Ginger Jar with Fruit, Paul Cezanne
Calm Things...We live in the world as little as possible. When the phone rings in this quiet house, there is genuine shock. We answer, incredulous, stuttering and stumbling over too few words. I wonder what most people talk about at mealtimes. For us, the subject is usually still life. Rob says what area of his painting he’s been working on. He works from a photo that I’ve seen beforehand, and still there is news. The grapes were much darker than he thought they would be before mixing the paint. Adjustments have to be made continually from photo to canvas. A shadow has to be deepened, a band of light refined. The calligraphy of stems needs to be rewritten...
...In a book on the painter Balthus, Claude Roy notes that in Japan, during the Meiji era, the term seibutso was formed. This translates as “calm things” and is the term used by the Japanese when talking about what we most commonly call “still life.” Roy says that “the peaceful contemplation of calm things, has its roots deep in the Japanese past, in politeness with regard to those objects that man has fashioned, generated, humanized.”...- excerpt, Shawna Lemay, Cezanne's Carrot Literary Journal, Winter Solstice, 2007, Volume 3, Issue 1
Link Calm Things, Full Text by Shawna Lemay
Link Cezanne's Carrot, A Literary Journal
