| Warm Feelings |
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On occasion I long to have the capability and passion of the "White Raven" authors, whose stubbornness in forging the indescribable into new conundrums leaves the door to insight into The All ajar, or at least that's how I feel. My troubles are so terribly pedestrian by comparison. Take the illumination of the works of art entrusted to me, for example. Of course there's a lot more to light: what it does to us defies description. Could this be the reason why the author of the article entitled "The World of the Landscape"*, in which he quotes Riegl on Jacob van Ruisdael, mentions everything but the function of light? I'd rather be modest and not dispute their expertise, but I feel that both of them have failed to notice the whims of the individual. Regardless of whether Van Ruisdael was an idealist or a tradesman, does anyone really believe that he sat there waiting until the museum-like pool of light finally materialised? He had his oil paints to reproduce what he loved, or what he was always hoping for although it hardly ever happened. If it is sufficient light that I want in the famous Spiegelstraat (literally: Street of Mirrors) in Amsterdam, I need to buy lamps and pay the utility bill. All this light creates a lot of heat, for which I have another machine that gobbles up power to turn all this heat into coldness. It's true that art tends to do particularly well in wealthy societies where it is neither too hot nor too cold, for art sales and high temperatures do not go together. Unfortunately the machines are in the habit of collectively breaking down when turned on high on one of those rare genuinely hot Dutch summer days. There's nothing all those wonderful people whose vocation it is to make sure that broken air conditioners are restored to proper working order can do - they can hardly be expected to spend the rest of the year twiddling their thumbs now, can they? And so your air conditioner and mine break down every five years, when there's a heat wave on. I recently spent two weeks wilting in a temperature of 32 degrees even though only half my 150 lamps were on, wondering how much similar misery I would be in for over the next few decades. Not being easily caught out, I simply procured a second air conditioner, to switch on when the first one breaks down during a sweltering day and the supplier is too busy instantly to fix it. A simple calculation shows that this is a sensible investment. Let's assume that you will be running your art business for, say, 50 years and that disaster strikes every five years. This implies that you would be suffering an aggregate loss of sales of ten weeks during the peak season, in summer. Let's be modest and regard these two and a half months as the average score, so if you are among the lucky few whose annual turnover exceeds the million guilder mark, you'd be losing out over those 50 years to the tune of two and a half divided by 12 times one million, which sort of boils down to two hundred thousand guilders or just under one hundred thousand euros. The second machine will last considerably longer as it is rarely used, so let's assume that you'll be wearing out a total of three over your half century, or let's not be petty and round it up to five, each of which will easily set you back a thousand euros (although they are spares, which means that you will settle for less power, you insist on quality appliances). This means that you'll have to spend five thousand euros so as not to miss out on a hundred thousand in sales. Believe me, there are plenty of traders who would shrug off the difference. However, what they are ignoring is the satisfaction of establishing that your idea works, never mind the endless weeks of exasperation you'll not be having to go through. It is the latter consideration in particular which prompted me to order my second air conditioner, and I have been singing happy tunes while cycling home in the rain ever since. The really exciting thing is that nobody knows what quality in art is, but when it's hot, quality simply boils down to generating coolness. *) The World of the Landscape by Bart Verschaffel - De Witte Raaf (White Raven) Vol. 95, January-February 2002 |