A Blue Sea

The Mediterranean Sea at Cap Ferrat.  12x16 inches, oil on canvas panel.  I've always liked the words of Cezanne to Pissarro about painting the sea at L'Estaque: "red roofs against a blue sea," signifying the simplicity required for painting in the brilliant light of the south of France. 

A Reactionary

When I was young, I read Clement Greenberg, and if you subscribed to his ideas, painting was over. Robert Motherwell declared eighty years ago that landscape painting ended with Cezanne. So here I am again painting in a retardataire, reactionary, worn out manner.  But then, I think because other people have already visited Paris, that isn't a reason why I shouldn't go too.  A Seine postcard painting. 6x8 inches, oil on multimedia artboard.

At The Jas

When at the Jas de Bouffan in Aix three and half years ago, I set up my easel in the field at the left to the space in front of the mansion.  The mansion, which you can't see, is in the center-right of the painting behind the plane trees which border one side of the space leading to the house.  Anyway, the sun streaks and tree shadows intrigued me then, but I can still feel today the excitement of painting at what for me is a sacred site.  9x12 inches, oil on board.

Jas De Bouffan

This front corner view of the Jas de Bouffan in Aix I painted from the edge of a side clearing.  The plane tree is the last one in a row leading up to the mansion.  Cezanne lived and painted there for forty years.  9x12 inches, oil on board.

The Spirit of Cezanne

While looking at paintings and postings, I found that I never posted some paintings done in Aix over three years ago.  At the time, the grounds in front of the Jas de Bouffan were open, though the building itself was not.  I walked there and painted.  The place was usually empty except for the spirit of Paul Cezanne.  9x12 inches, oil on linen.

 

A Paradox

Distant views intrigue me because one can see a lot, and at the same time see very little.  This paradox gets amplified in painted distant views.  One sees a lot but it's all paint.  I especially like the distant views from Chateau Hill in Nice.  I'm reminded of Cezanne's paintings of l'Estaque.  9x12 oil on panel.

Cezanne at Mauserts Pond

Fall is a great season in which to paint outdoors.  I visited Mauserts Pond again this morning.  The sky was cloudless and blue.  The pond reminded me of Cezanne's paintings of l'Estaque.  9x12 oil on linen.

A Salute to Cezanne

There's a Cezanne painting that he did while working with Pissarro in the early 1880's where he placed a dark window at the center of the painting (see Le moulin sur la Couleuvre a Pontoise).  To start this hay bale painting the first thing I did was to place the dark door space near the center, and go on from there.  A hidden salute to Cezanne.  9x12 oil on panel.

A Typical Brooklyn View

From a short essay by Astrid Reuter in the Cezanne "Metamorphoses" catalog on his use of watercolor:  "The perception of the object rather than the object itself... became the real subject of the representation."  Actually it's really the growing awareness that perception is the dominating factor.  

The painting represents a typical Brooklyn view (Classon Avenue near St. Marks Avenue).  6x8 oil on panel.

Dean Street And Copying Rubens

Recently I've been reading a catalog on a Cezanne exhibition in Karlsruhe, Germany called "Metamorphoses," which explores how Cezanne overlapped the different genres of still life, landscape and figure painting.  One essay by Alexander Eiling points out that Cezanne, late in his life, advised the painter Charles Camoin "to make copies of Veronese or Rubens in the Louvre as if he were making them from nature."  This idea of copying Old Masters as if copying from nature goes back at least to an early 18th century book on painting, and was not invented by Cezanne.  Eiling goes on to write: "Cezanne's intense exploration of the practice of copying thus aimed not so much at reproduction as at transformation.  The copied artworks became superordinate providers of structure within which he could articulate his perceptions of nature.  The copy thus served Cezanne as a starting point..."  I'll just leave that thought there for you to ponder.

This small painting depicts a view of the shuttle bridge over Dean Street near Franklin Avenue in Brooklyn.  The cars, bridge, buildings etc. all become abstract shapes, especially when the painting is seen from a distance so that one cannot make out what it is right away.  6x8 oil on panel.

Geometry of Brooklyn

Spending a few days in Brooklyn has motivated me to paint a Brooklyn painting.  This painting shows the Shuttle overpass at Pacific Street near Franklin Avenue.  A label for a Cezanne landscape that I saw this past weekend at the Met says that Cezanne wanted to paint the hidden geometry of nature.  I like to paint the overt geometry of Brooklyn.  12x16 oil on panel.

Same Spot in Aix

The top painting I did while in Aix in September.  It represents the Jas de Bouffan, the mansion acquired by Paul Cezanne's father in 1859.  It's a 9x12 oil on multimedia board.

The other painting was done by Cezanne in 1887-90.  What is interesting about the Cezanne painting (besides being a great painting) is that it is the only painting considered to be of the front or north side of the Jas de Bouffan.  All of the other fifty or so oils and watercolors of the Jas de Bouffan Cezanne did at the back of the building.  I'm not convinced that the Cezanne painting represents the front of the building.  The balcony and main ground floor entrance are not visible though Cezanne always took liberties.  But I like the idea that I could have been standing in the same spot as Cezanne when I did my painting.

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.'

Mountains in June

Whenever I visit Mount Greylock as seen from the top of Sheep Hill, I inevitably think of Cezanne's late Mont Saint-Victoire paintings, and I realize that our temperaments differ.  But I can understand his "excitement" when gazing upon the mountain and the sky.  I have a more organic view, certainly less adventuresome.   What I particularly like about the distinctive Sheephill view are the various diagonal planes:  deeply slanting hills, receding mountains, whose heights lead to the development of parallel cloud structures.  This is a 12x16 oil on panel that I did on site yesterday morning.

From the Far End

A painting from the far end of the pond, a 9x12 oil on panel.  This was done on site several days ago.

From my reading: Cezanne built a studio building in 1902 in Aix.  After the studio was shut following his father's death in 1906,  Cezanne's son Paul never returned to Aix .  He indicated that it was because the people of Aix had so little respect for his father.   Of course, that has changed today.

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.

From Yesterday and Beyond

From yesterday before the snow started falling: a 9x12 charcoal with touches of pastel drawing.

I've been reading a lot lately on Paul Cezanne and it hit me the other day that no one wonders why Sisley painted the way he did, or Monet painted the way he did, or Pissarro, and so on, but when it comes to Cezanne, the writers all try to figure out why he painted the way he did.  Richard Shiff wrote a book about it.  Rilke and Merleau-Ponty have interesting things to say about it.  Fortunately, I don't think it will ever be settled.

Mont Sainte-Victoire in Massachusetts

This afternoon, which might be the last nice day for a while (and I might not be talking just about the weather), I found myself at the top of Sheep Hill again.  Why not do the mountain that is constantly staring me in the face?  It'll require lots of work to capture the sense of distance and steepness.  I've also noticed that this view changes frequently, in terms of sky, light, landscape.  Many paintings are present here.  Then I realized that I have my own Mont Sainte-Victoire. This painting is a 12x16 oil on panel.  That's Mount Greylock and the Hopper in the distance.

Sheep Hill, Joy and Salvation

A 9x12 oil on panel painted yesterday at a favorite spot at the top of Sheep Hill in Williamstown, MA.

Jack Lindsay quotes a letter from Cezanne to Bernard, in which the painter ends with the words: "Paint. There lies salvation."

Earlier in his biography, Lindsay, when writing about Pissarro's influence on Cezanne, says, "... there was an aspect of impressionism, which we may say developed decisively in 1869 in the work of Monet and Renoir at La Grenouilliere, that struck home with [Cezanne]--it's effect of a world of actual and potential joy.  G. Geffroy wrote that impressionism was born from an 'exaltation' of the senses.  The conviction of a quite new form of free and yet precise comprehension of nature, of a release into light and infinitely rich and subtle colour, had a liberating quality: the final ratification of that impulse to deny and defy the world of drab and restrictive conventions, and to get away untramelled into the free tracks of nature..."

Sheep Hill and Horrors

A 9x12 pastel of a late afternoon view at the top of Sheep Hill.

A couple anecdotes from the Jack Lindsay book on Cezanne:

He left two unfinished paintings behind in the hotel at Neuchatel, Switzerland.  Not to worry.  Lindsay reports that another painter overpainted the canvases.

His sister Marie "was doubtless responsible for the fact that one day, while he was out, the housekeeper took on herself to burn his sketches of Baigneuses.  A woman who sold wine and liqueurs on the Pace des Trois Ormeaux asked her, 'How is Monsieur?' 'Not very well'. 'Is Monsieur painting?' 'O, such horrors, I've come down from burning a whole heap of naked women.  I can't leave them for the family's sake.  What would people say?' 'But some of them may be good'.  'They're horrors'."  Who knows how accurate this story is.  Lindsay complains that the people who befriended Cezanne near the end of his life, such as Gasquet and Bernard, put their words into his mouth.  I am reminded of other situations where disciples wrote what the Master supposedly said.