LFINO Issue #8 BONUS ESSAY: Hubert van Eyck - Fact or Fiction

'There are authorities who still insist that Hubert Van Eyck is a legend, that he never lived at all...' (The Recognitions I.vii, P.251)

Note on the text: This reading of The Recognitions will be using the 2020 New York Review Classics (NYRB) edition of the text. All page number references will refer to this edition. The recommended way to approach this blog is to read the chapter yourself, first, and then come back and read this. Of course you may read it however you like, but I will be starting with a synopsis which will inevitably contain spoilers. This is not intended as a replacement for Steven Moore’s (brilliant) annotations, but as another tool to help unlock this difficult book, and to further add to the discussion of William Gaddis’s work. For specific references, please consult https://www.williamgaddis.org/recognitions/I1anno1.shtml

I thought, for this issue’s bonus essay, that I would pre-empt our reading of chapter seven of, The Recognitions, with an attempt to contextualise one of its key supporting concepts. In chapter seven, we will meet a business associate of Recktall Brown’s by the name of Basil Valentine, and he will come to Wyatt and Brown with a proposition: what if Wyatt produced a forgery by Hubert Van Eyck, the older brother of the more famous Jan Van Eyck. On the surface, this doesn’t excite either of them. Why would they be excited to spend time creating a forged work by a minor Early Flemish Primitive? Well, Valentine ends his proposition by dangling the ultimate carrot in front of their eyes. Basil Valentine does not believe Hubert Van Eyck existed, nor do many others, and he wants Wyatt to make the forgery which will ‘prove’ that Hubert was real. Those who are pro-Hubert Van Eyck will be too blinded by being proven right to question it, and Valentine will use his critical pen to persuade the deniers to concede defeat. The financial stakes of such a find are stratospheric, how could Recktall Brown ever say no? What remains for us to ask is: who was Hubert Van Eyck, and what are the origins of this identity crisis?