Resumen de Humble relics: Beckett and Van Gogh's boots
Comparison of the old boots in Van Gogh's series of paintings from 1886 to 1888 with those in Beckctt's fiction, drama and poetry from the 1930s to 1980s establishes their significance for painter and writer alike: eloquently, unflinchingly embodied in these humble relics is life at once animated and inert, as empty worn our old boots attest to the distance travelled in them, or, like a shed skin, register the missing foot. This essay takes its place in the burgeoning area of material studies, and operates at the interstices of phenomenology, art history, literary criticism, anthropology and social science. My approach draws upon the anthropologist Igor Kopytoff's concept of a 'cultural biography of things', the art historian Meyer Schapiro's formulation of 'personal objects' and the mode of enquiry of the phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard. I adapt Kopytoff's methodology to explore the extraordinary longevity, familiarity and banal utility of the boot and its corresponding evocativeness for Van Cogh and Beckett. I have modified Schapiro's approach as my concern is not the relation of the art to the life, but rather the poetic resonance of a single recurring object in these paintings and texts. This resonance leads to my recommendation that Van Gogh and Beckett's use of old boots be considered an 'art of salvage.'
