Phantoms on the Bookshelves by Jacques Bonnet

matter of traveling, talking to people, joining in conversations, and reading books.
    All these books have several functions. The images may accompany a theoretical or historical text—a period in art history, an individual artist, studies by Jakob Burckhardt, Heinrich Wölfflin, Elie Faure, Charles Sterling, Henri Focillon or Francis Haskell. Or they may be the main reason for having the book: to be able to discover or rediscover a work of art without leaving home. Of course, the images don’t really speak unless you have physicallyseen the original—an exhibition catalog only truly comes to life when you have been in the presence of the works. But they also bring you all the images that are too far away or inaccessible, the ones you will never see, and for which the reproduction is the only way you can grasp them.
    The problem is that here too there are no limits to one’s curiosity. Images send you on to other images, artists to other artists, periods come one after another or echo each other, all with their cargo of art works. From prehistoric art to Land Art by way of Praxiteles, Roman wall paintings, the portraits of Fayoum, Romanesque frescoes, Fontainebleau School engravings, baroque ceilings, ukiyo-e woodcuts, the churches of Minas Gerais, nineteenth-century American still lifes, not to speak of all the most obvious and unavoidable schools, the universe of forms is infinite. And historical approaches are always being modified by new discoveries (through archaeology, or documents, or even the reappearance of works once believed lost). As for interpretations, however brilliant and convincing, they seem inevitably to be disputed sooner or later. Panofsky’s brilliant reading (
Studies in Iconology
) of the mysterious
Venus and Cupid
in the National Gallery in London has been contested by Maurice Brock, and that reading will no doubt be demolished in its turn. But no matter! In art history, the interest of all these interpretations and theories is not that they should be definitive, but that they should be coherent and relevant enough to make us really look at a work, and by so doing, to have some chance of appropriating it for ourselves.
    I cannot leave out the memory of those magical places which have sent shivers down my spine. Just to mention a few, purely autobiographical experiences, not the most famous, and confined to France: seeing
The Descent from the Cross
in the crypt of the church in Chaource; the Isenheim altarpiece in Colmar; the priory of Serrabone in the Pyrenees; the Romanesque frescoes of Tavant; the Apocalypse tapestry in Angers; Fouquet’s
Pietà
in Nouans; the Gallic ex-votos in the Bargoin museum in Clermont-Ferrand;
Irene Tending St Sebastian
by Trophime Bigot in the museum in Bordeaux; Puy-en-Velay cathedral, one summer’s day when the lower doors were open and the steps up to the nave became a well of light. The emotions I might have felt then naturally call for their extension through a presence of some kind in my library, and perhaps require to be better understood by acquiring a scholarly commentary.
    Once again, my mania for collecting all the books in a series makes me buy books which are on subjects that don’t necessarily interest me—until the day when … ah, now I need it! One of the most unusual collections on my shelves is the art historical series “Histoire de l’art” published by Julliard from 1962. This is unusual because of the personality of the general editor, Jean-François Revel, who is much better known for his writings on philosophy, literature and gastronomy, or for his journalism (he was at one time editor of
L’Express
, then a columnist for another weekly,
Le Point
), as well as current affairs debates and several best-sellers such as
Ni Marx ni Jésus
(
Without Marx or Jesus
) and
La Tentationtotalitaire
(
The Totalitarian Temptation
). But his role in producing this art series is much less well known.