OYSTERS get a little overshadowed by the spiralling lemons in the much praised book on art criticsm by Mark Doty. He begins with Jan Davidsz de Heem’s Still Life with oysters and lemons dated 1638 though it could equally apply to a variation painted three years later…”there is a spectacular spiral of lemon peel, a flourish of painterly showing-off. The rind has been sliced in a single strip, and it curls in the air, resting atop theroemer; one of its coils dips inside, toward the wine, so that we see it now plainly, now veiled by the slightly gray cast of the glass. Now the pebbly yellow, as it twists through air, now the white pith that lay between that outer skin and the body of the fruit. Shadows lie in the twisting helix, in the curling hollows –like the socket of an armpit, or the hollows at the base of the neck, the twin wells of the collarbone. These are fleshy, erotic shadows, and they stand in contrast to the brilliance raking across the peel, cut so thin as to be translucent, a slice of the warmth and energy pouring into this room we’ll never see. . . . “

The book has had rare praise indeed like here :

Mark Doty has done the impossible. ..he has not only written an extended essay (read epic poem) about his encounter with a simple Dutch Still Life painting, but he has also produced what must become the definitive map for looking, seeing, studying and describing the essence of art in a way that encourages us all to return to the pursuit of beauty.