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Samuel Beckett. A Passion for Painting. Beckett and Art. Beckett and the National Gallery of Ireland.
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Samuel Beckett A Passion for Painting
Beckett and the National Gallery of Ireland • Many Beckett scholars have explored the importance of art on Beckett’s writing. His great love for the National Gallery of Ireland and its collection began when he was a student and a lecturer at Trinity College in the 1920s. During his time at Trinity College, he frequently visited the nearby National Gallery of Ireland and became well acquainted with its collections of Old Masters and of modern art (11). • The Gallery was a haven for Beckett, and he found the peace and quiet there conducive to contemplating the works of art. Although not formally educated in the visual arts, Beckett was serious about art and wrote commentary on the Gallery’s acquisitions. In 1933 he even applied for a post as assistant in the National Gallery, a position he did not receive (24).
Godot and Friedrich’s Two Men Contemplating the Moon • Beckett’s special relationship with the National Gallery of Ireland not only enriched Beckett’s personal life and his appreciation of art and artists, but also informed his work as a writer and a dramatist. • The most notable and telling reference in this connection was his acknowledgement that the setting of Waiting for Godotwas suggested by Casper David Friedrich’s romantic masterpiece, Two Men Contemplating the Moon, which Beckett would have seen during his time in Germany in 1936-37. The diaries which he kept during his six month stay give testament to his great passion for paintings (7).
Beckett and Jack Yeats • Beckett met Jack Yeats, the painter, writer, and brother of William Butler Yeats, in November, 1930. This meeting led to a lifelong friendship as the two discovered their artistic affinities. • Beckett regularly visited Yeats’ art studio to see his latest paintings. For example, in May1935, after spending a whole afternoon in the artist’s company looking at new paintings, Beckett noted that Low Tide was “overwhelming” (qtd. in Croke 18). Beckett also enormously enjoyed walks with Yeats, and occasionally the two spent time together at the National Gallery of Ireland.
Beckett and Yeats • Not only did Beckett admire Yeats’ work, but it also stimulated his imagination. So close is the imagery Yeats paints and Beckett creates with words that several paintings by Yeats could be pointed to as stimuli for Beckett’s works. In Yeats’ art Beckett discovered apartness, solitude, isolation, and alienation. • In 1936 Beckett purchased Yeats’ A Morning and commented in a letter, “small picture especially, Morning, almost a skyscape, wide street leading into Sligo looking west as usual, with boy on a horse, 30 pounds” (qtd. in Croke 46). Thirty pounds is the price he paid for the painting. In addition to purchasing works by Jack Yeats, Beckett collected art rather seriously because he liked art.
Yeats’ A Storm • In a 1937 letter to a friend, Beckett commented on Yeats’ A Storm, painted in 1936: “I find something terrifying for example in the way Yeats puts down a man’s head and a woman’s head side by side, or face to face, the awful acceptance of 2 entities that will never mingle. And do you remember the picture [A Storm] of a man sitting under a fuschia hedge, reading, with his back turned to the sea and the thunder clouds? One does not realise how still his pictures are till one looks at others, almost petrified, a suspension of the performance, of the convention of sympathy and empathy, meeting and parting, joy and sorrow” (qtd. in Croke 72). • The alienation he found in Yeats’ works is present in his own writings: alienation from the world; alienation from the other; alienation from the self (72).
Godot and Yeats’ Two Travellers • Two Travellers, painted in 1942, has been suggested as a source for Waiting for Godot. Thematically, the painting includes Yeats’ common imagery. Two men, in well-worn clothing, encounter one another on a rough road in a coastal landscape. Heavy clouds suggest an imminent rainstorm, though the skyscape is lighter over a choppy sea in what is presumably the West, where a faint rose light illuminates the clouds and falls on one traveller’s face. • The encounter remains an enigma: Are they strangers or acquaintances? Of what do they speak? How far are they travelling? What brings them to this otherwise desolate and apparently uninhabited terrain? Where is each headed? (55-56).
Godot and Yeats’ The Graveyard Wall • The second Yeats’ painting that has been suggested as stimuli for Waiting for Godotis The Graveyard Wall, painted in 1945. It depicts two men, one bending to light his pipe by a small graveyard on a country road (19).
Beckett as Art Critic • Although Beckett distrusted the very act of criticism, he wrote much art criticism. He used art criticism as an opportunity to explore his own ideas about art and as a means to draw international attention to his friends’ artwork. • In Waiting for Godot, he parodied the interpreter of art: “Moron!”, “Vermin!”, “Abortion!”, “Morpion!”, “Sewer-rat!”, “Curate!”, “Cretin!”, and, finally, “Crritic!” (qtd. in Croke 77). • Beckett believed the paradox that painting cannot be judged as good or not good, yet the better the art the more impervious it is to critical commentary (78).
Beckett and the Visual Image • The importance that visual imagery held for Beckett is demonstrated by his insistence that productions of his plays did not deviate from his precise stage directions. As his American publisher commented, “in Beckett’s plays, set, the movements of the actors, the silences specified in the text, the lighting and the costumes are as important as the words spoken by the actors” (qtd. in Croke 19). • Despite Beckett’s resistance to textual deviations, he has permitted artists to illustrate his texts. Of all 20th century writers whose work has been the subject of art works, Beckett’s writings have been the most popular. A number of artists have chosen to illustrate Beckett’s work because his use of words is so “painterly,” or so strikingly imagistic (80).
Work Cited Croke, Fionnuala, ed. Samuel Beckett: A Passion for Paintings. Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland, 2006. Print.
