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Antoine's Alphabet: Watteau and His World
Antoine Watteau, one of the most mysterious painters who ever lived, is the inspiration for this delightful investigation of the tangled relationship between art and life. Weaving together historical fact and personal reflections, the influential art critic Jed Perl reconstructs the amazing story of this pioneering bohemian artist who, although he died in 1721, when he was only thirty-six, has influenced innumerable painters and writers in the centuries since—and whose work continues to deepen our understanding of the place that love, friendship, and pleasure have in our daily lives.
Perl creates an astonishing experience by gathering his reflections on this “master of silken surfaces and elusive emotions” in the form of an alphabet—a fairy tale for adults—giving us a new way to think about art. This brilliant collage of a book is a hunt for the treasure of Watteau’s life and vision that encompasses the glamour and intrigue of eighteenth-century Paris, the riotous history of Harlequin and Pierrot, and the work of such modern giants as Cézanne, Picasso, and Samuel Beckett.
By turns somber and beguiling, analytical and impressionistic, Antoine’s Alphabet reaffirms the contemporary relevance of the greatest of all painters of young love and imperishable dreams. It is a book to savor, to share, to return to again and again.
Perl creates an astonishing experience by gathering his reflections on this “master of silken surfaces and elusive emotions” in the form of an alphabet—a fairy tale for adults—giving us a new way to think about art. This brilliant collage of a book is a hunt for the treasure of Watteau’s life and vision that encompasses the glamour and intrigue of eighteenth-century Paris, the riotous history of Harlequin and Pierrot, and the work of such modern giants as Cézanne, Picasso, and Samuel Beckett.
By turns somber and beguiling, analytical and impressionistic, Antoine’s Alphabet reaffirms the contemporary relevance of the greatest of all painters of young love and imperishable dreams. It is a book to savor, to share, to return to again and again.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
November 12, 2010
Although I am absorbed in Mrs. Dalloway's lovely lyricism, I can't help but allow myself to follow this brief diversion. I came across this volume in the National Gallery's abundant little bookshop, and kind of bought it on a whim, but it is just too good! Check out this tidbit from pg. 20:
"The moderns dreamed of liberating beauty from the obligations of meaning, they conceived of beauty not as an idea or an ideal but as an irreducible sensation, an unforgettable kiss, a distillation of apprehensions and traditions and drives and desires and avidities, at once inevitable and serendipitous."
"The moderns dreamed of liberating beauty from the obligations of meaning, they conceived of beauty not as an idea or an ideal but as an irreducible sensation, an unforgettable kiss, a distillation of apprehensions and traditions and drives and desires and avidities, at once inevitable and serendipitous."
January 29, 2014
Somewhere in this unusual, gorgeously illustrated little book, Jed Perl quotes from a 1719 letter Antoine Watteau wrote to his friend Jean de Jullienne. “In my view,” Watteau writes, “you must either do away with ornament – or make ornament the essence. It’s not something you add. It’s not icing on a cake. It’s everything – or it’s nothing.” Watteau’s paintings, full of lovers and parties of friends singing and dancing and flirting in overgrown gardens, might at first seem to fall on the side of “nothing,” of impotent ornament. The gauzy trees, the liquid distances, the women with their backs turned and wearing voluminous pink or blue silk dresses that make them somehow look more naked for being clothed – there’s an impression of frivolity in it all (if, too, a bit of melancholy.) But despite his odd decision to construct this as an alphabet book with entries written variously as fiction, history or memoir, Perl nonetheless manages to open our eyes to the “everything” concealed in plain sight.
March 23, 2022
It’s a curious book about Watteau, an enigmatic and easily misunderstood painter, often dismissed as merely decorative. Just like his art, this book is whimsical and unsystematic. Presented in the form of alphabetically arranged entries, it explores an art critic’s thoughts and memories centered on one of his favorite artists, the themes of his art, and the influence it had on later works of various genres.
Watteau’s subjects are difficult to define. His figures meet, turn to and away from each other, flirt, part, and it actually stays unclear to the viewer what happens in the paintings – is it a hello or a goodbye? Is it love or indifference? Watteau focuses on the fleeting emotions, and the figures in his paintings strike the viewer as a bit disconnected like mere acquaintances. While their meetings have all the potential of opportunities, their interaction is not based on solid friendship or knowledge of each other so that his figures’ emotions are bound to fade like the silvery dusk on Watteau’s canvases.
Antoine’s Alphabet is very diverting; it jumps from one subject to another, leading the reader on a delightful voyage of discovery. It’s great for anyone who loves Watteau or wants to explore his art from a slightly different, less art historical angle. Just don’t expect a structured dictionary of themes and Watteau-related history.
Watteau’s subjects are difficult to define. His figures meet, turn to and away from each other, flirt, part, and it actually stays unclear to the viewer what happens in the paintings – is it a hello or a goodbye? Is it love or indifference? Watteau focuses on the fleeting emotions, and the figures in his paintings strike the viewer as a bit disconnected like mere acquaintances. While their meetings have all the potential of opportunities, their interaction is not based on solid friendship or knowledge of each other so that his figures’ emotions are bound to fade like the silvery dusk on Watteau’s canvases.
Antoine’s Alphabet is very diverting; it jumps from one subject to another, leading the reader on a delightful voyage of discovery. It’s great for anyone who loves Watteau or wants to explore his art from a slightly different, less art historical angle. Just don’t expect a structured dictionary of themes and Watteau-related history.
September 9, 2018
Jed Perl’s musings on the elusive and dreamily melancholy paintings of Watteau are at the same time charming, erudite, literary, and, in a fresh way that is often absent from more academic books, emotional. They follow the logic of the alphabet – a logic that quickly turns into a welcome randomness echoing the mysteriousness of Watteau’s work, as Perl lets his mind wanders along the many possibilities that each letter offers: from unexpected associations (with, among others, Katharine Hebpurn, Samuel Beckett, Jean Cocteau or Gérard de Nerval) to deeply felt analysis of the vanished world depicted by the paintings, from anecdotes about Watteau’s life (or, actually, Perl’s own life) to witty meditations on the bodies and postures of the characters on the canvases, this lovely book flirts with the infinite convolutions of the rococo that Pearl so adroitly defines. Because he loves and understands the paintings of Watteau intuitively, Pearl finds the right words to share his admiration of the painter’s brush strokes and of the scenes that are represented. But he is also able to convey clear and intelligent analyses of what Watteau may have tried to do, and of how he did it. Pearl illuminates with both heart and intellectual rigor what makes pieces such as Gilles or The pilgrimage to the Isle of Cythera endlessly mesmerizing. I’ve always sensed that Watteau’s artworks was a puzzling (and therefore irresistible) invitation, an invitation to secret gardens that seem almost mythical in their beautiful vagueness, to times past that oscillate between real moments in History and unknown centuries, to aimless strolls with people whom we don’t quite know and who don’t necessarily know themselves what they’re doing, where they’re going, what has happened and what will come next. There is an unsettling enchantment to Watteau’s paintings, and Perl has found a way to express and explain this peculiar magic. Getting lost into the visions of a painter, and getting carried away by the sentences of a writer, are two very different experiences. Perl, somehow, has managed to marry both.
August 7, 2023
Read this mostly for the form. Art history book about Watteau organized around alphabetical concepts. While some parts did speak to me, some other parts felt a little indulgent
June 4, 2009
If I were to see a painting or sketch by Watteau in a museum, I'm not sure if it would catch my eye. I might look at it and think, "people, yawn," and move on. I tend to like abstract art or minimalist art, art that is about color or shape, or else I like certain landscapes, certain still lifes or interiors: it's rare for portraits or group scenes to really grab my interest. But this book had me interested. It starts with two things: looking and exuberance, and I am a sucker for that particular combination, for exuberant observation. Of the figure in Watteau's Mezzetin, Perl writes that "he is a whirligig of a man"; his legs "explode in feet shod in slippers with pink rosettes, describing two points in the swing of a pendulum or two hours on a clock" (p 3). This almost feels a bit much for the first page of words in a narrative, but Perl makes it work, and keeps on making it work.
The structure of this book suits the subject, or perhaps just the author, wonderfully: it's an alphabet book, with several entries for each letter, each entry ranging in length from a sentence or two to several pages. Some of the entries are explicitly about Watteau or his art, while others are more loosely related. Most of it is really pleasing and satisfying, though sometimes Perl's tone irks me: he often says things are "surely" or "certainly" happened one way or another, or were one way or another, and sometimes it feels like bluster rather than a fully reasoned argument.
That said, there is so much in this book that made me grin, so much that is smart and playful and broadly interested in art and life and the world. I like the way Perl explores the idea of the arabesque in Watteau's art, the idea of circling and meandering to get to the point, and I like the way he talks about Watteau's paintings as full of possibility and ambiguity. (In the entry on "Cappriccio," he starts with this: "Not the construction but the unfolding or unfurling of a world, a mysterious movement, delicately meandering, full of S-curves and zigzags, forever decentering, snaking and circling, leaping forward in great arcs and pulling back in tight curls—this is the impulse behind Watteau's art" (p 31).") I like how he describes Watteau's work as having "the quality mingled insouciance and seriousness; the "Oh, it's nothing" that is another way of saying "Of course, it's everything" (p 8). The entry on backs and the back view in Watteau's art is really pleasing, as is the entry on beginnings, and I love the entry on evening, a paragraph about flirtation and dusk and conversation in bars: this is linked to Perl's idea, as he puts it in the entry on flirtation, that Watteau's art is "a never-ending plot of come-ons, importunings, seductions, rejections, equivocations, retreats" (p 66). There is just so much that is good in this book: a little bit about Virginia Woolf walking to the National Gallery in London, thoughts about grace and lack of self-consciousness, readings of paintings that are about looking closely but also about thinking and feeling. One of the best bits is on a painting called Gersaint's Shopsign: you can read that entry in its entirety on the Columbia College Today website.
The structure of this book suits the subject, or perhaps just the author, wonderfully: it's an alphabet book, with several entries for each letter, each entry ranging in length from a sentence or two to several pages. Some of the entries are explicitly about Watteau or his art, while others are more loosely related. Most of it is really pleasing and satisfying, though sometimes Perl's tone irks me: he often says things are "surely" or "certainly" happened one way or another, or were one way or another, and sometimes it feels like bluster rather than a fully reasoned argument.
That said, there is so much in this book that made me grin, so much that is smart and playful and broadly interested in art and life and the world. I like the way Perl explores the idea of the arabesque in Watteau's art, the idea of circling and meandering to get to the point, and I like the way he talks about Watteau's paintings as full of possibility and ambiguity. (In the entry on "Cappriccio," he starts with this: "Not the construction but the unfolding or unfurling of a world, a mysterious movement, delicately meandering, full of S-curves and zigzags, forever decentering, snaking and circling, leaping forward in great arcs and pulling back in tight curls—this is the impulse behind Watteau's art" (p 31).") I like how he describes Watteau's work as having "the quality mingled insouciance and seriousness; the "Oh, it's nothing" that is another way of saying "Of course, it's everything" (p 8). The entry on backs and the back view in Watteau's art is really pleasing, as is the entry on beginnings, and I love the entry on evening, a paragraph about flirtation and dusk and conversation in bars: this is linked to Perl's idea, as he puts it in the entry on flirtation, that Watteau's art is "a never-ending plot of come-ons, importunings, seductions, rejections, equivocations, retreats" (p 66). There is just so much that is good in this book: a little bit about Virginia Woolf walking to the National Gallery in London, thoughts about grace and lack of self-consciousness, readings of paintings that are about looking closely but also about thinking and feeling. One of the best bits is on a painting called Gersaint's Shopsign: you can read that entry in its entirety on the Columbia College Today website.
July 4, 2010
This is another one I thought I could read in transit, and it was pretty good for that-- a collection of ideas, stories, overheard conversations et al dealing with the painter Watteau, arranged alphabetically and grouped around key terms (so that A has entries on Actors, Antony, and Art-for-Art's-Sake).
At first I honestly didn't think too much of it, in part because I'm not sure I'm completely sold on Watteau as a painter, as much as I'd like to be. It might be asking something from Perl that he doesn't set out to do that I'm not really sure Watteau deserves this attention, at least from me.
But once I got into it, I did like it as a collection of anecdotes and ideas, copied quotes from other books and usually lucid writing on painting. Perl's style sees him going off a lot on strange flights of fancy, tacking phrase to ecstatic phrase till he sounds, to me at least, a little over the top. But at least he sees something in these paintings, and I found his reactions always interesting, even when they weren't persuasive.
I do think that Perl does have some weakness as a storyteller, where he kind of gives us too much information. It might be a problem related to that question of persuasion above-- where narrative is a form that is so open in terms of how you receive the story, Perl throws a lot at us to kind of lead us to his conclusion in a way he doesn't manage our experience as much in non-narrative sections. In the stories, I wish he'd be a little more hands off-- many of these are fascinating fragments, but they get a little buried under fussy crud in Perl's telling.
Interesting, though-- the format is pretty amazing, and the material more than justifies the time I spent reading this.
At first I honestly didn't think too much of it, in part because I'm not sure I'm completely sold on Watteau as a painter, as much as I'd like to be. It might be asking something from Perl that he doesn't set out to do that I'm not really sure Watteau deserves this attention, at least from me.
But once I got into it, I did like it as a collection of anecdotes and ideas, copied quotes from other books and usually lucid writing on painting. Perl's style sees him going off a lot on strange flights of fancy, tacking phrase to ecstatic phrase till he sounds, to me at least, a little over the top. But at least he sees something in these paintings, and I found his reactions always interesting, even when they weren't persuasive.
I do think that Perl does have some weakness as a storyteller, where he kind of gives us too much information. It might be a problem related to that question of persuasion above-- where narrative is a form that is so open in terms of how you receive the story, Perl throws a lot at us to kind of lead us to his conclusion in a way he doesn't manage our experience as much in non-narrative sections. In the stories, I wish he'd be a little more hands off-- many of these are fascinating fragments, but they get a little buried under fussy crud in Perl's telling.
Interesting, though-- the format is pretty amazing, and the material more than justifies the time I spent reading this.
May 30, 2009
At times while perusing this book (a better word than 'reading,' in the strictest sense)I had a feeling similar to when one wakes up from an odd, even surreal, afternoon nap (those daytime naps really provoke strange dreams sometimes); you are intrigued and sort of haunted by the random strangeness of some of the content. Same here. Watteau's paintings all by themselves would have drawn me to this work no matter the content of the accompanying prose, but this A-Z approach of bringing up subject matter related to Watteau (sometimes held together by the thinnest threads possible) was an interesting, intriguing, sometimes provocatory extra boost. Some of the commentary was superflous, some was just downright odd, but the lion's share was interesting and moody. And the artwork...well, what can I say. Only Watteau can put me in the particular mood that I felt while looking at his artworks. Love his paintings! Very interesting read overall.
July 25, 2011
Speaking of ""the gorgeously arabesques surfaces of the rococo as prologue to the planer fantasies and the point and line to plane capriccios of abstract art", and lots of musings on the commedia d'el arte, the clown figures especially, for it was Watteau that brought those figures forth as modern icons, and what Cyril Connolly said in "In Quest of Rococco" calling it "a lyrical conception of humanity, a response to all that is transitory and fugacious, a calligraphy of farewell.", which has a nice romantic ring to it......
Beckett's clowns and tragic heroes as a direct descendent of the pierrott and harlequins in Watteau, which he greatly admired, and, my favorite "Who can doubt that an art that in the Renaissance was grounded in the muscularity of the figure has been replaced, in modern times, by an art that is grounded in the musings of the imagination?"
Beckett's clowns and tragic heroes as a direct descendent of the pierrott and harlequins in Watteau, which he greatly admired, and, my favorite "Who can doubt that an art that in the Renaissance was grounded in the muscularity of the figure has been replaced, in modern times, by an art that is grounded in the musings of the imagination?"
January 26, 2009
An amazing approach to art history. The author provides an alphabet to accompany the life of Watteau. For example "B is for Back" since Watteau features the back side of some many of his subjects. The entries themselves are like meditations as Perl is a charming writer whose lyricism nicely suits his subject.
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October 9, 2013Bought this book when it was mentioned in a writing workshop about collage writing. Interesting vignettes, less about the artist himself, more about how loving a particular artist affects how one sees and experiences things. Intriguing read. Did get me over to the Norton Simon Museum while visiting LA so I could see a little Watteau painting in person :)
June 20, 2011
Tried to read this for Museum of Art Book club, but could not get past page 50. Attempted to read it several different times to no avail. Made absolutely no sense to me... Can't wait to hear the discussion at book club--maybe that will help.
May 14, 2016
If the best criticism creates taste and passion where there was none before, that has been the case with Antoine's Alphabet, Jed Perl, Watteau and me. Highly erudite but highly personal, super-eclectic and super-contagious. Just a splendid little book.
November 17, 2008
Makes me wish I were back in the Louvre :(
March 3, 2009
This was very disappointing! It got so much good hype, it was a real let down.
Not worth your time!!
Not worth your time!!
June 8, 2009
Having been introduced to the magic of Watteau by another writer (Eleanor Farjeon), it was lovely to find another soul enthralled by his magic. A quick read.
August 21, 2012
Now to watch "Children of Paradise" and learn more about the Sitwells.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews