Dear learners,
During the Franco Prussian war some retreating troops came upon some boggy
ground beside a village and some of them had found some boards and
canvases stacked in an out-house (shed); so they took about one hundred
and fifty of these and used them as duck-boards. It turned out that these
paintings were the work of one of the impressionists Pissarro or was it
Sisley- who were almost like mentors for the greatest of them all, Paul
Cezanne. Cezanne said of Pissarro that "consulting" and confiding in him
was like, "-confiding in the Lord himself." I have often wondered at that
small loss to the world. But then I wonder too at the loss of each mother,
who, much like the projecting expressing artists launches her children
into the world while full knowing the sheer lack of power to protect and
at the last, save her child from the savages of the world. Such are my
'winds' this morning, still as it is.
"If I pass too high or too low, everything is ruined. There mustn't one
single stitch which is too loosely woven, not one gap through which
emotion, light, truth might escape. You see, I develop my whole canvas at
once, as a unity. Everything disparate I bring together in one outburst,
one act of faith...All that we see dissipates, moves on. Nature is always
the same, but nothing of her remains, nothing of what appears before us.
Our art must provide some fleeting sense of her permanence, with the
essence, the appearance of her changeability. It must give us and
awareness of her eternal qualities. What lies below her? Nothing, perhaps.
Perhaps everything. Everything, do you see? And so I join her roaming
hands."
In painting of that kind 'the ground' is the 'subject' and the 'subject'
is the 'ground', 'foreground and background' are both real and
illusionary.
An even modest study of the movement called Impressionism would reveal the
most subtle human dynamics in relation to LI and LO. The assemblies and
sub-assemblies proliferate;-) And there are surprises all around as in
this letter from Vincent's erstwhile painting pal, Paul Gaugin writing to
Pissarro.
" I'm passionately interested in reading character from handwriting; if you
have a letter from someone you know well and that I don't, it would amuse me
to read his character and see if I am right.
Your handwriting for example shows that you are:
Simple, open, not very tactful.
A thinker - well-balanced, more poet than logician, not very receptive to new
ideas - keenly intelligent - very enthusiastic.
VERY ambitious. At the same time stubborn and gentle.
Lazy - sometimes awkward and greedy for money. (* Foregive him that- He was
often poor and incalculably generous in his legacy. [Note AC])
Stingy - sometimes selfish and unloving, you don't deviate from your chosen
path.
Extremely wary.
Rather whimsical.
Well shaped letter(s). You have a feeling for art. but not aesthetics. Your
spelling, which is often your own, shows that you are inclined to reject one
detail in order to think up another. All in all, a very complex character.
That is what you writing shows..."
Rouen Oct 1884
John Dewey writes of dogs, " his howl in time of loss and loneliness, the
wagging of his tail at the return of his human friend are expressions of
the implication of a living in a natural medium which included man along
with the animal he has domesticated. Every need, - is a lack that denotes
at least a temporary absence of adequate adjustment with surroundings. But
it is also a demand, a reaching out into the environment to make good the
lack and restore adjustment by building at least a temporary equilibrium.
Life itself consists of phases in which the organism falls out of step
with the march of surrounding things and then recovers unison with it -
either by effort or some happy chance. And, in a growing life, the
recovery is never mere return to a prior state, for it is enriched by the
state of disparity and resistance through which it has successfully
passed. If the gap between organism and environment is too wide, the
creature dies. If its activity is not enhanced by the temporary
alienation, it merely subsists. Life grows when a temporary falling out is
a transition to a more extensive balance of energies of the organism with
those of the conditions under which it lives."
I have a print downstairs by Rodin of a Cambodian dancer. It is just
pencil and wash. A fast impression. There is no doubt at a given range it
is a Balinese dancer, for all its penciledness and watercolourness and
framedness, but at another given range it is also a small bouquet of
spring flowers in a tall stemmed vase. And at a further range still it is
simply still movingly what it is, was and may yet become. Nothing in
Everything Everything in Nothing.
Degas to Mallarme, " It isn't ideas I am short of...I am full of them...I
have too many!"
Mallarme to Degas, " But Degas, you cannot make a poem with ideas...you
make it with words."
Just so;-)
Love,
Andrew Campbell
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