I did this one a little bit ago. I figured you guys might like to see it.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Cezanne
Hi all!
Well, things are starting to wind down here in Aix-en-Provence. We're taking pictures of all our work, scrambling to make it look like we've been sketching way more than we have, and everyone's starting to freak out because we're running out of time to create our masterpiece. The very first day of orientation here, we sat down with the director of the Marchutz School, Alan. The very first thing he said was, "Kids, I want you to do something. I want you to go home and write on a piece of paper 'They are not trying to get me to paint like Paul Cezanne,' and I want you to hang it on the ceiling above your bed, so it's the first thing you see when you wake up each morning." That statement was both true and false. They are not trying to get us to paint in the style of Cezanne. Really, they aren't trying to get us to paint in the style of anyone but our natural selves, which is one of the many things that makes this school so great. But if you interpret painting "like Paul Cezanne" to mean painting in a way in which the art is a true reflection of the artist's vision, in which every stroke represents a necessary relationship with every other stroke, to create a voluminous whole that is greater than the simple sum of its parts, then yes, they are trying to get us to paint like Paul Cezanne. Many artists and art historians say that Cezanne was the father of modern art. What this means is that to do something great in painting right now, one should really go through Cezanne. It's the same with Giotto and Michelangelo. Alan called them "bookends in history." Everyone way back the day, in Italy, was doing their art, and then along came Giotto who took everyone's different approaches, their different theories, their different everything, and summed it all up in a way that was more true than anyone had been able to accomplish. Michelangelo did the same thing with the human subject. Everyone who was interested in the way the human figure operated in space was doing their thing, when along comes this guy, and does it so well that it is impossible to ignore him. Well that was Cezanne as well. It is seen in his color, his depth (yes, there is great depth in Cezanne), his solidity and his atmosphere.
This past Friday, we went on a trip all around Aix, Cezanne's stomping grounds, where he was born and raised, and where he spent almost all of his days as a master. We started out in the studio he had built at the end of his life, where he worked on his late still lives and portraits. While they do have some replacement stuff, much of what they have in their actually belonged to Cezanne, and can be seen in various still lives. We then went out into the cold Mistral winds for the rest of the day, to look at some real motifs.
The first place we went was the Chateau Noire. The Chateau Noire is a large estate and mansion built by the inventor of a popular furniture varnish way back when. When he went bankrupt, he sold the property to a reclusive family, who has guarded it with everything they've got now for generations. When Cezanne got big, he tried to buy the place, but the family would not sell it. Instead, apparently recognizing his talent, they rented him a space for his studio, and allowed him to paint as much as he wanted around the property.
Now is the time for the story of Leo Marchutz, the founder of our school. Leo was a German art student in the early 1900s. He was friends with an art dealer in Nuremberg, who had the opportunity to buy a Cezanne painting of Mont Sainte Victoire. Leo, a fan of Cezanne, encouraged this dealer to buy. She was reluctant because of the areas of canvas that were left white, and her feeling that the painting was not finished. Leo did his best to explain that these white areas were a necessary element of the painting, and that it was a masterpiece. He was finally able to convince her to buy the work, and it hung in her gallery for about a year. During that year, Leo would come in every day and look, draw, copy, and study the painting. When it finally sold (for a huge sum of money), the dealer thanked Leo for finding the painting by paying for a trip to Aix, so that he could see the real motif. So off he went. Upon his arrival, the German city boy went for a walk around town. Although Cezanne had been dead for a few years at this point, his coach driver was still alive, and Leo happened to bump into him on the Mirabeau, the main street in town. He asked the coachman where he could see a place where Cezanne worked, and the coachman kindly took him out the Route de Tholonet (the Marchutz School is on that street) to the Chateau Noire. Well Leo Marchutz couldn't believe what he saw when he got to the top of the hill and rounded the corner. He had been driven right into a Cezanne motif, in fact the very one that he had studied for so long, done from the terraced hilltop of the Chateau Noire. Leo immediately took up a room, just like Cezanne, at the Chateau Noire, and began to study the motifs. So great was his passion for Cezanne that Leo returned the next summer, and eventually permanently moved to Aix, living at the Chateau Noire. Leo must have become quite close with the family who lives there, who recognized an important link between the young German and the late Paul Cezanne, because he developed an important relationship with them. When the War started, Marchutz even hid out on the property so as to avoid having to help the Nazis, and, despite their best efforts, he was not found. An important event happened when John Rewald (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rewald) came to Aix to study and photograph gothic architecture for his thesis. Here he met Leo, who asked to borrow his camera to take some pictures of Cezanne motifs. So the two of them went out together, lopping branches off trees, recreating and documenting Cezanne motifs. These were the first photographs of Cezanne motifs ever taken. Rewald eventually abandoned his gothic architecture project for a study of Cezanne, and later went on to be one of the most important art historians in the post impressionist era. He credits his study of Cezanne to Leo's enthusiasm. Anyway, Leo eventually moved from the Chateau Noire, about a 4 minute walk back towards town, to the place where the Marchutz school now stands. But the Marchutz-Chateau Noire connection still exists. Both professors, Alan and John, have their studios at the Chateau Noire, and Marchutz affiliates are the only people allowed to see the motifs that exist on the property. Alan and John have been allowed to bring one group of Cezanne scholars onto the property, but beyond that, only students have ever been allowed by the family onto the property. In fact, when the recent huge Cezanne retrospective that started in DC, and traveled to Paris, ended in Aix, Alan asked the family if he might bring the curator of the Smithsonian's National Gallery to come see the place, and they refused.
So there we stood, looking at things that only a hand full of people ever have the opportunity to see. People have speculated that Cezanne moved his easel during paintings, so as to gain multiple perspectives. It has also been said that up until Cezanne, art was about "this is what I see," whereas Cezanne asked the question "Is this what I see?" Well I'll be happy to explain to all of you in person why neither of these claims are true, and that's what we talked about. We did some serious looking at the motif and at the painting, and we did some reading of Cezanne's letters, and it was what Cezanne saw.
After an indoor picnic lunch in Alan's studio, we went across town to another motif to look at the evolution of Cezanne, and to think about what he meant when he said "I want to redo Poussin after nature." We looked at 3 paintings all done from this one spot, to see how he evolved over the years. Finally we went back across to the north east side of town, just in time to see the sun set on the mountain, and look at one of the last Mont Sainte Victoires he painted. As the Mistral winds whipped around us on top of the hill, we witnessed one of the most fortunate geographical situations in the world, the fact that the cliff side of Mont Sainte Victoire faces west. As the sun sets over the Cote D'Azur, it passes through the clear Provence sky, turning bright orange and pink, and it shines off the mountain, lighting it and the clouds up in fiery colors agains the blue, green, purple grey sky. It's amazing.
So no, they are not trying to get me to paint like Paul Cezanne. This is because, according to Cezanne, I can't, because I'm me, and I grab onto different things. But yes, they are trying to get me to paint like Paul Cezanne, because they are trying to get me to look and to really see, to be concrete and faithful to nature, without being a slave to nature, and to unify my surface in a way that creates something living.
The Marchutz school has given me something. They sometimes call it "sight and insight." I'm not sure what to call it, but it's very important, and I think it's going to drive my work from here on out. My time here has radically changed the way I see and think about the visual world. I've just begun my inevitable tasks of figuring out what to do with that, and disciplining myself so that I can get to a point where I can develop it further, and maybe even show people what I am just starting to see. Every time I say that, I hear myself sounding like a nut job, but I guess that's part of what studying art at the Marchutz school is about. This is a crazy place. I'm so happy I've come here. I can't wait to keep working so that I'll have more and better paintings to give all of you.
Well, things are starting to wind down here in Aix-en-Provence. We're taking pictures of all our work, scrambling to make it look like we've been sketching way more than we have, and everyone's starting to freak out because we're running out of time to create our masterpiece. The very first day of orientation here, we sat down with the director of the Marchutz School, Alan. The very first thing he said was, "Kids, I want you to do something. I want you to go home and write on a piece of paper 'They are not trying to get me to paint like Paul Cezanne,' and I want you to hang it on the ceiling above your bed, so it's the first thing you see when you wake up each morning." That statement was both true and false. They are not trying to get us to paint in the style of Cezanne. Really, they aren't trying to get us to paint in the style of anyone but our natural selves, which is one of the many things that makes this school so great. But if you interpret painting "like Paul Cezanne" to mean painting in a way in which the art is a true reflection of the artist's vision, in which every stroke represents a necessary relationship with every other stroke, to create a voluminous whole that is greater than the simple sum of its parts, then yes, they are trying to get us to paint like Paul Cezanne. Many artists and art historians say that Cezanne was the father of modern art. What this means is that to do something great in painting right now, one should really go through Cezanne. It's the same with Giotto and Michelangelo. Alan called them "bookends in history." Everyone way back the day, in Italy, was doing their art, and then along came Giotto who took everyone's different approaches, their different theories, their different everything, and summed it all up in a way that was more true than anyone had been able to accomplish. Michelangelo did the same thing with the human subject. Everyone who was interested in the way the human figure operated in space was doing their thing, when along comes this guy, and does it so well that it is impossible to ignore him. Well that was Cezanne as well. It is seen in his color, his depth (yes, there is great depth in Cezanne), his solidity and his atmosphere.
This past Friday, we went on a trip all around Aix, Cezanne's stomping grounds, where he was born and raised, and where he spent almost all of his days as a master. We started out in the studio he had built at the end of his life, where he worked on his late still lives and portraits. While they do have some replacement stuff, much of what they have in their actually belonged to Cezanne, and can be seen in various still lives. We then went out into the cold Mistral winds for the rest of the day, to look at some real motifs.
The first place we went was the Chateau Noire. The Chateau Noire is a large estate and mansion built by the inventor of a popular furniture varnish way back when. When he went bankrupt, he sold the property to a reclusive family, who has guarded it with everything they've got now for generations. When Cezanne got big, he tried to buy the place, but the family would not sell it. Instead, apparently recognizing his talent, they rented him a space for his studio, and allowed him to paint as much as he wanted around the property.
Now is the time for the story of Leo Marchutz, the founder of our school. Leo was a German art student in the early 1900s. He was friends with an art dealer in Nuremberg, who had the opportunity to buy a Cezanne painting of Mont Sainte Victoire. Leo, a fan of Cezanne, encouraged this dealer to buy. She was reluctant because of the areas of canvas that were left white, and her feeling that the painting was not finished. Leo did his best to explain that these white areas were a necessary element of the painting, and that it was a masterpiece. He was finally able to convince her to buy the work, and it hung in her gallery for about a year. During that year, Leo would come in every day and look, draw, copy, and study the painting. When it finally sold (for a huge sum of money), the dealer thanked Leo for finding the painting by paying for a trip to Aix, so that he could see the real motif. So off he went. Upon his arrival, the German city boy went for a walk around town. Although Cezanne had been dead for a few years at this point, his coach driver was still alive, and Leo happened to bump into him on the Mirabeau, the main street in town. He asked the coachman where he could see a place where Cezanne worked, and the coachman kindly took him out the Route de Tholonet (the Marchutz School is on that street) to the Chateau Noire. Well Leo Marchutz couldn't believe what he saw when he got to the top of the hill and rounded the corner. He had been driven right into a Cezanne motif, in fact the very one that he had studied for so long, done from the terraced hilltop of the Chateau Noire. Leo immediately took up a room, just like Cezanne, at the Chateau Noire, and began to study the motifs. So great was his passion for Cezanne that Leo returned the next summer, and eventually permanently moved to Aix, living at the Chateau Noire. Leo must have become quite close with the family who lives there, who recognized an important link between the young German and the late Paul Cezanne, because he developed an important relationship with them. When the War started, Marchutz even hid out on the property so as to avoid having to help the Nazis, and, despite their best efforts, he was not found. An important event happened when John Rewald (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rewald) came to Aix to study and photograph gothic architecture for his thesis. Here he met Leo, who asked to borrow his camera to take some pictures of Cezanne motifs. So the two of them went out together, lopping branches off trees, recreating and documenting Cezanne motifs. These were the first photographs of Cezanne motifs ever taken. Rewald eventually abandoned his gothic architecture project for a study of Cezanne, and later went on to be one of the most important art historians in the post impressionist era. He credits his study of Cezanne to Leo's enthusiasm. Anyway, Leo eventually moved from the Chateau Noire, about a 4 minute walk back towards town, to the place where the Marchutz school now stands. But the Marchutz-Chateau Noire connection still exists. Both professors, Alan and John, have their studios at the Chateau Noire, and Marchutz affiliates are the only people allowed to see the motifs that exist on the property. Alan and John have been allowed to bring one group of Cezanne scholars onto the property, but beyond that, only students have ever been allowed by the family onto the property. In fact, when the recent huge Cezanne retrospective that started in DC, and traveled to Paris, ended in Aix, Alan asked the family if he might bring the curator of the Smithsonian's National Gallery to come see the place, and they refused.
So there we stood, looking at things that only a hand full of people ever have the opportunity to see. People have speculated that Cezanne moved his easel during paintings, so as to gain multiple perspectives. It has also been said that up until Cezanne, art was about "this is what I see," whereas Cezanne asked the question "Is this what I see?" Well I'll be happy to explain to all of you in person why neither of these claims are true, and that's what we talked about. We did some serious looking at the motif and at the painting, and we did some reading of Cezanne's letters, and it was what Cezanne saw.
After an indoor picnic lunch in Alan's studio, we went across town to another motif to look at the evolution of Cezanne, and to think about what he meant when he said "I want to redo Poussin after nature." We looked at 3 paintings all done from this one spot, to see how he evolved over the years. Finally we went back across to the north east side of town, just in time to see the sun set on the mountain, and look at one of the last Mont Sainte Victoires he painted. As the Mistral winds whipped around us on top of the hill, we witnessed one of the most fortunate geographical situations in the world, the fact that the cliff side of Mont Sainte Victoire faces west. As the sun sets over the Cote D'Azur, it passes through the clear Provence sky, turning bright orange and pink, and it shines off the mountain, lighting it and the clouds up in fiery colors agains the blue, green, purple grey sky. It's amazing.
So no, they are not trying to get me to paint like Paul Cezanne. This is because, according to Cezanne, I can't, because I'm me, and I grab onto different things. But yes, they are trying to get me to paint like Paul Cezanne, because they are trying to get me to look and to really see, to be concrete and faithful to nature, without being a slave to nature, and to unify my surface in a way that creates something living.
The Marchutz school has given me something. They sometimes call it "sight and insight." I'm not sure what to call it, but it's very important, and I think it's going to drive my work from here on out. My time here has radically changed the way I see and think about the visual world. I've just begun my inevitable tasks of figuring out what to do with that, and disciplining myself so that I can get to a point where I can develop it further, and maybe even show people what I am just starting to see. Every time I say that, I hear myself sounding like a nut job, but I guess that's part of what studying art at the Marchutz school is about. This is a crazy place. I'm so happy I've come here. I can't wait to keep working so that I'll have more and better paintings to give all of you.
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