A couple of days ago my husband and I took a trip up to the Getty Museum. It was a blustery, rather chilly day, for L.A. but there were still pretty sizable crowds lining up to get on the tram that climbs to the top of the hill, where the many buildings of the museum reside. We arrived around 12:15 and had a reservation at the very popular restaurant there for a post-Christmas lunch at 1:30, so we didn’t have time to see too much. Our first stop was at the permanent collection of the European masters with always my favorites of the late 19th century paintings of Monet, Van Gogh, Pizarro, Degas, Renoir, Cezanne and others. There is always a crowd in this particular room of the exhibition, but it was manageable and we made our way around the room, stopping in front of our favorites to linger and drink them in. My husband favors Claude Monet’s, Wheatstacks, Snow Effect Morning and I am entranced by the watercolor of Paul Cezanne, Still Life with Blue Pot.

It reminded me that I had written a short essay about the still life watercolors of Cezanne and in particular, Still Life with Blue Pot when I was in my third semester of school at Vermont College. It was my art study semester and I fell in love over and over again with the paintings of the impressionists and expressionists of the late 19th century and early 20th century. To me this art is the most alive, most present and most emotionally compelling of anything I’ve seen. Following a few photos from our day at the Getty is a reprint of my mini-essay and a poem, of course.

Still Life with Blue Pot by Paul Cezanne is deeply explored in this oversized book written in conjunction with an exhibit at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Cezanne in the Studio: Still Life in Watercolors. There are numerous partial and full-page photos of Cezanne’s paintings, with particular attention given to details of the painting Still Life with Blue Pot. These close-up photos of the painting are particularly entrancing as they reveal the movement of the brushstroke on the canvas, the layering of the colors of the paint and the penciled lines of the original drawing.

The French poet Charles Baudelaire is quoted as saying that “the modern artist acts as a kaleidoscope; color is relational and plural in its effects, while working on the eye and imagination of the viewer like a prism or faceted jewel.” This is the experience of peering deeply into these Cezanne’s watercolors. They are beautiful to behold as a completed composition or a simple study, as in Decanter and Bowl on page 80, which is charming in its depiction of these two simple objects, yet one can also feel the energy of a man and a woman; partners who are not only utilitarian, but have a wistful and demurely sensual aspect to them. Cezanne accomplishes this effect with his ability to create a carefully crafted still life scene that, at the same time, appears unassuming and spiritually beguiling.

Cezanne sought to “realize his sensations” and was not given to follow any particular school of painting, rather chose to incorporate them in relationship to his own artistic sensibility. He follows no set procedure to constructing his art and often blurs the “distinction between sketch and finished picture, and even privileging the former over the latter.” This shows up in the enlarged details of Still Life with Blue Pot where graphite lines are seen swirling amidst the brilliant colors and white expanses, adding a wonderful sense of imagining the hand of the artist on the canvas, not in perfect determination, but wandering, playing, letting the hand go where it will.

There is something about the irregularity of these watercolors, how they pool, drip, are not controllable within any boundaries, that is so liberating to observe. The way the colors run together and the objects themselves have murky boundaries, often flowing over into one another. It speaks of life and how individuals slip into and out of our lives, daubing their particular hue onto our psyche. Cezanne had the ability, through his mastery of color and brushstroke and his intention to “realize his sensations,” to depict a simple grouping of fruit and pottery that transcended the commonplace, transforming them into a glorious and ephemeral experience for the viewer.

Cezanne in the Studio: Still Life in Watercolors
Carol Armstrong
Getty Publications
 

Van Gogh’s Bed

is orange,
like Cinderella’s coach, like
the sun when he looked it
straight in the eye.

is narrow, he sleeps alone, tossing
between two pillows, while it carried him
bumpily to the ball.
is clumsy,
but friendly. A peasant
built the frame; and old wife beat
the mattress till it rose like meringue.

is empty,
morning light pours in
like wine, melody, fragrance,
the memory of happiness.

Jane Flanders (1985)
from Ekphrastic Poetry website