During a recent visit to Amsterdam for EuroPrideCon, I spent several hours exploring the Rijksmuseum, which is the Dutch National Museum. It has a wonderful collection, including Rembrandts, Van Goghs, Vermeers… and dollhouses. These date from the 17thand 18thcenturies, and they were the amazingly detailed hobbies of wealthy women. Aside from fascinating us with their artisanship, the dollhouses give a detailed view of homelife for the wealthy of that period.
While my general reaction to the museum’s collection was awe, some pieces elicited a different response. Hendrick ter Brugghen’s The Adoration of the Magi, for instance. This painting was completed in 1619 and is rich in color and detail. But its Jesus is the ugliest baby I have ever seen. It made me wonder if Ter Brugghen had ever set eyes on a baby.
But here’s the thing—four hundred years after Ter Brugghen painted that hideous infant, the painting hangs in a prestigious museum where thousands of people a year admire it. In fact, it’s in the Museum’s Gallery of Honor. Wikipedia tells me Ter Brugghen is considered an important and influential artist. Now, I know almost nothing about art, so I’m going to assume that, taken as a whole, this painting is significant. The use of light and shadow intrigues me, the fabrics are so finely depicted I can almost feel them, and the faces of everyone except Jesus seem genuinely suffused with emotion. It is, I assume, a masterpiece.
But oh, that ugly baby!
Here’s a lesson I’m taking from this painting: even if a work of art contains a serious flaw, it can still be admirable. It can still carry emotional and artistic significance—even many years after it’s created. It can still be immensely valuable.
I don’t by any means claim to be the gay-romance equivalent of a Dutch Master. But I think this lesson is important for me to remember nonetheless.
During my flight to Europe, I went over final galley proofs of my upcoming (25th!!) novel, Drawing the Prince. With help from my lovely editors, I’ve done my best to make the book as perfect as possible. I’m positive, however, that if I read it over in a year or two, I’m going to find imperfections—maybe plot points or turns of phrase that I could have written better. Hopefully none of those imperfections will be as ugly as that baby, but even if they are, I’ll think about Ter Brugghen and remind myself that an imperfect work can still be treasured.
Do you have a favorite piece of art—visual, auditory, or literary—that also has flaws?
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Kim Fielding is the bestselling author of numerous m/m romance novels, novellas, and short stories. Like Kim herself, her work is eclectic, spanning genres such as contemporary, fantasy, paranormal, and historical. Her stories are set in alternate worlds, in 15th century Bosnia, in modern-day Oregon. Her heroes are hipster architect werewolves, housekeepers, maimed giants, and conflicted graduate students. They’re usually flawed, they often encounter terrible obstacles, but they always find love.
After having migrated back and forth across the western two-thirds of the United States, Kim calls the boring part of California home. She lives there with her husband, her two daughters, and her day job as a university professor, but escapes as often as possible via car, train, plane, or boat. This may explain why her characters often seem to be in transit as well. She dreams of traveling and writing full-time.
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Great article. And yes ugly baby.
Oh, too right. I mean, Michelangelo never managed to really come to terms with the female form (“BIG MUSCULAR TORSO, STICK SOME UNLIKELY BREASTS ON IT SOMEWHERE AT CHEST HEIGHT, HEY PRESTO, WOMAN! SEE I CAN TOTALLY DO WOMEN!”), but his place is pretty much assured for eternity and he was seriously wealthy as an artist to boot!