I didn't know what to think when I started reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tart. I was expecting something more along the lines of The Secret History, a story pushed forward by its intense plot and ensemble of characters that take up every word of every page. There are elements of this in The Goldfinch, but I was struck by the bleak, beautiful, and tragic trajectory of the story. Particularly, the protagonist, Theo Decker, and his relationship to art remain as a living thing in my memory of the book.

There is much to unpack with this story—the relationships, prose, and imagery are stunning—but I want to focus on the titular part of the tale, The Goldfinch by Fabritus. This is a painting that serves as  the catalyst for much of the plot. It is undeniable in its importance to Theo Decker, as a symbol of his paranoia, his adoration of art, and his captivity to a moment in his life that will never leave him. It is the remnant of an accident that killed his mother and introduced him to a seedier, darker world.

Donna Tart's depiction of what art, in all of its forms, means to people is what struck me most emotionally. To begin in what I would say is the first act of the book, Donna Tart introduces the character of Hobie. We are introduced to the shop of Hobart (Hobie) and Blackwell as a staple within New York's furniture and antiquities scene. Once prolific in its sales of luminous chests and chairs, it turned into a slower, less visible establishment after the death of Welty, one of the store's partners. Theo is welcomed into Hobie's store and his home, solely because Theo stayed with Welty during their meeting at the art museum explosion. Tart’s description of Hobie's house and its art is extremely compelling. Dimly lit hallways chock full of art and trinkets. A basement workshop, a maze of antiques. Tart spares no detail when describing the outpouring of love that is put into the turning of a chair leg, matching the varnishing of a bruised and damaged cabinet, and the delicate paintings Hobie replicates on dining tables. Hobie called his workshop 'the hospital', leaving no doubt that this was a place of refuge for art, neglected or not. Theo is privy to this lifestyle, even learning the repairing and woodworking techniques himself, and then later going on to deal with the antiquities (even if he does so a bit illegally). Prior to Hobie, we get a crucial connection to art through Theo's connection with his late mother. His mother is a central piece of Theo's anguish, grief, and motivations, whose absence forces him to be sent to his confusing and tormented father in the middle of Las Vegas. His mother, whose kindness grounds Theo to love and to a happiness that he can't seem to reach after she dies. Theo's mother also loves art and art history. She brings Theo to museums at every spare moment and muses over pieces of art as if they are the most interesting thing in the world.

These figures in Theo's life point to art—fine art in this specific instance, but applicable to all other forms of art as a great power of the universe. At the end of the book, when Theo finally reveals the journey he has taken with the stolen painting and fraudulent antiquity sales, a compelling series of questions is uttered by Hobie: "'And isn't the point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty? Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing or trying to recapture, in one way or another?'" Now this resolution with Hobie at the end of the book, (although a bit unsatisfying to me in its totality), resonated true and meaningful to me. I feel something visceral and heated when I see a beautiful painting. Increased blood flow. Heart racing. A physical manifestation of beauty that is uncomfortable, that draws that "crack" into a part of me. An imprint that longs for the next crack, and the next, to finally shatter the craving for a painting just as moving, just as beautiful as the last. In my eyes, a good painting will leave a stain, it will break something, because isn’t that the power of beautiful things? To leave you fresh, vulnerable, and with an ever growing hunger for more art.

Theo's revelations on The Goldfinch articulated that painfulness that I have been drawn to time and time again when engaging with certain paintings. That art, and beautiful art at that, will always be a force of change, whether that is conscious or not. Reshaping our memories, catalyzing revolutions, drawing communities closer, fragmenting relationships, and most potently, solidifying the human experience into something tangible. Or as Tart puts it so concisely, art "alters the brain of reality".

When I reflect on the art that shaped my life, I always come back to John Singer Sargent. I adored art and going to art museums ever since I was young, not unlike Theo. I loved fawning over all the pretty pictures lined up, waiting to be viewed just by me. But at that time, it never went much farther than simply looking.

This changed later on, around when I was fourteen or so, when I stumbled across a painting by Sargent called "Carnation Lily Lily Rose". The painting depicts two young girls holding wispy lanterns in a verdant, flower-filled field. It is dusk in the painting and the light from the lanterns casts a warm, peach colored glow across the two of them. I remember seeing this painting and wanting to be inside of it more than anything else in the world. Sargent's plein air style, his thin brush strokes conveying translucent light, the simplicity of the scene, all of these factors compounded into a glorious, other-wordly feeling. I was enthralled, and there was no other way around it. Sargent's technique was stunning to me. His portraiture, which he was famous for, was great, but I was more interested in the dream-like quality which he could depict so well.

This painting was just the beginning. I read more and more about him. Planned a trip to London to see 'Carnation Lily Lily Rose' in person at the Tate. Showed up many times at the Boston Public Library and Museum of Fine Arts here in Boston just to stare at his mural cycles plastered all over the walls. It was a very prolific obsession and I was perhaps too proud of it. In fact, I was overjoyed to find that upon moving to Boston, Sargent's work was just laying around in the city in abundance. It would have seemed that, without knowing, I found myself in a John Singer Sargent pit! In all seriousness though, even now, the thrill of running into a small Sargent painting or tid-bit of info about his life as I go about my day is unmatched.

That being said, my tastes are always changing, and after taking a few art history classes I found other paintings that replicate the awe that I experienced with "Carnation Lily Lily Rose" (like Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 'Netherlandish Proverbs', Raqib Shaw's 'The Departure', and Georges Seurat 'A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jette', just to name a few). Similar to Theo, though, there was something that constantly pulled me back to 'Carnation Lily Lily Rose'. The inviting light of the painting tugs at my attention, pulling me ever closer to the simplicity of an evening filled with flowers, lanterns, and childish whimsy. It's undeniable that 'Carnation Lily Lily Rose' set me on a path to love art even more than I had before. The subsequent years of research into Sargent's work and a deep dive into art history were done in an attempt to mend the huge cavern that 'Carnation Lily Lily Rose' left. It's a good cavern though. It's the cavern that pushes me to learn more, consume more.

The ending of The Goldfinch spoke to me because of this connection. I felt seen by Theo's obsession, even though I didn't steal a million dollar painting and hoard it away for my entire adult life. In some odd way, I understand his protectiveness over this beautiful, compelling piece, because I know the effect art like The Goldfinch has on my own life. Like Theo, I saw a beautiful painting and I wanted to practically inject it into my veins.

This visceral desire is what I think the power of art is: art is the magic conjured just by looking and art is the messages it can scrape onto our beings.

I should mention that although Tart describes Theo's connection to Fabritus' painting as a "secret whisper from an alleyway", I also believe that these whispers can also be screams, when called for. Paintings and other types of fine art are a strong social and political currency, and I think they should remain that way. Sometimes, the beauty in the art is that it is ugly, that it is meant to incur ugly feelings. Paintings that speak to all the tucked away, unnamable parts of ourselves are the ones that withstand time and memories and the weathering of humanity.

In the ending monologue that Theo embarks on, he mentions the Unified Field Theory in regards to The Goldfinch. In very broad terms, the Unified Field Theory postulates how all the major forces of nature of space and time are pulled together by a single field. I'm no physicist, but I like to believe that in the small microcosm that is my life, my unified field can be art. If the field is not 'Carnation Lily Lily Rose' by itself, my fundamental force is the mass of beautiful pieces of art that access my inner luminosity. That these objects, under zero rational explanation, command my gaze and leave glowing footprints all over my mind. Because it is as simple as, I love this painting, and it loves me back.