Get a Life by Vivienne Westwood

Author:Vivienne Westwood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile Books

SEPTEMBER 2013

MON 2 SEPT BEN’S GOT ART

My son Ben writes the World’s End shop website and he was explaining the origins of a man’s suit – one of our favourite classics, which we have just reintroduced. It is from a portrait of a man called Krall by Otto Dix and Ben found out more about the work of Dix and talked to Andreas. Then Andreas came to me, really excited, and he made me excited because he said, ‘I think Ben’s got art!’ If this happens to you it’s a gift out of the blue – you enter the parallel universe (where everything is perfectly expressed). Andreas has got art, he gets it immediately – and I’m sure Andreas is right about Ben. I talked to Ben, who said, ‘I’m very alive to the subject matter.’ I don’t know if I get art. I know I love paintings; I stand in front of them for ages and I don’t want to leave. I think you’d call it worship – or meditation. I marvel and I’m completely grateful they exist.

They have found a new Titian. Andreas showed it to me on his computer. It’s been 120 years since the last discovery and this one has been in a private family collection. Titian painted it when he was young, around twenty-five. It’s a Resurrection. Andreas said, ‘It’s obvious, of course it’s competitive, he is showing off his power. It’s very important. An interesting face – someone he knew. Intellectual. The loincloth (shroud) is the greatest ever painted, its swathes include every possibility but it doesn’t exist in real life.’

I don’t know how big the painting is. It could be life-size or more. Jesus fills all the space; he fills the world, the clouds are the horizon, the sunrise is low down, level with Jesus’s legs. The composition gives confidence, in Jesus and in the world – a feeling of security. ‘Christ’ means the ‘anointed one’. Christ has saved us for everlasting life by dying for us on the cross. We can share in his divinity: ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’ This is what I read in his expression: I’ve done it, I have fulfilled my destiny. Contemplation of this all-embracing icon gives peace and confirms heaven.

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