Julian Barnes Analyzes Painting “With His Eyes Wide Open”

The English writer gives free rein to his passion for painting and French culture in his latest book, where he reviews, describes and analyzes with brilliance some of the most important works of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Cover of the book “Con los ojos bien abiertos” and portrait of Julian Barnes. At anagrama-ed.es and penguin.co.nz

The work of Julian Barnes needs no introduction. From the publication of the excellent Flaubert’s Parrot, a text full of charm that explored a new way of writing non-fiction (and fiction), to his novel The Only Story, the British writer has developed a literary corpus that gives a new twist to each story, each life and each experience. A declared lover of French culture and of art, his latest book Con los ojos bien abiertos (Anagrama, 2018) moves away from fiction to delve into the analysis of some of the most important paintings created during the 19th and 20th centuries. In his magnificent book of stories A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, Barnes already used one of his texts to tell us the terrible story that Theodore Gericault reflected in his canvas The Raft of the Medusa. In his new book the writer returns to the canvas to talk about its creation, and about what the painter captures or hides. With it begins a fascinating journey that includes paintings by artists from very different eras: from Delacroix to Magritte; from Courbet to Oldenburg. And more.

“La balsa de la Medusa” (1819), Theodore Gericault. Museo del Louvre. At arteselecto.es

Without doubt, one of the great successes of the book is its distancing from a critical or analytical stance on the works. Barnes focuses solely on his passion, discovering why those paintings awaken in him the feelings he experiences, giving keys so that the reader manages to feel the same. He may achieve it or not, but the texts equally dazzle once again with the quality of writing to which the author has accustomed us. The pages of Con los ojos bien abiertos overflow with literature, equaling the heights reached by his marvelous book Levels of Life or his many stories. The book is structured by chapters, in which the aforementioned artists and others such as Braque, Manet, Cezanne, Vallotton, Bonnard… have a place. A cast as varied as it is essential in the history of art that we know as “modern”. In short, in Con los ojos bien abiertos Julian Barnes invites us to discover and enjoy the works that move him, for one reason or another. “Art not only captures and reflects the excitement, the emotion that life contains. Sometimes it even goes further: art is emotion“.

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