REMEMBERING
JAMES BECK
1930-2007
“Blow on the coal of the heart”
Jim
Beck was my adviser, mentor, and cherished friend for
more than 40 years. When I came back to school in 1966
to study art history at Columbia, Rudolf Wittkower was
Chairman of the Department. Wittkower had been Jim’s
adviser, and he personified the ideal against which
Jim measured his own performance as a scholar and as
a teacher for his entire career.
On
the 20th anniversary of Wittkower’s retirement
as chairman, in 1989, when Jim was chairman, Jim summarized
that ideal with his characteristic insight. “[Rudolf]
Wittkower’s contribution to the discipline of
the History of Art set a standard for the finest art
historical scholarship of the entire twentieth century.
Its impact,” Jim insisted, “derives not
only from its sheer range, from the kinds and diversity
of problems Wittkower has confronted,
but [also] from the special quality of his approach,
which is characterized by clarity, thoroughness, and
invention, as well as joy and reverence.”
Like
Wittkower, Jim also was the ideal teacher. Wittkower’s
protégé and Jim’s close friend,
the late Howard Hibbard’s description of Rudi
also describes Jim. “Perhaps his outstanding quality
was faith. He saw talent where others did not, and carefully
nourished it. And he was a loyal and loving colleague.
Surely no one did so much for so many—students
and colleagues alike. … The loss of the scholar
and administrator is, for his countless friends, dwarfed
by the disappearance of what we valued most, his unique
humanity.”
When Jim and I weren’t talking about the latest
questionable attribution of a major painting or the
outrageous restoration of an Old Master that Art Watch
was trying to save from further desecration, Jim was
always interested in what I was working on. And our
conversations invariably got around to family. How was
Nancy’s writing coming along? Darma’s work
at Casa Italiana and her family in Italy. Larry, the
devoted husband and father, the gifted artist with photographic
exhibitions here and abroad. Nora, the accomplished
musician and loving mother, and like her father a tenured
professor, department head, and published author.
Over
the years, Jim and I found we had a common bond that
transcended art history, to what the philosopher Alasdair
MacIntyre calls “those traditions of moral inquiry.”
Jim
found particular insight and inspiration in the Old
Testament story of Job, described by scripture scholars
as the epitome of the just man. Especially toward the
end of his life—and we talked about this often—Jim
felt he had learned from Job to forgive the imperfections
of others. And what was most important, he had learned
to forgive his own imperfections. Rabbi Harold Kushner,
in his discussion of Job, says, by learning to forgive,
we’re able “to live fully, bravely, and
meaningfully in a less-than-perfect world.”
It’s
been said that life should be a meaningful story, not
a series of meaningless episodes. That bit of wisdom
underscores what Gilbert Meilaender, an authority on
bioethics, calls the “narrative quality”
of a person’s life. “…our lives are
best understood as stories.” Moreover, he tells
us that we can’t know the full significance of
that narrative until we read the whole story—that
is, at the end of our lives. Even then, he says, we
can’t know the whole story, because “the
story of one’s life is not only one’s own
private creation but depends also on the memories of
others and the stories they tell. … The way people
replay and recast memories, day by day, deepens and
reshapes that larger life story.” “An individual
is more than just an individual self. The individual
belongs to an ongoing tradition. We are defined by the
story of which we are a part.”
Long
after today. Long after all of us here are gone, the
memories of those whose lives Jim Beck touched over
his 77 years, his students, colleagues, friends, the
shopkeepers along Broadway and in Italy, will continue
to sustain and construct the narrative of Jim’s
story.
Meanwhile,
as Carson McCullers, wrote in her novel The Heart is
a Lonely Hunter, “…the one who has gone
is not really dead, but grows and is created for a second
time in the soul of the living.”
Today,
we rekindle the special living flame that represents
the essence of James Beck’s humanity, what Charles
Dickens might call “wisdom of the heart,”
that will continue to warm and enlighten the souls of
the living.
As
Jim found self-understanding, hope, and inspiration
in the story of Job, Job’s wife reminds US that
the living flame of wisdom in the heart of the just
man burns and illuminates forever.
In Archibald MacLeish’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning
drama that he titled—coincidentally— “JB,”
Job’s wife says,
“The candles in churches are out.
The lights have gone out in the sky.
Blow on the coal of the heart
And we’ll see, by and by.”
Donald Martin Reynolds, Adjunct Professor of Art History
Remarks delivered on Wednesday, September 19, 2007
A Memorial Service in honor of James H. Beck
Il Teatro
Italian Academy for Advanced Research in America
Columbia University
1161 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, N. Y.
Sponsored by the Department of Art History and Archaeology
Columbia University
Robert E. Harrist, Jr., Professor of Art History and
Chairman