My Kid Could Paint That

by Rabindranath Tagore

Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.

The grass seeks her crowed in the earth.

The tree seeks his solitude of the sky.

Man barricades against himself.

Your voice, my friend, wanders in my heart, like the muffled sound of the sea among these listening pines.

What is this unseen flame of darkness whose sparks are the stars?

A witness to the Spanish Civil War and its atrocity, Robert Motherwell later devoted a series of abstract paintings to the experience, revolving the theme of black and white, and the inexorable circle of life and death. Was he disappointed in humanity, faithless? As the black so overwhelmingly dominates the canvas. Or was there still hope? As light still shines through the corner. Were children the solution, whose innocence forces history to turn to a new page? Perhaps the answer is just behind the unseen flame of darkness. 

Editor's Note: Students were asked to match a poem to a picture. They could do so with or without comment; they could be serious or playful. We will leave it to our dear readers to make the connection.

Editor's Note: Students were asked to match a poem to a picture. They could do so with or without comment; they could be serious or playful. We will leave it to our dear readers to make the connection. 

Editor's Note: Students were asked to match a poem to a picture. They could do so with or without comment; they could be serious or playful. We will leave it to our dear readers to make the connection. 

Spring is like a perhaps hand

by e. e. cummings

Spring is like a perhaps hand

(which comes carefully

out of Nowhere)arranging

a window,into which people look(while

people stare

arranging and changing placing

carefully there a strange

thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps

Hand in a window

(carefully to

and fro moving New and

Old things,while

people stare carefully

moving a perhaps

fraction of flower here placing

an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

Editor's Note: Students were asked to match a poem to a picture. They could do so with or without comment; they could be serious or playful, profound or goofy. We will leave it to our dear readers to make their own connections.

By Allen Ginsburg

Editor's Note: Students were asked to match a poem to a picture. They could do so with or without comment; they could be serious or playful, profound or goofy. We will leave it to our dear readers to make their own connections.

So, let’s take a look at Pauline as Victorious Venus. She lies sumptuously upon the softest bed of marble you’ll even witness. And in her hand she holds the apple prize. 

Editor's note: This week's series was adapted from an earlier lecture. 

Over the years I have learned more than a few varying accounts of the commissioning and purpose of the painting, most of them claiming the painting was explicitly for a gentlemen’s pleasure, perhaps of his mistress, or his favorite courtesan - or both.

Editor's Note: This week's posts are an adaptation of a lecture given in January. Enjoy.

All about the etching lies a sentiment of decay.  The neighborhood stands looking empty and desolate, its inhabitants forced to abandon it.  Tall rocks stand like forgotten megaliths by the roadside, helpless in the face of modernity. The living road swarms forth to engulf the edges of the painting with little regard for its victim culture. Paris's citizens and unique form of civilization pale in comparison to the need to renovate and usher in the new.

Caillebotte’s engineering training may have contributed to his precise treatment of perspective and architecture. In addition, he worked together with his brother, Martial Caillebotte, who was a photographer. Although no concrete evidence has been found, art historians speculate that some of Caillebotte’s tracing paper sketches, done on paper the same size as a photograph, may be studies traced from his brother’s photographs. The strangely detached paintings his methods produced, which imitated photographic depth of field and looked from unusual angles, were different from the main body of Impressionist work, but nevertheless valuable.

The Boulevard Montmartre, Morning, Grey Weather, 1897

In his later years, Pissarro suffered from a reoccurring eye infection that confined the previously en plein air painter indoors. Thus, Pissarro worked from the inside looking out -- or down, rather -- from hotel rooms in Paris, as well as London. This change in venue also made Pissarro change his subject matter from that of Millet-esque peasants and nature to city streets. A vast and difficult change for any painter, but that's what I appreciate about Pissarro. He has the innate ability to switch painting styles and subjects at the drop of a hat. I can't say that Pissarro has any set style, one that would uniquely define him as a painter. He switched from watercolors to Impressionist, to pointillism, to Impressionist again. Thus, the day begins with The Boulevard Montmartre, Morning, Grey Weather. I wish I could present this in the intended size (Wikipedia has a quality, zoom-in-able version of this painting. I would recommend looking it up). Although collectively grey, it's extremely colorful and lively. Overcast weather is usually portrayed as melancholy and dull, but the small flecks of color in the people and buildings bring vitality to the canvas. A hint of red, a blip of yellow; Pissarro manages to somehow breathe life into this painting with the small things.

The Boulevard Montmartre: Afternoon, in the Rain, 1897

The overcast skies have now given way to rain. The Parisians on the boulevard, made up of multicolored smudges and blobs, have their umbrellas out. This painting is slower than its predecessor. There's also a sort of buoyancy to this painting. The Boulevard Montmartre, Morning, Grey Weather is dense and heavy. The air seems thick and so does the paint. In The Boulevard Montmartre: Afternoon, in the Rain, it feels like a deep sigh, a weight has been lifted. The brushstrokes are smoother, blending together like water and dirt to make mud.

Part of me loves that fact that Pissarro painted the same boulevard fifteen times (that's not an exaggeration, it's an approximation), but it also drives me up the wall. The only difference to each painting is the the position of the people, the weather, and the trees. The man was obsessed. This always reminds me of Monet and his paintings of the Rouen Cathedral. He painted this same subject eight times (don't quote me on that), becoming obsessed with how the different times of day would light the cathedral walls. But he was never satisfied with his compositions, so much so that the cathedral haunted his dreams, giving him so many nightmares that he had to leave Paris. Did Pissarro ever dream of the Boulevard Montmartre? I'll come back to that thought.

Boulevard Montmartre, Sunset, 1897

In The Boulevard Montmartre at Night, I believe he finds that. My favorite of the Boulevard series, The Boulevard Montmartre at Night is so different from the other three paintings that it hardly looks like the same artist. Returning to this idea, I believe Pissarro had to have dreamed about his boulevard. Looking at the painting, it's too dreamlike from him to not have. Except, unlike Monet, it wasn't a nightmare. The sky is dark and starless. Pissarro, instead, brings that celestial quality to the ground. The streetlights, previously lost in the commotion of the day, have their own star-like quality. It's no longer about the people or carriages that crowded the street, it's about the Boulevard Montmartre itself. He shows his love for the Boulevard Montmartre through these paintings, like a love affair (objectively, of course). And I have to admit, I'm obsessed.