Patrick Bringley: All the Beauty in the World (2022, Simon & Schuster)
English language
Published May 15, 2022 by Simon & Schuster.
Interesting look at the Met. Would have liked more personal braiding and sharper writing.
"It feels impossibly generous of visual art to affix its strokes to a surface, making it a performance without end."
A knowing, quiet little book (only 178 pages) that is at once a meditation on the healing power of art and stillness, a selective catalog of some remarkable items in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and an intimate look at the art security guard world.
Patrick Bringley quit his job at the New Yorker while his brother was dying of cancer, and became a security guard at the Met. He stayed for 10 years. He shared this position with around 600 other guards of myriad ethnicities, education, and social and economic backgrounds. I am someone who often ignores what seem to me like bored looking art museum guards, but many know a lot about art and even more welcome the chance to chat.
As his years as a guard continue, …
"It feels impossibly generous of visual art to affix its strokes to a surface, making it a performance without end."
A knowing, quiet little book (only 178 pages) that is at once a meditation on the healing power of art and stillness, a selective catalog of some remarkable items in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and an intimate look at the art security guard world.
Patrick Bringley quit his job at the New Yorker while his brother was dying of cancer, and became a security guard at the Met. He stayed for 10 years. He shared this position with around 600 other guards of myriad ethnicities, education, and social and economic backgrounds. I am someone who often ignores what seem to me like bored looking art museum guards, but many know a lot about art and even more welcome the chance to chat.
As his years as a guard continue, Bringley reflects with perception on paintings of madonnas, a Muslim mihrab, Egyptian temples, musical instruments (even an 1850 banjo!), and a suit of armor. He makes connections between objects in different collections, between objects and the people looking at them, and between objects and life outside the museum.
He mostly works through his grief while at the Met, but finds over time that he is less able to evoke the pain and love that he felt when looking at the "Study of a Young Woman" (Vermeer) or "Madonna of the Goldfinch" (Raphael). Of a Mary Cassatt painting ("Mother and Child"): "...for the first time in a long time, I simply adore. These moments don't come around as often as they once did...The great painting stirs up dormant feelings of awe, love, and pain. Strangely, I think I am grieving for the lost end of my grief."
A bit maudlin at times, but always informative and often insightful, this is a feel good book that I was glad to read in our tough times.
One complaint: the stiff, graphic arty illustrations that I suppose have to suffice in an era when books are so cheaply produced. How much better would have been old-fashioned plates with reproductions of the actual works described.
