Monday, February 27, 2017

A Flag and a Trope


We're not close to the Fourth of July, but I saw the flag displayed on Grand Avenue near Bergen Street, and a street sign bent in a complimentary direction, and it's a colorful location, and so forth and so on.  So I painted this 12x16 oil on panel.

I continue to ponder on Cezanne.  Here's a perspective from Denis Coutagne:  "...the artist has often inspired the word 'heroic,' not only because of his lofty ambition but also because of the discrepancy between his exceptional genius and the rather awkward, unyielding talent with which he had to cope.  The glory of the consequent paintings is that they seem so manifestly to be the record of a great soul mortally engaged in winning dominion over his own conflicted nature, which, thanks to the dynamic complexities of the art, becomes an expansive trope for modern civilization striving to wrest order from the chaos of post-feudal existence."  The claim for the expansiveness of the trope might be too grand, but nevertheless Cezanne is a heroic example to those who study his paintings, which is a trope enough for me.

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