie Clark portrait where their emotional distance, expressed through their body language, is such that you can't help thinking each is mentally composing a letter to a divorce lawyer. So one can construct some sort of a narrative - how did they get to this pass, what happens next, most importantly, who'll get custody of the cat?
In his "Peter Getting Out Of Nick's Pool", Hockney constructs a different kind of narrative simply by having a young man, whose back is to us, looking out of the picture, beyond the frame. Not only the eye but the mind is drawn there, wondering what is happening beyond our view, and how the unseen face is reacting to it. Caspar David Friedrich is a great one for depicting people with their faces turned away, so that we must imagine the most important part of them, where the emotions show.
But not all narrative pictures stick in my mind. For that, they need one more quality: the potential to be variously interpreted. "And when did you last see your father?" is packed with narrative, but there's only one possible interpretation of what is happening and what's going to happen next. The same goes for all those Victorian paintings with helpful titles like Arriving at the Inn, Waiting for News, Farewell to the Soldier... I like them, sure; they do at least have a narrative, unlike some Mondrian geometrical design or Pollock squirt from which I can't construct a story to save my life. But the story is too clearly told and has too few alternatives to it.
This is what I love about "Riding Couple". When I was young, I constructed an elopement narrative from it; they're waiting for a ferry to cross the river away from her outraged parents, thinks I. Now older, I can see that the horse's high, elaborate step speaks against it. That's the sort of highly trained animal you take for an evening outing with your accredited sweetheart, not the sort you escape on. And yet... being loth to lose my elopement fantasy altogether, I can suppose the ground is boggy near the river and the horse, clearly a fastidious creature, is high-stepping to avoid the miry bits. Is that town, that looks as if it might be on an island in the river, a refuge or somewhere to escape from? It looks a beguiling place, but who knows?The thing lends itself to all manner of stories, not just one, and that's what keeps drawing me back.
The point is, I rather think the same applies to poems. I want them to tell me a story, but I don't want it spelled out and tied up in a bow. I want to be a co-creator and to be able to fill in blanks myself. And I want, in the end, for there to be several possible stories, not just the one.
I think the reason has some relevance to preferences in poetry: it's to do with narrative. I did figure out long ago that I need a picture to have a narrative element, and preferably one involving living creatures. I used to put my indifference to Gainsborough portraits down to the fact that the subjects were all toffs, and to my suspicion that he himself was indifferent to them, and couldn't wait to collect the dosh and be off to paint something he liked better. But now I think it's that they have no narrative. They are just sitting there being painted: I can't imagine them having a life outside the painting.
Not all portraiture is devoid of narrative. Hockney's double portraits tend to crackle with unresolved tension between the subjects, as in the Celia & Ossie Clark portrait where their emotional distance, expressed through their body language, is such that you can't help thinking each is mentally composing a letter to a divorce lawyer. So one can construct some sort of a narrative - how did they get to this pass, what happens next, most importantly, who'll get custody of the cat?
In his "Peter Getting Out Of Nick's Pool", Hockney constructs a different kind of narrative simply by having a young man, whose back is to us, looking out of the picture, beyond the frame. Not only the eye but the mind is drawn there, wondering what is happening beyond our view, and how the unseen face is reacting to it. Caspar David Friedrich is a great one for depicting people with their faces turned away, so that we must imagine the most important part of them, where the emotions show.
But not all narrative pictures stick in my mind. For that, they need one more quality: the potential to be variously interpreted. "And when did you last see your father?" is packed with narrative, but there's only one possible interpretation of what is happening and what's going to happen next. The same goes for all those Victorian paintings with helpful titles like Arriving at the Inn, Waiting for News, Farewell to the Soldier... I like them, sure; they do at least have a narrative, unlike some Mondrian geometrical design or Pollock squirt from which I can't construct a story to save my life. But the story is too clearly told and has too few alternatives to it.
This is what I love about "Riding Couple". When I was young, I constructed an elopement narrative from it; they're waiting for a ferry to cross the river away from her outraged parents, thinks I. Now older, I can see that the horse's high, elaborate step speaks against it. That's the sort of highly trained animal you take for an evening outing with your accredited sweetheart, not the sort you escape on. And yet... being loth to lose my elopement fantasy altogether, I can suppose the ground is boggy near the river and the horse, clearly a fastidious creature, is high-stepping to avoid the miry bits. Is that town, that looks as if it might be on an island in the river, a refuge or somewhere to escape from? It looks a beguiling place, but who knows?The thing lends itself to all manner of stories, not just one, and that's what keeps drawing me back.
The point is, I rather think the same applies to poems. I want them to tell me a story, but I don't want it spelled out and tied up in a bow. I want to be a co-creator and to be able to fill in blanks myself. And I want, in the end, for there to be several possible stories, not just the one.
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