229
everyday life of the country’s residents. That is what van Goyen accomplished.
9
Citing Beck, the late Walter Liedtke suggests that van Goyen had an important influence on at least 40 contemporary and subsequent followers.
10
Consider just a few of van Goyen’s repeated impressions (titles of paintings):
“The Pelkus Gate near Utrecht,” “River Landscape,” “Country House near the
Water,” “Castle by a River,” “River View with a Village Church,” “A Windmill by a
River,” “View of Dordrecht downstream from the Grote Kerk,” “View of The Hague
from the Northwest,” “The Thunderstorm,” “Polder Landscape,” and “Village at the
River.” Three hundred and twenty years ago, a van Goyen’s obsession with the surrounding waterways could be likened to a clairvoyant intimation of climate change.
It is in the Dutch psyche, certainly. But to have fashioned from its eerie prospects an
entire aesthetic of enduring intimacy—of pleasure within each coming storm—
marks a radical shift in human apprehension, from fear and flight to loving, even
customary, embrace; “an attempt to reassert the validity of the organic, as against
the mechanical, of the individual personality as against the statistical aggregate, of
the instinctual and traditional and historical as against the purely rational and measurable,” wrote Lewis Mumford, speaking of the advent of Romanticism.
11
24.3 A Philosophy of Vulnerability
In an entirely different mode of perceiving, the 29-year-old Albert Camus wrote
in his meditation during World War II, The Myth of Sisyphus, “His scorn of the
gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the
price that must be paid for the passions of this earth.”
12
The Dutch have always
known of that price. One late Saturday night, on January 31, 1953, and into the
next morning, the North Sea flooded, the so-called watersnoodramp event, killing
9 See “Population developments in the Northern Netherlands (1500–1800) and the validity of the
‘urban graveyard’ effect,” A.M. van der Woude, Annales de Démographie Historique Année 1982,
1982, pp. 55–75, https://www.persee.fr/doc/adh_0066-2062_1982_num_1982_1_1528, Accessed
April 25, 2019; see also “A maritime worldview in Jan van Goyen’s ‘View of The Hague from the
south east,’” by Noortje Knol, www.vliz.be/imisdocs/publications/252980.pdf; see also “Van
Goyen’s Puddles,” by Lytle Shaw, AA Files, No. 65 (2012), pp. 76–86, published by: Architectural
Association School of Architecture, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41762329, https://www.jstor.org/
stable/41762329?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents, Accessed April 25, 2019.
10 See Walter Liedtke’s two-volume Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Yale University Press, New Haven and London,
New York, 2007, p. 224.
11 See Mumford’s In the Name of Sanity, Harcourt, Brace And Company, New York, 1954, p. 119.
12 See Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, translated from the French by Justin
O’Brien, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1955, p. 120.
24.3 A Philosophy of Vulnerability
everyday life of the country’s residents. That is what van Goyen accomplished.
9
Citing Beck, the late Walter Liedtke suggests that van Goyen had an important influence on at least 40 contemporary and subsequent followers.
10
Consider just a few of van Goyen’s repeated impressions (titles of paintings):
“The Pelkus Gate near Utrecht,” “River Landscape,” “Country House near the
Water,” “Castle by a River,” “River View with a Village Church,” “A Windmill by a
River,” “View of Dordrecht downstream from the Grote Kerk,” “View of The Hague
from the Northwest,” “The Thunderstorm,” “Polder Landscape,” and “Village at the
River.” Three hundred and twenty years ago, a van Goyen’s obsession with the surrounding waterways could be likened to a clairvoyant intimation of climate change.
It is in the Dutch psyche, certainly. But to have fashioned from its eerie prospects an
entire aesthetic of enduring intimacy—of pleasure within each coming storm—
marks a radical shift in human apprehension, from fear and flight to loving, even
customary, embrace; “an attempt to reassert the validity of the organic, as against
the mechanical, of the individual personality as against the statistical aggregate, of
the instinctual and traditional and historical as against the purely rational and measurable,” wrote Lewis Mumford, speaking of the advent of Romanticism.
11
24.3 A Philosophy of Vulnerability
In an entirely different mode of perceiving, the 29-year-old Albert Camus wrote
in his meditation during World War II, The Myth of Sisyphus, “His scorn of the
gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the
price that must be paid for the passions of this earth.”
12
The Dutch have always
known of that price. One late Saturday night, on January 31, 1953, and into the
next morning, the North Sea flooded, the so-called watersnoodramp event, killing
9 See “Population developments in the Northern Netherlands (1500–1800) and the validity of the
‘urban graveyard’ effect,” A.M. van der Woude, Annales de Démographie Historique Année 1982,
1982, pp. 55–75, https://www.persee.fr/doc/adh_0066-2062_1982_num_1982_1_1528, Accessed
April 25, 2019; see also “A maritime worldview in Jan van Goyen’s ‘View of The Hague from the
south east,’” by Noortje Knol, www.vliz.be/imisdocs/publications/252980.pdf; see also “Van
Goyen’s Puddles,” by Lytle Shaw, AA Files, No. 65 (2012), pp. 76–86, published by: Architectural
Association School of Architecture, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41762329, https://www.jstor.org/
stable/41762329?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents, Accessed April 25, 2019.
10 See Walter Liedtke’s two-volume Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Yale University Press, New Haven and London,
New York, 2007, p. 224.
11 See Mumford’s In the Name of Sanity, Harcourt, Brace And Company, New York, 1954, p. 119.
12 See Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, translated from the French by Justin
O’Brien, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1955, p. 120.
24.3 A Philosophy of Vulnerability