"At is now at home, albeit without a computer and feels cut-off from
his friends and the much loved LO-community."
Dear Chris Klopper & At de Lange,
Appreciation (of human becoming/being) is a funny thing, knot!
~~~~( sotto voce) ~~~~ Henri Matisse to Brassai...." I don' think
you'll manage to photograph Bonnard. He's in a bad way." -" The
filmmakers who did a short film on me wanted to film him as well, but
he refused. The death of his wife was a terrible shock to him. He's
still suffering from it..."
Brassai, the great Parisian photographer then starts to muse upon the
fickle and ''selective'' nature of fame. -" You can be," as Bonnard by
then was, "one of the greatest painters in the world and still be
completely unknown to your neighbours." -- "Not one of them was able
to point out to me where he lived, ..."
Fortunately Brassai persisted and found a very apparently ordinary
vision. " Who would have imagined that he would inhabit such a
commonplace dwelling?" The inside was according to Brassai as banal
as the outside. Ordinary cheap furniture, white wooden chairs and
tables. He was taken aback. " Bonnard felt no need to surround himself
in a fairyland of Venetian armchairs or Chinese vases." It seemed that
a degree of discomfort suited him..." His brushes could turn the most
commonplace objects into poetry, from radiator pipes to his chipped
bathtub."
Bonnard greets Brassai, complimenting him upon his own artistry,
saying -" I am happy to meet you. You are free to photograph whatever
you like, with one exception, my face."
Brassai noted in great depth the emptiness left behind by the
departure of his beloved model and then wife, of forty nine years, and
then notes " i began to look around for his easel, his palette. There
were none. Nailed on the wall side by side were several unstretched
canvases, on all of which to my astonishment, Bonnard was working. --
He was nourishing each of several canvases at once until they all came
to life."
"In Bonnard's eye, a picture can be reduced to a series of touches of
colour, linked otgether to form a whole over which the eye can then
more easily travel, without shock." ...Brassai went about taking
images of the rooms and the garden, then he went back into the studio
and prepared to take his leave. Bonnard then said to him, " I ask you
not to photograph my face, but if you want to, you can take a picture
from the back..." So Brassai cheated, and managed to capture Bonnard
half in profile, close to the canvas, as he laid on a a bit of colour
with the tip of his brush."
[Host's Note: Andrew's PPt is at
http://www.learning-org.com/docs/LO31089_Bonnard.ppt
..Rick]
I have put here a PPt along with that photo image by Brassai, andalso
a glorious example of Bonnard's vision. ( Bonnard was a pupil of
Degas, a friend of Cezanne and an inspiration to Lautrec) -- The four
canvases in the black and white image by Brassai are 'La Salle a
Manger', 'Nature Morte', 'Le Payssage du Canet avec Toit Rouge', and
'L'Amandier en Fleurs'. " When i took a picture of him bending over,
working hard on a painting of the almond tree, with its glowing petals
seemingly lit up from within with sparkling white, like flakes of
snow, i felt quite clearly that it would be his final canvas, his swan
song. It now hangs in the Musee National d'Art Moderne in Paris."
Dear At, ...i spy with my photonic eye, flowers in flames and flames
in flowers...emergences at the ridge...;-)
Love from a fellow artist and pupil,
Andrew
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