Book review: Framed by Frank Cottrell Boyce

In general, I liked this book but for the dynamics of this tiny Welsh town more than the writing about art, stored there when London faces terrible floods (a modern riff on the WWII evacuation of art from London).  Also liked the movie made from Boyce's book, Millions, which is what prompted me to pick up this one.

Without ruining the plot of the book, Boyce is arguing for the transformative power of art and its effect on the human soul.  There we are certainly agreed.  But Boyce has a terribly hard job: he needs to write about the power of the art but also preserve the voice of the 9 yr old protagonist through whom we see the art.  This is really difficult. 

The first piece Boyle writes about is the Manchester Madonna, by Michelangelo, ca. 1497.  The boy starts:

It was a picture, a picture of a woman trying to read a book.  The woman's face was in colour, but her clothes were in black and white and the top of her head was missing.  The most random thing though was that one of her boobies was sticking out of her dress, like you sometimes see on the front of the papers... (78)

 The art historian character provides the through-line of 'more sophisticated' opinion/knowledge about art: After discussing tempera, he says

As you can see the painting is unfinished.  The Madonna's clothes...' Madonna again. '...are blocked out in black, but one assumes they were going to be painted blue.  Somehow it adds to the drama.  As if the master was in such a hurry to capture the perfection of this girl's face, he couldn't wait for the paint to arrive. He knew that if he waited one morning, her beauty might have begun to fade.  Isn't that what Art is about?  Rescuing Beauty from the ravages of Time.  To save one moment from eternal silence. (79)

I get it--the point is to create a moment out of this experience, the dissonance of experience that then leads the boy to look up Michelangelo and the Madonna (as opposed to Madonna).  But there's more to the work than just the Madonna (and the parallels made to the Madonna in the Pieta of 1498-99 are unavoidable for me and unmentioned by Boyce).  It's as if Boyce fears that knowing more about the work will make it a lecture and take the magic out of the "moment".  So we can't talk about the muscular bodies, the twisting limbs, the gaze of the John the Baptist child.  We can't look at the pink reds and the shading that creates a welter of three dimensional folds.  We can't talk about the way Michelangelo thought of himself as a sculptor, even in paint, and how that comes out in technique. 

Dylan, the boy, says:

I know it sounds daft now, but it was only when he said that that I realized it was a painting.  It looked so real, even though it didn't look like a photograph. (79)

I have talked with actual 9 year olds about art.  They grasp--especially in person--that paint is different from photography.  They can tell you about lines and they notice details.  Sometimes Boyce's writing about the works feels as if he has only experienced them digitally or through books.  There isn't a feel of standing in front of the work (though he tries somewhat harder with the National Gallery's Sunflowers, by Van Gogh, which is the climax of the art discussion).

I don't want to make it sound like I didn't enjoy the book or the art or believe that art enriches our lives, which is at the center of Boyce's book.  I just want to point out how difficult it is to write about the transformative, spiritual nature in a way that conveys it to the reader.  But while "Tickets to London and the National Gallery in every book!" might sell copies, I doubt it would be feasible...