Georges Rouault, Sculptor of Color

With no small joy I learned today from a write up by Michael Kimmelman in Art Review of an exhibit of Rouault works at the Mitchell-Innes & Nash Gallery (“Georges Rouault: Judges, Clowns and Whores”). For too long Rouault's ouvre has been all but ignored, or turned into a footnote in the careers of Matisse, Picasso, and other, more easily categorized, less archaically "religious" artists.

As for Kimmelman's article, I found it good, though of course it misses the point by (as ever) placing the emphasis on Rouault's subject matter and his own proclaimed piety for the poor and martyred and misunderstood. His genius—and his contribution to art history—lies not with his subjects or themes but with his technique, a rapturously sensual grasp of the most humble materials--paint and knife. Square inch by square inch, he could give Rothko and any of the abstract expressionists a run for their money. But unless they have their faces rubbed in them, critics like Kimmelman tend to be too far-sighted. I submit that Rouault's real subject were those textures and colors that produce their own heavenly raptures in viewers, much as Rothko's canvasses would decades later. If only Rouault had abandoned subject matter completely! But that's not always possible, and he did the next best thing: he simply repeated the same subjects over and over, turning them into armatures for sculpted color.

A Surfeit of Choices

Writing is so hard and yet it really shouldn’t be. The problem comes down to too many choices, and the feeling that each choice eliminates rather than propagates others. It’s as if we feel we have a limited number of words, sentences and paragraphs at our disposal (and we do, but only in the sense that our life expectancies are limited). When I used to paint (seldom now), I’d say to myself, “Go ahead and make this choice and let it stand”—on the assumption that, if I made infinite paintings, sooner or later I would be bound to make that choice anyway, so why not make it now and get it over with? With writing I never feel that sort of reckless self-confidence, and each choice feels like the one that may doom me! But as someone—I forget who—said to me not long ago, it’s not so much the choices that one makes that determine his or her quality as an artist, it’s the willingness to MAKE choices and live with them. After all, “unlimited choices” is a contradiction in terms.

Burning the Fallow Field

I’ve not been writing at all, going through a period of mini-mourning—or letting the field go fallow, or (more aggressively) letting it burn to nitrogenate the soil and encourage future growth. Yesterday I let the flames carry me into the city, where I played hooky (hookie?) all day in advance of attending a Chelsea party to celebrate the publication of Edmund White’s latest novel (CHAOS). First stop, the Sabarsky Café at the Neue (pronounced: Noya) Gallery at 85th and 5th Avenue, a museum dedicated to Germanic arts and artists. For a pretty penny one can get a nice cappucino and apple strudel there, served with white gloves and no background music.

I read submissions to the magazine, then finished my coffee and wandered into the little book shop there, where I found the most beautiful monograph of watercolor studies by Emile Nolde, small works saturated with the most luminous colors, hues as rich as anything God provides for His most extravagant flowers—with brush work and some body color added in just the right measure here and there, with a combination of conviction, abandon, and piety—all very spontaenous, at least in its ultimate affect. Some made my jaw drop. They were done on Japan paper and never meant to be viewed for their own sake, but to serve as guides for oil paintings that never materialized. I’m convinced, though, that had Nolde made those paintings they would not have been a match for their studies; the purety and spontaneity of watercolor can rarely be matched by oil; oil simply doesn’t afford the level of accident and incident, the soaking and spreading, the serendipitous bursts of capillary action, the pocked luminosity where a dry brush has bumped and dragged over the texture of the paper. Turning from drawing to drawing I made little mewling, dry orgasm sounds—they were that beautiful. I thought (peripherally aware of the other shoppers with their eyes on Klimt calendars): here is the answer. This little book of paintings, everything you need to validate existence is in here, in this modest little book. I wanted to turn to the nearest little old lady and shove the book under her wealthy pale and faintly liver-spotted canopener of a society nose and say, “Now THIS is a goddamned painting!”—but that wouldn’t have gone over, I knew. So I kept my feelings to myself. But I did also feel, as I left the museum, that I am infinitely lucky to be so well-equipped to love masterpieces when I see them.

The rest of the day was sunny anticlimax, except for the party, held in a lovely brownstone in the far West 20's with rear balconey overlooking the equivalent of an urban rainforest. A surfeit of handsome gay talented men, all in their mid-thirties, and Edmund White, with his pot belly pushing out a white waiter’s shirt. I tried to flirt with him but it was no go: at fifty, my days of flirting with gay men—even white haired gay men with pot bellies—are, alas, over.

"It [creativity] begins when the individual realizes his boredom and his solutude and has need of action in order to recover his equilibrium."—H. Matisse