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Being Madame X / p.1
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By Cecilie Scott They hung Madame X from the lampposts. Banners cried scandal up and down First Avenue, her bare white shoulders, deeply cut black dress, and striking profile undimmed by steady drizzle. I couldn't open a newspaper without seeing these words writ large across her torso: "In 1884, she nearly ruined his career. Now she defines it."Museums must compete with televised sports, shopping malls, blockbuster films, celebrity memoirs, and the evening news for our attention. The Seattle Art Museum's publicists knew the power of sex, were armed with a major icon, and used it for a three-month barrage of newspaper ads, direct mail, banners, and billboards. Wherever I turned, I found the image of John Singer Sargent's notorious subject. My attention captured, I used the Internet to find the Portrait of Madame X - and view it in still solitude. Memory I A ripple breaks the surface of that quiet pool; something moves. Casting my line I catch a memory. My mother dressed to go out, turning away from me towards a world that excluded me. My stubborn rage at her for having a life of her own, going to a party shimmering and glittering, leaving me with a baby sitter. |
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Four years old and in full tantrum - face burning, tears scalding - lying on my stomach and pounding my fists on the floor long after she'd left. I still see the whorls and ridges of the varnished softwood boards between the gray island of rug and the door that had shut between us. I can run my fingers along those ridges even now, tracing the pattern burned by passion into memory, passionate indignation because even then I made the distinction between my everyday mother, leaving for work because that was what a mother did, and this mother who betrayed, leaving me by her own choice. Not a mother but a woman. I pull up other memories, recollections of delight at my mother in white satin and pearls or azure silk and amethysts, delight no doubt heightened by my certainty that some day I too would step from ordinary life into such luminous glamour. | |||||
Sargent's portrait of Madame X was the lure for catching old resentments, angers, loves, and ambiguities - and not just for me. My web browsing revealed hundreds of references to this portrait ranging from admiration and appreciation for the work itself to almost hysterical condemnation of its subject. Negative phrases are repeated verbatim on site after site; professional critics, faced with the problem of saying something new, wax baroque in expressing both fascination and repulsion. The most comprehensive John Singer Sargent site on the Internet, though, is a personal, non-professional site, created and maintained by Natasha Wallace, using the graphic and linking capabilities of the medium to share her love for Sargent's art. Madame X was in residence that winter . . . © 2001-2002 Cecilie Scott |
"When I first ran into a painting of Sargent's I was drawn to it almost immediately. It was a visceral experience with a power to his art that was just so inexpressibly captivating." -Natasha Wallace, John Singer Sargent Virtual Gallery | ||||
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© 1996-2012 Cecilie Scott