Mud and Transcendence

Another view of Rue Celony in Aix.  The experience of Rue Celony has to be contemplated in paint over time.  It's not something I can absorb and understand all at once.

Here's another interesting passage from the James Elkins book What Painting Is:  "What matters in painting is pushing the mundane toward the instance of transcendence.  The effect is sublimation, or distillation: just as water heats up and then suddenly disappears, so paint gathers itself together and then suddenly becomes something else -- an apparition hovering in the fictive space beyond the picture plane.  The boiling point, just before the substance evaporates, is the crucial moment, and it is vexed."

By the word 'mundane' Elkins means that paint stuff, which comes in tubes, and is formless when spread on a palette, and is like mud.

Rich Rue and Squeezed Cars

Another view of Rue Celony in Aix-en-Provence.  This narrow street is rich in views.  People in Aix squeeze cars into the tiniest parking spots using great patience and many backward and forward movements.  However, most cars that I saw had tell-tale signs of this activity.

The End of Landscape

Rue Celony again.  It is a narrow street that pedestrians and vehicles use as a shortcut to get to the old part of Aix.  Fortunately there are metal barriers to separate people from machines.  This painting is a 12x16 oil on panel.

Here are a couple interesting quotes from the Alex Danchev biography of Paul Cezanne:

'Asked why he was so fond of ultramarine, he [Cezanne] replied: "Because the sky is blue."'

'"With Cezanne landscape itself comes to an end," proclaimed the artist Robert Motherwell in the 1940's.'

Rue Celony

This 12x16 oil on panel depicts on the left side a view down Rue Celony in Aix-en-Provence.  If one were to continue for another mile and a half or so, the Jas de Bouffan would be on the left.  But I couldn't help being impressed by this magnificent building and its diagonal shadow.