Cézanne and Debussy

The Post-Impressionist works of "The Father of Modern Art", Paul Cezanne (1839--1906) who inspired Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, et al, are shown here with the music of master of Impressionism in an unique sense of emotion captured in tone, Claude Debussy (1862-1918).

Surrealism and Rene Magritte (with Nina Simone's "Sinnerman")

“If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is
also a translation of the dream.”







Rene Magritte (1897-1967) is my favorite of the artists who are placed in the category of Surrealists.

I admire how much he uses absurdity and humor in so many of these paintings presented here. Also the way he plays with space and imagery (like the huge rocks that appear in many of his most famous works) and the bizarre men and women who inhabit his netherworld of fantasy--a world that gives us arresting insight into our own way of seeing the world around us. A painting of a pipe that tells us, in cursive writing below, "This is not a pipe." Or a view out a living room window that is blocked by a painting of the identical landscape you'd expect to see outside.

Nature can be duplicated and its still great art (potentially) , but Magritte wants to remind us of our perceptions and the power of understanding (and not understanding) how our brains process the life around us.

This separates his work, and the work of so many other great 20th Century painters, from the old task of the painter's art to duplicate nature and its creatures and humans in the exact detail of visual simplicity.


There is a bit of an impishness to his work, but also a touch of the macabre.

The music here is Nina Simone's classic "Sinnerman".

Edward Hopper, "If you could say it, there would be no reason to paint it."

"Great art  is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist,  and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. 
Edward Hopper , American Painter (1882--1967)  

Edward Hopper was the quintessential realist painter of twentieth-century America. His images have become  part of the very grain and texture of American experience,  and even today, thirty years after his death, it is all but impossible to see America without some refraction through them.--Robert Hughes

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In January of 1982,  I was lucky enough to get to see a major exhibition of the paintings of Edward Hopper at the Veterans Hall in San Francisco. It was part of a national tour celebrating the centenary of the man who had become a great "realist" painter.  But, like most shorthand media "tags", realism doesn't begin to describe a great painter's works.   

  Although I had been exposed to European Art and the American modernists like Roy Licthenstein and Andy Warhol as part of a general education, this was the first time I saw a major American painter  that  I was drawn yo.   I was taken by how "American" Hopper was, and by this I do not mean Yankee Doodle Dandy patriotic.  I had no idea what Hopper's politics were, how many mistresses he had or didn't have, or who else liked him and who didn't. I didn't care.  

Hopper's  streets and avenues, his hotels and lunch counters, those Midwestern and coastal landscapes drenched in bright sunlight or dark urbanity--all this was like stills from a fantastic documentary that seemed more real than any movie could recreate from the all dream factories of Hollywood.  This was an America people and their world caught out when no one thought anyone was looking.   

Here was a visionary painter who captured the introspective emotions, reflective ennui and quiet tensions in the lives of  of ordinary people.  They were figures from the past, walking and working or just sitting in a bygone America of the "Roaring Twenties/The Great Depression and the times of post-War prosperity. As a young man Hopper had first travelled to Paris before the war to perfect his craft. BUt by the Twenties he was back in America and the bulk of his greatest works were done in his home country.  

I've gone back to Hopper since then in art books, prints and documentaries. He is a true maverick, like Henri Rousseau and Cezanne were in France.  And real mavericks in art are rare indeed.  

The short film below gives an impression of his artwork.

Gabriel FAURE': Pavane, Op. 50 - Paintings By 'CLAUDE MONET'

One of the most haunting yet beautiful compositions I've ever heard. Oddly enough I first heard this music quite by accident. It was played over a video of nature scenes used by a television station as their sign-off-the-air program! I had to call the station the day after to find out both the name of the work and the composer. It seemed to express an inner longing about solitude and mortality that I can not then or now quite put into words.

I suspect I am not alone in this.
I soon found out from a musically attuned friend that it was a very popular piece with symphonies.

Faure (1845-1924) was a pupil of Camille Saint-Saens, and a teacher to Ravel, among many others.
According to Naxos. Com:
"Gabriel Faure took the rhythm for this piece from the slow, stately Spanish Court Dance known as a Pavane. It was originally composed for a small orchestra and an optional chorus, who sung about the romantic helplessness of men! Pavane was first performed in 1888, and three years later it was performed with dancers."

The art of Claude Monet needs no introduction.