Old, Bold and Amazed
Age distills more than it diminishes. My fearless mentor in aging proved the point with her brush.
The first time I saw Maria, she had an hourglass in her hand and astonishment blazing in her wide blue eyes. She looked over my head and through the portal behind me toward some transfixing conundrum unrelated to the gallery beyond. I had just passed any number of paintings in search of one that would call, “Over here, Rona. I have something to tell you.” That one picture on every museum visit, anywhere from Pasadena to Paris, will not be the most revered or pleasing to the casual eye. It won’t be anyone’s pick for a selfie. On May 29, 2014, at the Lenbachhaus in Munich, the one picture was naked, open-mouthed Maria—unbeautiful and undeniably old.
Exactly what I didn’t want to be. Old, to my mind, meant irrelevant, invisible, heading downhill toward the grave.
I called myself middle-aged then. Soon to turn 65, I would bristle when offered the senior discount. The nerve of those checkout clerks. They should see me in Pilates, keeping up with mere sprouts of 50. Should have heard my friends exclaim, at every passing mention of my age, “You look ten years younger!”
Diana Athill, the grand dame of memoir, had said at 89 that old age does not begin until 70. At least that’s what I thought she said—until, just now, I pulled Somewhere Towards the End off the shelf and considered every word of the first sentence: “All through my sixties I felt I was still within hailing distance of middle age, not safe on its shores, perhaps, but navigating its coastal waters.” How had I missed the word “felt?” Wishful thinking, that’s how. Athill was making a confession, not a declaration. Like me, she clung to midlife until she felt the grip of old age “and saw that the time had come to size it up.”
She reminded me of fairy-tale crones who speak in riddles to plucky girls seeking their fortune.
Maria Lassnig, an Austrian artist, was 82 when she painted herself with an hourglass, sizing up the truth of her physical self. Corded neck, swollen fingers, slack breasts. Bony shoulders you wouldn’t want to lean on. A woman ravaged by time but possessed of courage and conviction. That day she riveted me in Munich, it seemed inconceivable that I had never seen her work before. Or had I walked by it, unready to look? She reminded me of fairy-tale crones who speak in riddles to plucky girls seeking their fortune. I was no girl and didn’t have forever to make sense of what Maria was about to say, her mouth a dark cavern in the seething brightness of her face.
Something appeared to amaze her. Her expression challenged me to name it. The sheer fact of making beauty with paint when nature had stripped it from her flesh?
My father, an artist, taught me to look for beauty in the harmony of line and color. In front of a painting dear to him, he’d reveal the master’s intention, Cézanne’s brush joining my gaze in a dance that made a shimmering geometric forest of the canvas and drew me inside. Maria painted another kind of beauty—weathered, jagged, discomfiting. In naked self-portraits, she erased her own skull, distorted her features, turned her skin lurid colors. She reveled in her lumps and bumps. Male gaze be damned. Maria, who chose not to marry or have children, gloried in her own unsparing gaze. Here I am and proud to be. No fucks given.
She tells me that age distills more than it diminishes.
Some creative artists inspire my admiration, others a kind of love for the mentorship they offer by navigating an indifferent world with curiosity, courage and wit. Maria—never “Lassnig” to me—is among my mentors. I discovered her within weeks of her death at 94. She worked almost to the end after painting for 70 years—longer than I had been alive—but did not become famous till her 60s. Picture by picture, truth by truth, she put her whole indomitable self on canvas. She tells me that age distills more than it diminishes.
In her exhilarating “Woman Power,” she bestrides New York like a 60-year-old Queen Kong—belly sagging, breasts uneven. The effect would be triumphal if not for her face—half expressionless mask, half daubs of paint slashed like a well used palette. Without eyes, she seems pulled on her way by an unseen force. Unlike most self-portraits, this one draws emotion not from the face but from the unstoppable movement of a body infused with purpose. As in all Maria’s work, emotion rises like a bright balloon tethered to the string of a firmly held idea—in this case, the artist’s trust in her gifts. I didn’t dare call myself a writer until a few years ago, after a lifetime of publishing credits. When doubt briefly silences me, I hold fast to the string of my floating balloon.
Thank you, Maria.
Last month I turned 75, often said to be the boundary between “young old” and “old old.” Between Pilates and sunscreen, I put on a good show. I’m lucky. Many friends of mine didn’t live to be old. Yet like Maria with her hourglass, I can’t forget my time is running out. It took me the Biblical three score and ten to appreciate being myself—no man to find, child to raise or “deliverables” to meet for corporate masters. I’ve gained the confidence to seek what lifts me up and do my ragged best to avoid what pulls me down. I don’t need the beauty of youth to love this world, which teems with beauty of its own, waiting for expression in words. Yet with Alzheimer’s running in my family, I dread losing the snap of discoveries into language, the fine obsession with a story almost ready to tell. I don’t want to die as a husk of myself.
Maria left a self-portrait that speaks to my worst fear. She playfully called it “Lady with a Brain.”
Male artists of the Western canon left centuries of “Lady with…” paintings in which a prop enhances the allure of a female subject. Da Vinci gave one lady an ermine; Manet chose a parakeet. Velasquez and Klimt, Maria’s countryman, both used fans as grace notes. Maria, no lady, subverts this trope. The seat of all her skill and perception billows from the side of her head like a Renaissance hairdo about to burst its net. I’d know that face anywhere—outsize nose; open mouth, small, wide-set eyes you’d forget if not for their blue intensity. That awestruck expression, both knowing and vulnerable. A newborn with an exposed brain will live at most a few days. In old age, Maria puts her brain on display while considering its uncertain future.
If Maria were a writer, she’d be another mentor I hold dear—the memoirist Abigail Thomas, now 83 and exploring her own age with curiosity and courage. In her latest book, Still Life at Eighty, she contemplates the urn that will one day hold her ashes. “I am comforted by remembering those of my friends who have died. I figure if they can do it, so can I.” She notes, with pleasure, that “mortal” rhymes with “portal.” As her memory fails, she cracks wise about her “last marble [rolling] under the radiator.” But it’s not there yet. The book’s punning title captures both the physical stillness of Abigail’s age (she mostly sits these days, with her coffee and her dogs) and the undeniable fact of her emotional aliveness. Here I am and proud to be—still.
I have treasured old woodwork, old lace, old jewelry of the kind they don’t make any more. On cobblestoned streets where half-timbered houses lean against one another like old friends, I’ve been struck by the rawness of my Toronto neighborhood across the ocean. Old is seasoned, tested and bequeathed. Yes, I’m old and proud to look back, with all my marbles, on the many amazements of my life. Be warned, though: this old dame has standards. Call me “elderly,” and I’ll send out a hit squad.
Do you have a mentor in aging? Is “old” a word you can embrace, or a state of mind you plan to avoid? I’d love to know.
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Oh, one more thing: You might enjoy “This Is the Look of a Joyful Woman,” about aging without the tyranny of mirrors. It’s my best-read post yet.
"She tells me that age distills more than it diminishes." This. That sentence. The whole essay, actually bore so many gifts. I'd never heard of Maria Lassnig until this morning, reading your post. Her use of color and form astounds, a wry sense of humor indeed. Yes, to Abigail, for sure as mentors go...maybe not a mentor, as much as an inspiration to me to free myself up. I adore her. And you, my dear Rona. I'm enthralled by your vision, by the details you observe. Your eye, and your ability to discern and convey teach me every time I read your work. Much love to you. Every time some younger person calls me "ma'am" they're asking to be strangled. xoxo
I used to bristle when fellow TTC riders stood up to offer me their seat. Now I typically give someone a ‘look’ until they move aside so that I can sit down. I guess this is the commuter’s grip of old age.