The profanity of paint — Inside the Classic

The Aspen as Spiritual Mirror

Kiddier's most sustained descriptive passages center on the aspen tree. In 'My Friends the Trees,' he recalls weeping on learning the Cross was made from aspen wood, and claims the leaves 'will tremble to the end of the world' for Golgotha. The tree becomes a devotional figure: 'beautiful and gentle like a nun with a prayer quivering upon her lips.' Yet his painter's eye also notes how the leaves 'like a million little mirrors, draw the blue and the purple from above and drink the orange from departing suns.' The aspen thus serves as both religious symbol and color-study—a fusion of the romanticist's truth and the painter's craft. Kiddier's language here is ornate, with similes drawn from jewelry ('precious pearls on the neck of a goddess') and textiles ('a garment inwoven with gems'). The tree's elusiveness to paint becomes a proof of its spiritual nature: 'the colour upon the leaves, like that in the dews around, is surely spiritual.'

Class as a Painterly Problem

In 'The Middle-class,' Kiddier turns his aesthetic sensibility onto social hierarchy. He declares his own middle-class birth 'my chief misfortune,' ranking artisans above aristocrats and both above the money-making middle. His critique is blunt: 'With them lying is an art, whereas for the poor it is only a pastime.' The aristocrat, by contrast, is 'as much above any mean action as he is at loss in managing his own affairs.' This class schema echoes his earlier remark in 'The Profanity of Paint' that 'a crowd of them in one spot is bad form, often bad colour, and mostly confusion'—where 'them' refers to the rich. Kiddier treats social groups almost as compositional elements: artisans form 'the natural order of things,' while a concentration of wealth creates visual and moral discord. The chapter ends with a theological flourish: 'God made the lord and the labourer: the rest is mainly the work of the devil!'

Against the Masterpiece

The chapter 'The Masterpiece' and the poem that follows it articulate Kiddier's skepticism toward artistic ambition. He recounts telling a young artist to 'attempt no masterpiece,' because 'the moment you think of doing a masterpiece you are befooled.' Instead, the painter should 'paint with a generous heart—paint colour—and leave to the next generation the selection of your masterpiece.' The accompanying sonnet personifies Time as a Titan who 'threw the dreams of men' into the sea, including 'one was a masterpiece!' The poem's final line—'I am the Tomb of Time!'—reinforces the futility of chasing permanence. This anti-monumental stance aligns with Kiddier's earlier insistence that painting is 'a personal matter' and cannot be regulated by communities. The excerpts suggest a consistent philosophy: art's value lies in the act of seeing and recording, not in posterity's judgment.

Kiddier's essays resist easy categorization. Though the catalog lists Painting and Architecture as subjects, the excerpts engage as much with class, religion, and the nature of truth as with visual art. Readers should expect a personal, aphoristic style that moves between lyrical nature writing and blunt social commentary. The fragments do not reveal whether Kiddier sustains a coherent argument across the full text, but they show a writer who treats painting as a lens for all of life—and who is unafraid to call the middle-class the devil's work.

Some books don't argue; they simply wait for you to catch up. Kiddier's essay on temperament finding truth in aspen light felt like that, a quiet ache for honesty. Selected etchings by Piranesi, series 2 — Text and Context lingered with me the same way, built of shadows and vast, patient ruins.