Third-year art history student Ella O’Sullivan reflects on the third of three lectures given by Professor Carol Mavor at the University of Manchester in December 2023, as the Pilkington Visiting Professor in Art History
At once, she is one.
The painting of Tobias and the Angel (produced around 1470) is an altar painting by the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio. A masterpiece which tells the biblical story of Tobias being guided by the Archangel Raphael to collect money for Tobit, Tobias’ blind father. However, it is not the narrative that author Carol Mavor highlights, but the tension of the moment of fusion depicted, when the angel’s index finger brushes the side of Tobias’ hand, and his thumb rubs across his wrist. It is this intimacy, this hope, this spring which are encapsulated in the term ‘husband’ for Mavor. She describes it as the most intimate way to describe a loved one, better than ‘my love’, ‘my beloved’ – husband. This term was hardly used and never liked by Mavor until after her husband’s passing.
‘I is harder to write than to say.’ Mavor starts her cine-essay with this thought-provoking statement. Why is it so difficult to translate our inner monologue onto a page and confront the ‘I’, the ‘one’, the idea of being alone? Mavor, however, does this with such beautiful accuracy. She explores the impossible feelings that defy definition and translation. She explains having to rediscover ‘I’ as a widow after suddenly losing her husband Kevin. She investigates themes of memory and loss amongst anecdotes that describe her involuntary sleeping and waking dreams, which left her almost haunted by a person who existed only in her memory. ‘Where is the present? Only she knows what they did.’ Mavor is vulnerable in her honest presentation of grief, polishing over none of the raw and confusing sentiments which coloured her life afterwards. She brought us along to the first exhibition that they attended together and to the John Constable sky under which they existed, amongst other moments she holds most dear.
Mavor’s description of the primary grieving year was perhaps the most impactful imagery of the talk. ‘The year of magical thinking’, she calls on Joan Didion’s deeply personal memoir, in which she also explains her grief following the sudden death of her husband John Gregory Dunne. In this period, Mavor explains how she indulged herself to fantasise of her husband’s return. An anorexic’s high when denying food, this is how Mavor captured the sweet denial that he was truly gone. Games of inversion and the internal conflicts between loving refutation and guilty acceptance were how Mavor spent lots of her time while grieving. Her translation of major personal feelings appeared to resonate deeply with the audience who were often moved to tears.
In the period dedicated to the audience’s questions, Mavor talked more about a major source of inspiration for her deeply personal writing which was Roland Barthes’ A lover’s discourse: Fragments. ‘What I want to know (love) is the very substance I employ in order to speak’, Barthes’ words glow from behind Mavor’s, especially from her discussion on the ethics of writing about the deceased and the challenge of portraying a loved one as they would have wanted at a time when they are no longer around to approve or agree.
Her lament beautifully captured the essence of longing and loving in a beautifully descriptive structure which enabled the audience to empathise with Mavor. A truly moving experience.
Ella O’Sullivan
Third-year art history student
December 2023
Dispatches in Art History 