I went back to the Metropolitan Museum of Art last night and had an enjoyable time looking at some European paintings and really taking in the Cezanne paintings, yet another time. I meant to post here last night but when I got home I was too exhausted; I promised to myself that I’d remember what I needed to and post as soon as I could.

My first stop was viewing in a different way the View of the Domaine Saint-Joseph by Paul Cézanne which looked different to me last night.

This was the first Cezanne, I’m told, that was purchased for an American Collection and one of the few landscapes he signed. Perhaps the olive green/brown walls of the newly redone European Paintings wing helped this painting shine more - it’s a gem and I had the sensation of “feeling” the artist’s feelings within me.

Beyond that - I sensed Cezanne was projecting his painting past the physical frame of it - it’s as if the paintings fully resolves behind or in-front of itself.

Having been to that part of France last year - I imagined having stood exactly where he stood (even though I didn’t visit that spot) and got the feeling that painting and life are one, and here’s why.

Everyone’s life is imperfect, yet often, what we’re creating is what we’re working towards, not so much what we actually achieve.

Cezanne’s Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses is my favorite painting in the Metropolitan (a painting Claude Monet once owned), and one that I’ve studied and known for almost 40 years, since I was a young teenager.

No one could have painted this painting except Cezanne, in retreat, solitude, if you will, around Aix-en-Provence. Most of Cezanne’s paintings make great postage stamps - something about the composition - and when I stand in front of this great painting - I feel as if my mind first goes blank, and then seems to get lost in cobalt green/blue of the background, and then the apples on the table.

Not grand or large like several earlier European paintings - the Cezanne are valuable not only as works of art, but for what they contributed to other artists and art movement that came after; at least, that’s one way to look at it.

I had a few more impressions that I could not quite write down - I felt as if the moments I spent looking at what I did - I was taking in a tremendous amount of information beyond what I could take in and write about.

Then I treated myself to a glass of red wine and a light snack of marinated olives and dried meats at the Balcony Bar. I regretted not having my sketch pad with me but decided it’s not really important right now.

On my way out of the museum, I stumbled past the Roman and Greek Wing, which was almost empty, and enjoyed the Roman Wall Murals and some of the Roman sculpture portraits, including imperial portraits.

After comparing the Metropolitan to the Louvre in my mind, I decided, all things being equal, the Metropolitan was a more enjoyable experience because much of the work at the Met is better shown than the much larger, but not well lit, collections at the Louvre.

And than I made my way home - feeling that, while I could not paint much or at all this month - somehow, I was taking in what I needed.

I had a thought as I left the Metropolitan, or while I was there, that while I’m a pretty gifted artist, my contribution, mission in life, is not really that much about art and the work I’m doing to bring together Analytics, Social Media and Art is probably much more important to society than any painting I do, to the Art World - which barely knows I exist.

And I’ve come to terms with that - I don’t require being known or being successful as an artist - nor do I have any compulsive need to paint, at this time of my life - have nothing I need to prove to anyone, but myself.

Yet, all the same, much of my work could hold well against much of what I’ve seen in museums, and some of it is even better.

Still, my purpose in life is not to succeed as an artist.

A couple of months back I applied for a Nyfa.com Art grant, at the very last minute. I have no illusions that I’ll get it, nor do I really need or require it - I’m still going to paint and do what I do with or without it.

However, what I really wanted to say when I applied, but didn’t - that it would be great if, for once, as an artist, I got some recognition that my work is good and that people recognize its worth supporting and nuturing - want to see more of it - that in some small way, society values it.

I feel this painting, self portrait, is one of my best.

Wouldn’t be nice if the world could work that way.

Google Books has a new feature allowing anyone to take a part of a public domain book that Google has scanned and embed it into a blog.

And guess what I picked to embed…. a page from my favorite painter, Paul Cezanne.

By the way, I’m getting ready to send 2 paintings to Christine Boulet, my friend who lives in Aix-en-Provence.   I miss Aix, miss Cezanne and had a good time with Christine.

Here’s the paintings I did last month of Christine, after I got back from France.  Darn, wish I spent more time there.   Maybe next time.

I also had some Moo Cards made up recently, and these two images among those on the cards.

I spent all afternoon and most of the evening painting at Brooklyn Artists Gym; decided to do a large painting based on my study of trees in Paul Cezanne’s back yard, the one I did the first day I arrived in Aix-en-Provence 3 weeks ago today.

Here’s the painting - it’s done in Oil Pastel on Canvas and is something like 3 feet by 4 feet in size.

 

You know the study for this painting was Cezanne’s Back Yard, but the painting drew, somewhat, on the ideas I got back in Paris a couple of days before when I saw an exhibition of Pierre Klossowski at the Centre Pompidou.  Besides liking the drawings on paper (canvas to me) I found out that Pierre Klossowski was the brother of the painter Balthus.  While the sexual symbolism is not my thing - the feeling and quality of Klossowski’s work is my thing and decided, then and there, I would buy an expensive book (in French, no less) based on the exhibition, and find a way to use that insight in my painting when I got back to the New York.   And this painting of Cezanne’s Back Yard was my first attempt and using crayon, or Oil Pastel, on Canvas.

“..Pierre Klossowski, April 2-June 4, 2007 - The writer and philosopher Pierre Klossowski (1905-2001), a friend of Rilke and Georges Bataille, took up art on the prompting of Robert Lebel, André Masson and Alberto Giacometti. Centre Pompidou is to show drawings, prints and sculptures by Klossowski in Spring 2007. Klossowski also worked with a number of film directors, as writer or actor: with Pierre Zucca and Raoul Ruiz in the early 1970s and Pierre Coulibeuf, Michel Nuridsany and Alain Fleischer in the 1980s. A program of films in which Klossowski was involved will also be shown.”

While my inspiration may have started with Klossowski, it was mostly about my time in Cezanne’s last studio in Aix.   And here’s the movie I made just as got done working on this large painting - my hands all “green” with oily pastels, have drunk 4 glasses of Red Wine at an opening that happened at BAG last night - where I freely moved back and forth to the studio area and to the photography opening.

I was also thinking of the Van Gogh in the Clark Exhibition at the Metropolitan I saw the night before - how powerful it is (was).