Connections/Flux

My name is Annie Labatt and I'm a fellow at the Met. My topic is "Flux."

The great fortune of being an art history graduate student is that I get to travel, and

I need to travel, because, it may sound trite, but it doesn't mean anything when it's in a book.

You have to see it in the space it belongs in, in its context.

I'm in a moment in my life where things are rather unstable. I graduated from Barnard

and then I went to London for a year and

then I went back to New York for a year

and then I went to Chicago for a year

and then I went to New Haven for three years

and then I went to Rome for two years

and I was in DC and now I'm back in New York.

I think of my journey as being Odyssean, because I've been traveling and now I'm full circle. There's something evocative about that

unknown that the black background represents, that he's forging ahead, and he'll get there, but he doesn't know quite when.

The travels that I've gone through represent a chance to be somewhere new and learn about that place and grow from that experience rather than isolate myself, although

I have to say, I never knew how much I liked hamburgers until I moved to Rome. I grew up in Texas where hamburgers are a major part of the cuisine, but it wasn't until I was abroad that I needed them desperately.

Sargent is part of this story of the American abroad. He went to Italy and was taken, captivated, just as I was. The golds and the shimmery, broken lines reflects his

similar grappling with these unusual monuments.

I have the most fun when I'm looking at Panini, because looking at the painting is like having my own souvenir.

I get to relive those times and those walks that I had when I was living in Rome. The monuments I study were often times built on top of by Baroque people, and so

these are the sorts of underground monuments that I would find, the hidden Rome. Sometimes there were no stairs, there would just be a pile of mud, and I'd traipse down into these lower spaces and walk around in the dark and then search for traces of paintings. And you can almost see

in the background, that there are marks and hints of pigment. In looking at those outlines, it's possible to create something and imagine what might have been.

As I come back from these travels, I've been changed in a way. I bring back memories. This stereograph is duplicated. It's not only one memory. It represents something in your mind's eye, something that you try to capture when you go to these sites.

People say that if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. And it seems as though the people in this painting don't really have

a direction, that they're sort of enjoying rambling and losing themselves in the landscape.

Saint Anthony, he's in the middle of an incredible wilderness of disasters and fires and little hobgoblins, even one

is pulling at his coat. Being in this very unstable and insecure space, he still keeps his focus. And in fact, it may very well help him establish his focus

on the painting of the crucified Christ. When I was abroad, I was able to recognize what made me, me. It's not only an exterior struggle, but it's also an interior struggle.

I'm finishing my dissertation and now I'm moving into a new phase, and it's a little uncertain what that's going to be like. Henry James said in The Portrait of a Lady that

Isabel Archer affronts her destiny, not confronts, but affronts her destiny. For the moment, I don't know what my journey is going to be.

I'm just going to try every path and every time that I go on these adventures I learn more things

so I'm not worried about it. I'm excited.