All The Beauty In The World
A Book Review
Patrick Bringley became a guard at New York’s Metropolitan Museum after his brother’s untimely death affected him so deeply he needed a place of quiet. He just wanted to fade into the background and who does that better than a guard in a gallery full of far more wonderful things to see?
Beginning his career in the sanctuary of the Venetian galleries, he takes solace in the old masters. Over time, he spreads his wings and spends a decade guarding some of the world’s most famous artefacts. All The Beauty In The World is his unique take on what he learned, both about art and more importantly about life.
The thing I loved most about this book was that Bringley is no art expert. He did a few art history classes in college but this is not an excuse to flex his artistic muscles. He rarely talks about the technicality of painting. Instead he guides you through the things he discovers as he spends hours and hours every week learning to truly look at paintings and to think about what that looking means.
As time goes by the paintings and other works begin to show him the things that will bring him back to life; shared suffering and redemption, community, a sense of belonging, a language that is unspoken but which nevertheless alters what it touches in a profound way.
Bringley understands what a lot of people either don’t or choose to ignore. Art is made to be looked at. It is made to be looked at, not just by important, clever people who ‘know’ about art, but by everyone.
Bringley’s experiences are all at the human scale. What does this mean to me? How do I feel about it? And most importantly, how does that help me build a bridge to you to talk about us? I love that he often chooses works from different cultures and talks about how their ability to show difference in cultural practices and depict such different lives is often the very thing that unlocks a sense of shared connection. He is also extremely sensitive to matters of cultural appropriation and what belongs to who, which is refreshing.
Art is often created by people who struggle to find the words to express how they feel about something but knows exactly what colour that elusive emotion looks like, or what shape it is. Art both engenders communication and bypasses language at one and the same time and it does it both by being made and by being experienced by anyone who cares to look at it. Bringley’s strength is being able to write about this in an Everyman way.
The Met is a huge museum and Bringley gives us a real sense of the scope of the artworks held there but without overwhelming us. Throughout the book he introduces us to relatively few works and specifically focuses on the ones that have meaning and resonance for him. He does give context to works, but all the facts are seamlessly knitted into the larger message rather than being tacked on as an addendum.
For me, the most successful chapter is the one where he talks about the two exhibitions that he loved the most; one of Michelangelo’s drawings and one of the Gee’s Bend quilts.
You would think there wouldn’t be much to link the creator of the Sistine Chapel with poor, working class, black women who made their quilts out of necessity but Bringley pulls it off with aplomb.
To complete it, the Sistine Chapel ceiling was broken down into sections called a giornata. A giornata is Italian for a day’s work. The wet plaster would be applied and the work would have to be finished by the time it dried at the end of the day. It was back breaking work. The end result may have been spectacular but it was work that was being paid for by one of the most important and powerful men in the world and it was very clearly a job rather than a labour of love for Michelangelo.
The quilters of Gee’s Bend quilted to keep their children and their houses warm. They quilted with whatever they had to hand and used the quilts not just on beds, but as floor coverings, curtains and eventually as dish rags. The work was intensive and time consuming. The art came later in the looking by others.
Bringley describes his favourite quilt, made by Loretta Pettway. Part of the beauty for him is the social and cultural context in which it is made. He quotes Loretta, who is still alive and who has never liked sewing. She sewed out of obligation:
‘I ain’t had no other choice, because I asked people for quilts and they wouldn’t give me none, so I said I’m gonna make these the best I know how and quilt ‘em. Think they’ll keep me and my kids warm, and they did.’
At the heart of this book is the message that art is called ‘a work of art’ precisely because it is hard work, but it is work that can redeem suffering. Art works by showing us our humanity, but reminding us that we are not alone in it.