Category: Uncategorized
November 17
I don’t know if you’ll understand that one can speak poetry just by arranging colors well, just as one can say comforting things in music. In the same way the bizarre lines, sought out and multiplied, and snaking all over the painting, aren’t intended to render the garden in its vulgar resemblance but draw it for us as if seen in a dream, in character and yet at the same time stranger than the reality.
I’ve received a letter from Mr E. Dujardin regarding the exhibition of some canvases of mine in his dark hole. I find it so disgusting to pay for the planned exhibition with a canvas that in reality there aren’t two answers to this gentleman’s letter.
Gauguin has bought a chest of drawers for the house, various household utensils and 20 meters of very strong canvas, a whole lot of things we needed, which it was more convenient to have anyway.
I don’t yet know what Gauguin thinks about my decoration in general; I only know that there are some studies that he really does like, namely, the Sower, the Sunflowers, the Bedroom.
This week I did a new study of a sower; the landscape utterly flat, the figure small and blurred.
I can do nothing about it if my paintings don’t sell. The day will come, though, when people will see that they’re worth more than the cost of the paint and my subsistence, very meagre in fact, that we put into them.
I’ve had gas put in, in the studio and the kitchen, which is costing me 25 francs for installation.
I’ve had gas put in the studio, so that we’ll have good light in winter.
As far as the house is concerned, the fact that it will be habitable continues to soothe me very much. Will my work be worse because by staying in the same place I’ll see the seasons come and go on the same subjects? Seeing the same orchards again in spring, the same wheatfields in summer, I’ll inevitably see my work regularly before me in advance, and can plan better. And by keeping certain studies here to make an ensemble that will hold together, after a certain time that will make a calmer body of work for you. I feel that as far as that goes, we’re pretty well on the right road. I could only wish that you were nearer here.
We’re sparing nothing of what we have, in order to obtain some rich effect of color. And I believe that the idea of earning something as much for the pals as for ourselves will give us confidence. And in our business dealings, although we have no fixed plan, everything we do will nevertheless be based on that deep sense that we have of the present injustice suffered by the artists whom we know, and of the desire to change it as far as we can. With that idea, we can work with calmness and determination, and in short, we have nothing to fear from anyone. I’m working on a portrait of our mother because the black photograph was making me too impatient.
Ah—my study of the vineyards—I sweated blood and tears over it—but I have it —another square no. 30 canvas—once again for the decoration of the house.
I have no canvas left at all.
The weather’s still fine here, and if it was always like that it would be better than the painters’ paradise, it would be Japan altogether.
The day has been so beautiful again. My great sorrow is that you can’t see what I see here. From 7 o’clock in the morning I sat in front of what was, after all, nothing special — a round cedar or cypress bush — planted in grass.
Here you have portraitists, living for so long side by side and they don’t agree on posing for each other and they’ll separate without having portrayed each other. Well! I’m not pressing the point.
I’ve tried to express the terrible human passions with the red and the green.
Neither Gauguin nor Bernard has written to me again. I believe that Gauguin doesn’t give a damn, seeing that it isn’t happening right away, and for my part, seeing that Gauguin has been managing anyway for 6 months, I’m ceasing to believe in the urgent need to come to his assistance.
Is it true, as I think in moments when I’m in a good mood, that what is alive in art, and eternally alive, is first the painter and then the painting? Well, what difference does that make — but if one sees people working it’s still something one doesn’t find under glass in museums.
Asha rec’d this great cAfe - le café japonais i think it’s called. If you sit outside and look across the street there is sun like tag/painting on the wall. We chatted with the owner, I forgot her name, she’s from Japan, lived in Berlin, now in Arles, and just had a baby. Asked for recs from her and she gave us two great ones….
1st was - a gallery owned by a Japanese design guy that gives shows to people, and also shows his wares. And also— there is a collaboration of some sort w a German sorbet man, selling artisanal sorbets .. I think the gallery is called vague. (I had the fig with Szechuan peppercorns).
I loved the show they had up. About lichen. I feel like flash photography is very uncool rn and I think some of those were made with a flash so that was fun. The German guy, I forgot his name, but he was easily the weirdest/coolest person we’d met in Arles at that point. He was playing cool music at the gallery. Lo later told me he used to do sorbet at capitain petzel in Berlin (Captain pretzel).
many articles are written about the joys of talking to strangers (and how people overestimate how annoyed strangers will be if you talk to them). talking to the sorbet man, in a wonderful gallery and show, with good music, was certainly a highlight.
The second Rec the cafe woman told us was a performance for her son that would be at the cafe the next night. It is apparently customary in Japan to celebrate the first 100 days of a baby’s life with … well I’m not sure what. This particular celebration was going to be a ‘zen drumming’ performance.
it was great! Kenji, @kenji.zen.drumming on ig , was very very special! I tried uploading a vid but it didn’t work.
anyway! It was improvisational soft drumming and the baby giggled and slept and awoke and sat in her diaper in a very relaxed fashion. Another highlight sparkles
