Tuesday 23 January 2018

Giles’s Gallery: Interiors (Rondeau Redouble)



http://www.gileswood.com/works/#/interiors/

The light in every room is like Vermeer’s,
this quality achieved by chalkiness,
it softens, mutes, lends ancient peace, appears
not as some disinfectant force whose restlessness
requires it to dance on surfaces pursuing cleanliness, 
but rather to diffuse. It guides, it steers
the onlooker towards a deeper truthfulness:
the light in every room is like Vermeer’s,
as the viewer’s drawn in, he nears
an understanding of the owner’s mind in its unconsciousness. 
The lime-washed walls add brilliance to mahogany veneers, 
this quality achieved by chalkiness
contrasted with french polish, beeswax, elbow greasiness,
seemingly applied by long dead relatives and many years.
And something else illuminates - a tenderness,
it softens, mutes, lends ancient peace, appears
unwittingly:  the artist’s quiet reverence.  Those ‘seers’
who ‘foretell’, dictate our future style and taste, pursue an emptiness.
And yet still most of us respond to their sneers
not as (to) some disinfectant force whose restlessness
we must obey, but as a false fastidiousness,
that would eliminate our history, but wouldn’t free us.
We reject the bossy imposition, of year zero tastefulness,
we like our clutter, displayed lineage, it cheers,
every room.


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