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MICROSTORY OF ART
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Dedicated to Anthony van Dyke

(Picture: youtube.com; above: tate.org.uk)

The Secrets of the Court

He had been invited to take a look at this yet unknown painting by Van Dyck. That tentatively had been called The Secrets of the Court. Why, he had’t been able to figure out; and he had actually not much thought about it, because it had been clear from the very beginning that they had invited him because of his very special, his rather unique expertise.
He knew everything about birds in painting. And it was clear that there would be a bird in that particular painting. A parrot, he imagined. The Secrets of the Court – it could only be a painting with a parrot. And he was prepared to discuss a parrot like the one in the William Feilding portrait.
He knew little about the techniques of painting, or let us say that his expertise was limited to Sunday painting (he actually had, let us be honest, tried to copy a landscape with birds by Savery once, but it had not resulted with satisfying him; and while working on that copy, while enjoying, yes, enjoying the smell of wet paint, of turpentine above all, in his mind something had resounded, something he had heard or read earlier: about a bird that had been taught to say: ›birds are smart but they cannot speak‹. This resulted with him simply stopping.

Who was he? A former antiquarian bookseller, having, a couple of years earlier, when he had still been in his fifties, turned to be an occasional art dealer. But he dealt only to the degree now to make a modest living. And since he lived alone, his style of living was modest in the extreme. But still he was rich, he felt, and he kept on studying the history of birds in painting. Because, then, life seemed worth living to him.

Who were they who had, just recently, sought contact with him? This was not quite clear either. Judging from the documentation it seemed that the owner, or the owners of the painting had also something to do with the place that had been chosen to show him the painting: a former bunker nearby the main station of a Scandinavian capital. A bunker built at the times of the Cold War, but now used to house servers, many servers, a whole farm of servers. This was a very appropriate surrounding, he found, to look at an Old Master painting. And even if he did not expect to enjoy the smell of wet paint, of turpentine, he could already smell the painting.
This was an appropriate surrounding indeed in its hyper artificiality, bringing out skilled craftmanship. The future of art, at least as far as painting was concerned, or as the appropriate presentation of an unique Old Master painting was concerned, opened to him. The Secrets of the Court were awaiting him to pass a judgment (upon a bird, and perhaps a parrot).

Less appropriate seemed the model of the moon rocket from a comic book that had been chosen as the only ornament to the kind of conference room, where they now had gathered. Some servers kept the secrets of large companies, they had explained to him upon his asking, some even the secrets of governments. He had once looked at a painting at a freeport. But this was different here. Better. He could hardly wait to see the Secrets of the Court. And they showed him down a flight of stairs that led to a sort of cabinet (within thousands of servers humming).

###

The painting indeed did not disappoint him. A theatre of hands and gloves as he had expected, hands reminding rather of gloves, and gloves that, in their artificiality seemed to cry out meaning, superficial meaning, but who acted here, and who (was) in the position to dominate was left in equivocalness by the painter, all was left in mystery, but the two courtiers who dominated that painting seemed to have been depicted in a moment in which they had become aware that they had been or were being part of a bigger something, as mysterious this something seemed to them, and as little transparent (a well chosen title it seemed to him, The Secrets of the Court, whoever had chosen that title).
A bird, however, he was not able to detect. The two men, his hosts, exchanged glances.

The two man, who had escorted him in, a younger man, a seemingly angry young man, some of those who used as a screensaver scenes from a street fight, and the older man, who apparently had been an angry young man in his earlier days. And without much words, he was supposed to again take the flight of stairs down to the small cabinet; and again coming down and turning now to the right to look at the painting from the side, he could finally see the bird. A bird in anamorphosis, with a long tail that had been used by the artist as a constructional aid, a bird of a kind he had never seen in his life. Only showing itself to those who were already aware of it. What was the role of the bird within the Secrets of the Court? It remained mysterious to him.

As his own stance remained mysterious to them. Because he felt now here was something bigger of which he could only guess a fragment of it. A fragment of a bigger picture. And these two men seemed not to be the typical owners of Old Master pictures, not interested at all in art (let us be frank), nor very skilled in art dealing, nor showing a sterling education. Although he did not pride himself of being a major figure in the trade, nor within the academia.
Although lately, due to the becoming very popular of a mysterious novel about a second rate Swiss painter, of which he happened to own more or less the whole stock, he had become rather successful. Even more succesful that he actually had wanted to become. But this was another story being part of another, bigger story.

He left it with being honest that he did not recognize that bird, nor was he in the position to tell them, if Van Dyck had actually painted that bird.
The painting, yes, or maybe perhaps. This was not his area of expertise. The bird, yes, a beautifully rendered bird with a long tail, rendered in anamorphosis, but not known to him, nor reminding one of the innumerable birds in painting that he had seen and stored in his visual memory.

###

Postscript: Having found this fragmentary story in an old issue of the New Yorker, dated as of the year 2027, I have investigated further fragments of this tale that seems to be based on a true event. Since I happen not only to be in the posession of a whole file concerning the visit of the old man at that Scandinavian bunker housing many servers, a file containing also many drawings after the purported Van Dyck. (Beyond that a preparatory drawing, a drawing that could be a preparatory drawing to the Secrets of the Court by Van Dyck happens to be in my posession).

Probably it had been the old man who had attempted to draw the Van Dyck, a painting that he never had seen again in his life, and he had probably attempted, shortly before he had died, to at least draw it from memory. Being obsessed that he had been part of a bigger something, but not knowing what it was, and finally dying without knowing.
Never, he wrote on one scrap of paper, never he would be able to know the complete oeuvre catalogue of Van Dyck, but he apparently had found consolation in the thought that ›nor would they‹ (to whoever ›they‹ referred to here). Maybe, alas, it does refer to us.

(Picture: youtube.com)

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM
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