Marchutz, Art, Cezanne/Picasso

So! The past week has been kind of nuts. After recovering from Oktoberfest, I came back to my senses and realized I had work to do. A LOT. At Marchutz, we started oil painting. Now I've painted a little bit in my time but never with oil. I consider myself more of a watercolor girl. It was really interesting to see the difference between the thickness, amount and all the other necessaries needed to paint with oil. Turpentine, poppy seed oil, LOTS of paint, a palette knife, brushed, rags, easel, prepared surfaces... the whole bit. I've used oils before while doing prints (monotype, block.. etc) but this was a whole new experience for me.

We were to choose a painting that spoke to us and of course all of the landscapes didn't interest me, so I chose Monet's last painting that he did in Venice called "Gondola in Venice". It's a very beautiful painting but has a lot of depth to it. It's filled with so many incredible colors that it was hard for me to distinguish a lot of them. I cranked out my first copy in the first session and it was too dark. The second I completed the second day with a 5 hour session but it still wasn't right. The third is still incomplete but you can definitely see the progress made from one to the other. I think that since I was using a new medium that I was getting used to what I was doing with it as opposed to seeing what I was actually doing. I kept getting stuck in certain areas of the painting worrying about the color moreso then the relationship that was on the canvas. So I have a bit of work ahead of me to finish that one. But by the end of the semester I'm bound to finish it.

Thursday night "Les Marchutz", hit the town. Unfortunately we were with out two because both Joy and Jamin we're really sick. We planned a whole evening together. Last week was the ending of the Picasso/Cezanne art exhibit at the Musee Granet in Aix. We decided that we'd go to the exhibit then have dinner at the school later on. Since Marchutz (the school) is so far away from town, Mary, a really awesome lady in our group offered her apartment up for the evening. So, we went to the exhibit.

My first impressions of the exhibit were that It was wonderful to see the works separately but I together it seemed kind of like a far stretch. Of course Picasso is a descendant of Cezanne but I think that the two are on different levels of work. There were some really hard comparisons to comprehend. It didn't seem like the exhibit was fully brought together. That was my personal opinion, but it wasn't all negative. My favorite room was probably the third as you went through the exhibit. A wall called "Les Fumees", was enthralling. Cezanne's painting of "L'homme avec une pipe" contrasted against Picasso's 2 abstract paintings of the maritime men with pipes made you really think about color pallete and how it's applied to the painting as a whole.

The upstairs portions of the exihibit was great. There was a lot more Picasso than Cezanne, I feel, but that wasn't the best part. I got to see some other artists that I'm quite fond of. Paul Klee, LOTS of Giacometti, which was impressive. I saw my first real Piet Mondrian that totally blew me away. There was also Ingres, David, Constantin, Granet and Rigaud. I feel that it was a great way to end my experience at the exhibit because i was taking in so much information about the latter two, it was nice to be able to just stand and be WOWed by some of France and the world's greatest artists. It was about time for me to return to meet up with the group. So i made my way back through the exhibit to find everyone.

Have you ever had the opportunity to look at a painting, hear a song in your head and be able to sing the whole thing through while navigating your way through the brush strokes? I had this experience after we regrouped with everyone. I spotted Picasso's "Woman with mandolin" and immediately in my head started "Little Motel" by modest mouse. I've never been so drawn in by a painting composed by the song in my head. It was absolutely insane to have this kind of moment. The way her face just held the power of the majority of the painting lead me to believe I have a connection somehow with this woman and her mandolin.

Alors, j'ai oublie finir ma rapport, donc, a plus tard!
(i forgot to finish this entry, so I will a little later)