Meeting My Father

I thought I was finally past my father and his damning affect on me.
But, I sat down to read a book called, : "The Aesthetic Adventure".
It is the story of the death of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement.
I really did not expect to meet my father in those pages.

Father was venomously anti-art.
When, at 5, I asked to take art classes, his reply:
"I am not going to have a homosexual as a son!"
And I was beaten every time I tried to take an art class!
Truth.

It was only by staying with my grandmother I was able to draw anything other than a straight line!
And NATO sending me to learn from Picasso for a week in sixth grade!
And father and I had no relationship after I was nine years old.
Well, he was sort of around until I was 16, but only in a negative context.

So, I am reading this book by William Gaunt from 1945.
He writes of the interactions and personal lives of the Pre-Raphaelite artists.
Particularly, James Whistler (always one of my favorites).
I think one of Gaunt's as well.

The book is extremely well written.
And what is not said is just as loud as what is.
Half way through the book we hit a lawsuit by Whistler, against Ruskin - one of the other artists.
And I was struck with the thought,
Were these guys even "straight"?
Yeah, the pettiness of their issues and fights sure looked like lover's spats!
Yet, some had married, even if for only a short time.
And other's I knew specialized in, er, scandalizing - the reputations of others' wives.
(remember, this a family friendly blog)
And the women seemed to commit suicide with great regularity ...

But, I shrugged this off.
Nah, they couldn't all be bi-sexual could they ... ?
Then enter Oscar Wilde, into the fray and now we have solid homosexuality running rampant!
Oh, yeah, he liked the ladies too.
Just not as much!
And the death knell of the pre-Raphaselite movement was begun.

Suddenly, I understood my father's comment about artists!
All he roared about decades ago were right here.
Somehow he had been affected by this movement.
In fact, father was very much an aesthetic man:
Godless, cultureless, amoral ... he was the "perfect" man according to European standards.
Of the mid-19th Century!

I can not condone who or what he was, but at least through seeing Whistler's life, I can understand him.
Now.
I feel sorry for Whistler too.
I  understand the artist bent.
And to have it belittled, rejected, spurned.

The Pre-Raphaelites created some of the finest paintings of the 19th Century.
To my mind.
But the artists lives were one of unending tragedy.
They lived their lives to their own set of rules.
They even worshipped a "god", of their own creating.
And at the end, I doubt any of them understood that the real God would hold their hedonistic lives accountable!
And there will be Hell to pay for that one!

There is a lesson in this, for anyone willing to learn from history .....