In a phone conversation on July 8, 2005 John Fitz Gibbon recalled how as a Yale undergraduate he had attended a lecture on Pandora’s Box by Erwin Panofsky. So impressed was he by the discourse, including among other things a brilliant analysis of this myth’s use by various artists, that he rushed to a bookstore, when it ended, to purchase a volume of essays by that eminent art historian. He confessed he understood little of what he read until the last, “Et in Arcadia ego”, an exegesis on a favorite painting of his, Les Bergers d’Arcadie, by Nicholas Poussin. In it three shepherds and a woman stand around a tomb staring at its Latin inscription that John translated as “I too lived in Arcadia”. During the conversation, however, he remembered other figures going about their daily life, eating and drinking and making love, unconcerned with the inscription, which was meant for the viewer. John is an expert on such matters and probably meant that Poussin would have strengthened his piece had such figures been added. What he found absolutely exhilarating was that Panofsky’s meditation on this Latin phrase found in Virgil’s fifth eclogue led him to a meaning deeper and richer than that of a mere memento mori, the common interpretation, which was John’s as well. Arcadia for Panofsky was more that a geographical place in Greece, inhabited by an ancient tribe, or the idea of Utopia where blissful shepherds lolled in endless summer, unaware that the coffin represented a limit. Rather it was where child like misfits had been confined by an adult, fallen world; it was the pre fallen Eden not as fabrication but as the source of all creation: the realm of the imagination. When John reached the last few words he said he was heart sick there were not several more pages. It was as though the brilliant sky had opened and a ladder appeared at his feet that stretched to the “sacred places” that Paul Klee claimed had fostered all organic growth, the domain where Les Bergers d’Arcadie had germinated and is the germ. He immediately decided to devote his life to art and art history and began his ascent.

After graduating from Yale he attended many art history courses at Berkeley, several of which were taught by Horst W. Janson, with whom he became very friendly. Commonly known as “Peter”, this former student of Panofsky was the author of a very popular textbook on art history. Several years later, while teaching art history at Sacramento State, he invited Peter to his home on Pilot Hill. After lunch he escorted him with Joan Brown, Wayne Tiebault, Joseph Raffael, and a few musicians down a hill to three sailboats, which ferried them to a cemetery on a small island and to a prominent tomb of an 18th century man where John had hung a burlap tarp on which he had written “Et in Arcadia ego”. Thinking it meant he was about to die, Peter asked nervously: “Does this mean me, John?” “No”, he replied, “It is for you”, while around them danced several nudes.

A few years ago, realizing the degree to which that essay had affected his life and as the fulfillment of it, he offered to give his entire collection of California art to the Yale Art Gallery, to be housed in a new addition, for which a substantial sum of money was included. The new building was to be in the shape of the State of California and constructed over the small, nearby home of a secret society called “Skull and Bones”. Thus would the Golden State and its art provide continual joy above what he described was an ugly building. Thus would modern Arcadia soar over what was and is commonly called a “tomb”, with its dry bones. Thus would the creative life triumph over death.

WHH Rees, March 23, 2007