Antoine's Alphabet

Starred review from June 30, 2008
The 18th-century rococo artist Jean-Antoine Watteau is art critic Perl's favorite painter, one who transforms “powerful feelings—of love, friendship, lust, avidity, curiosity—into delectable artistic play” and “poetic pattern.” Perl's exquisitely composed study is organized alphabetically; from “Actors” and “Art-for-Art's Sake” to “Zeuxis,” and each chapter involves a theme, individual or movement related to Watteau. There are many delightful surprises, even to the reader familiar with the artist's oeuvre; Perl illuminates the links between Watteau's Harlequins and Pierrots and Beckett's characters, “so clownish and so heartrending.” His entry on “Flirtation” expands this theme, ubiquitous in Watteau's paintings, into a profound commentary on love and metamorphosis. Perl's essays on Watteau's most famous works, The Pilgrimage to the Isle of Cythera
and Gersaint's Shopsign
, are equally inspired; Cythera
displays what for Perl are Watteau's most poignant themes: the confounding of one's own emotions and the “elegant chaos” of the mind's consistently contradictory nature. Perl, art critic for the New Republic
, has written a carefully researched, book of rare beauty and provocation. 44 illus.

September 1, 2008
After the inclusiveness of New Art City (2005), art critic Perl focuses on a single artist, his favorite, the early-eighteenth-century French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau. Anticipating surprise at his choice, Perl vanquishes any and all trivialized views, declaring that this painter of frolicsome and romantic scenes of lovers and dreamers in unkempt, secretive gardens is an artist of audacity and resonance. Emulating the sneakiness of Watteaus seriousness, Perl marshals his considerable interpretative acuity and extraordinary gift for fresh language to create a sophisticated variation on the alphabet book. This form allows Perl to free-associate in one clever entry after another as he interprets Watteaus bold extrapolation of the commedia dellarte and quest to depict the struggle to feel fully alive.Perl ponders what littleis known of this quicksilver painter, who diedat 36 in 1721, and muses over the insights of such fellow Watteau enthusiasts as Samuel Beckett. The ebullience, mischief, and discernment of this artful lexicon perfectly embody the shimmer and steeliness of Watteaus incisive drawings and paintings. Works well never view lightly again.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)