Pictures & Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings
by James Elkins
[Originally posted at Goodreads]
One of my all-time favorite books about art:
Have you ever been moved to tears by a painting?
There is a wonderful letter, in James Elkins' Pictures and Tears, about museum goers looking at a landscape painting in Japan. The lady who wrote the letter to Elkins was in Tokyo as part of an Andy Warhol exhibition. Unable to speak the language and perhaps not all that knowledgeable about the culture, it had to be based on some kind of misunderstanding that she came to believe that the painting of a waterfall on rare display at the Nezu Museum, called Nachi Waterfall, was "a picture of God."
This painting is a National Treasure of Japan and is not displayed so often (I never managed to see it in 22 years there). So, not surprisingly, the exhibition was jam-packed full of people there to see it.
In the letter, she described how beautifully dressed the people were, many in formal kimono and some looked to be college professors. She said it was like going to the Met, except that when she finally got near the picture, she found the people around her to all be silently standing there crying.
It is an extraordinary story in an extraordinary book.
Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever been overcome to tears by a painting? (It has to be a painting and it has to be tears).
James Elkin (my new favorite writer) is obsessed by Stendhal Syndrome--and since I am obsessed by Jerusalem Syndrome, I couldn't help but find myself increasingly intrigued. I never knew that-- unlike Mark Twain (who has a malaise named after himself too)-- that Stendhal, like so many others at that time period, had become so utterly enraptured by the art he saw in Florence that he became dizzy and had heart palpitations. In fact, apparently, he had to seek medical help. Elkins says that in the old days, it was much more common to be moved to tears by art.
In fact, as far as emotional response to paintings, we are living in a bit of a dry age, he insists.
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