Leisure • Art/Architecture
Reasons Not to Give Up
In one of the upper rooms of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford hangs a picture by a minor Danish nineteenth century artist, Claus Anton Kølle. Measuring around the size of a sheet of A4, the picture shows us a courtyard in Rome with a yellow wall, a conservatory roof, various kinds of trees and most significantly, at the centre of dense foliage, a handful of oranges.
We can sometimes wonder what art is for. It has enormous prestige in our societies and yet there is considerable ongoing mystery as to its fundamental purpose. Why do governments give money to museums? Why do we send school children on improving trips to galleries? Why all the respect and reverence for pictures in a world with ostensibly graver priorities?
Kølle’s picture offers us one possible answer: art is there to refocus our attention on what matters most deeply. Traditionally, that would have meant drawing our minds back to the Virgin Mary or the Buddha, the King or a minister of state. But Kølle has a different target in mind: importance for him lies in some citrus fruits quietly growing in a sheltered spot in a busy city. These are his sacraments and his divinities.
Yet the oranges are not – of course – just oranges. Kølle’s painting is a sermon about not giving up, about hope, about the pleasures that still remain open to us even in dark circumstances, about our capacity for joy despite many kinds of suffering. The oranges are whatever remains nourishing and pleasurable. They are the project we’re looking forward to starting, they’re our very good friend we can call up at moments of crisis, the lover we have a playful nickname for, the five year old nephew we are taking out to the zoo next week, the book that comforts us.
Kølle isn’t denying that there might be darker forces around. He knew all about wars, tyranny, poverty and discord (his own life was notably difficult). But it’s precisely because the horrors of existence are no secret that the more innocent, joyful, and pretty elements matter so much. Those ‘oranges’ aren’t just nice (though they are that too); they are arguments against despair.
Kølle never gained the fame or respect he felt he was owed. As is the case for most of us, his life was not quite as he wished it to be. Nevertheless, his achievement remains notable. He made a quiet unobtrusive masterpiece on which we can hang a whole philosophy of art – and of redemption. For a moment or two, across the centuries, he beams us a message: don’t give up, keep searching for what can work out, stop being surprised by pain, look out – always, in the depths of the dark foliage – for the bright, sweet oranges.
