ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

I love every bit of this delicious satire, but I just had to share this snippet with you.  This is Peter Orr, guardian of the literary heritage of Raymond Lawrence, describing the painting of his hero in The Residence:

And here he is, framed over the extinct old front fireplace at 56 inches by 64, courtesy of Phyllis Button at her best, before the visionary period that signalled the onset of her dementia.  The painting hangs here and not on the long walls of the Blue Room as something to confront the public: they enter, pause, look at the buffet and (always) ask whether it is real or not (meaning, of course, whether it is authentic), then how much it is worth (I’ve no idea but I conjure up imaginary figures to make them gasp), and then turn right and – well, here he is in glorious Technicolour.

In truth, though, in far better: in Phyllis’s sparkling, even shocking end-times style, with its splatters and scrapes of oil straight from the tube, oranges and reds and (of course) bright blue, his defining colour, smeared on the canvas as if she were trying straight from the medium or through it or even around it, to the man himself, to Raymond Thomas Lawrence  – Nobel Laureate, Master, genius: martyr.  It’s an extraordinary work, full of life and all the evidence you need of the way a work of art can show its artifice while at the same time transcending the strokes and smears of which it is made, and (even if only for  a moment, even if only to particular eyes) make that impossible leap into life itself, hot, quivering and now.

Are you imagining it?  A great painting, of a literary genius, yes? …

… but the author is poking fun.  The subject of this painting is the title of the book.  And that’s all that you can see in the painting!

The Back of His Head, by Patrick Evans,
Victoria University Press, New Zealand, 2015,
Kindle edition, Loc. 150