In our home, we have a lot of art as well as books. That is no surprise; you probably would say the same thing. Books and art weave a spell here, and sometimes even merge, as in British artist Jess Allen's painting, The Empty Book, No 1, which my wife bought a couple of years ago after meeting the artist at Scroll gallery in New York City.
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| David Smith's XI Books III Apples | |
Something that has occurred to me this summer is how often, when I'm in a museum, I gravitate instinctively toward art that has a bookish connection. This may well make me an art-appreciating imposter, but I'm not sure I care, really. Let's just call it my special field of interest.
Some recent examples of this behavior include last week, when we went to the legendary Storm King Art Center in New Windsor, N.Y. It had been 25 years since our last visit and much had changed. As we walked to the top of Museum Hill, however, I found myself back in the presence of David Smith's stainless steel sculpture, XI Books III Apples (1959), and its bronze neighbor, The Sitting Printer (1954-55).
In August, we were in Boston for a medical appointment and stayed overnight so we could visit the Museum of Fine Arts. In an exhibition titled Qi Baishi: Inspiration in Ink, I was drawn to the piece Browsing by Candlelight, which, according to a note Qi left on the painting, he created "after returning home one night and seeing two mice on an open book under candlelight. He also wrote, 'Men are asleep, while you are awake' " Asia News Network reported.
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| Persephone Books section at Beacon Hill Books & Cafe | |
We also stopped at Beacon Hill Books & Cafe on Charles St., a lovely indie bookshop that felt like a work of art itself, perhaps especially a section devoted to beautifully-crafted volumes published by Persephone Books.
A recent Instagram post by Homeworthy described the bookshop as a "storybook escape in the heart of Boston! Step inside @beaconhillbooksandcafe, where every corner feels like a hidden European gem. Cozy nooks, shelves brimming with stories, and the charm of afternoon tea make this whimsical space a true neighborhood treasure--and owner Melissa Fetter's love letter to Boston."
Last spring, at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., among all the great works of art on display, I stumbled upon a modest little exhibit in the Manton Reading Room, where an ongoing series of installations called Paginations was featuring "A–Z: Alphabetic Highlights From The Library's Special Collections." It celebrated "the building blocks of type and text, the letters of the alphabet, and showcases examples from 1488–2024 in which the letters themselves take center stage."
What is the origin story for this habit of mine, connecting art with words so instinctively? The obvious answer might be children's picture books, but I didn't have many of those. I think the connection developed a bit later, in the mid-1970s, when I purchased a copy of Zen Art for Meditation by Stewart W. Holmes & Chimyo Horioka from Tuttle Books in Rutland, Vt., where I lived at the time.
As it happens, many of the artworks featured in the book were, and still are, part of the MFA's impressive Art of Asia collection, though it would be decades before I actually got to see them in person.
The arc of my book and art journey with Stewart Holmes is a curious one. I originally bought Zen Art for Meditation because of the title and the publisher, but was shocked to discover that the co-author had been one of my college professors several years before. That guy? Really? And yet, now I must admit that almost no teacher influenced me more than he did over the long term, despite the fact that when I had the opportunity to study with him in person he seemed a nonentity. Very Zen of him, I suppose.
When I took his "Origins of the English Language" class in college, I didn't know anything about Zen yet, though Holmes was probably already working on Zen Art for Meditation at the time. Maybe the course was fascinating, but I don't remember. Now I wish I could take it again, or at least apologize to him for my grade-B lack of focus.
What I do recall is the quiet presence of a diminutive, unassuming man in the front of the classroom. He was simply trying to share the wonders of language with students who were otherwise engaged; who knew for certain what they should be learning in college, and it wasn't the origins of the English language from some old dude who didn't seem to notice that they were changing the world.
Zen Art for Meditation is still perfect and, perhaps the greater miracle, still in print. I treasure my hardback first edition. Holmes was and is, in a way, my Zen master. Commenting on a haiku by Meisetsu ("A monk in the mist:/ I can see him/ By his tinkling bell."), Holmes asks: "Where are the boundaries of the monk's being? And yours?"
He may have also sparked the confluence of words and art in me. And so, in tribute to him, I open again to page 90 of Zen Art for Meditation and read this Soseki haiku (translated by "Mrs. Yasuko Horioka"):
Butterfly! These words
From my brush are not flowers,
Only their shadows.