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My Favorite Painting



I love this painting at the Met. I know nothing about Georges de La Tour. I do know that this painting was completed sometime around 1630.


The reason I love it is that it is a narrative about transgression. Like the writer Patrick Radden Keefe, I think a story is useless unless it involves a crime. (Maybe that's overly dramatic, but it's pretty close to what I think.) A crime involves role-playing--you have to feign being someone you're not, if you want to stage a coverup--and role-playing leads to odd behaviors. I will always have fond memories of "Better Call Saul" because of Kim Wexler. Wexler's criminal ambition takes her farther and farther from "the truth"--then, after a massacre, she has to try to atone for what she has done.


Georges de La Tour's "Fortune Teller" has a straightforward story. An elderly woman offers to read a palm. While the "mark" is distracted, a band of thieves gets to work on a pocket-picking mission. The mark seems to understand that he should be suspicious. But it's apparently too late to shout, "Halt!" This is like the moment an online vendor asks me for all of my identifying information--and I just comply because the thought of raising an objection is tiresome.


I am currently daydreaming about revenge. Someone in my life did something obnoxious. I'd like for her to taste her own medicine. I'm not exactly proud of that wish. But I do feel for the fortune teller--who am I to judge her?
 

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