Central Park Sketch

This will be brief , but as I was taking my lunch break today in Central Park, I cam upon a few people talking about painting and drawing. They were all sitting around this one guy who was painting a small oil sketch of the fountain. I was watching him paint and noticed that all the people were wearing little "Hello, My Name is..." stickers. I hate to be that guy who bothers people in public when they are working, but I had to ask what kind of a class or group this was.

Turns out they are part of a thing called meetup.com and the group is called The Central Park Sketching and Art Meet Up ( http://www.meetup.com/sketching/?a=wm1_gn).

Very cool idea, and even cooler website if you have never seen it before. All these different groups of strangers meeting up doing all sorts of stuff. These are the grass roots movements that will plant seeds to a new art world that is really an art world, not just an art market.

Pierre Bonnard: The Late Ineriors

Before Diner, oil on canvas, 1924

Pierre Bonnard: The Late Interiors
@ The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave NY, NY
January 27, 2009 – April 19, 2009
Robert Lehman Wing (1st Floor)


As wind and cold whipped around buildings and ice sheets caused me to slip and crash down my stairs, I found warmth, sun and solace at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for an unprecedented showing of Pierre Bonnard’s late paintings of interiors and still lives.

I had actually slipped and slid down the front stoop of my apartment that Friday morning when I left to go and see the show. I was meeting an artist friend of mine to see the Bonnard when I was greeted with a thin layer of frozen rain and slush on my stairs. I found myself with my ass on the sidewalk. Why do I mention this? Because it’s been that type of a winter here in New York; cold with a chance of freezing and bitter…

The artist I was meeting up with, Gary Tenenbaum had turned me on to Bonnard while we were both doing a residency in Paris in 2007. I had always considered Bonnard a lesser impressionist or just another fluffy French painter; not quite Matisse, not quite Monet. One similarly cold and cloudy day in Paris, Gary took me to the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. In their holdings are some of the most stunning Bonnard paintings, especially one of his self portraits and his paintings of his wife Marthe de Meligny in the bathe. The color and absolute abandon in those paintings blew me away. I had never seen anything like it and was enraged that I had wasted this much time without acknowledging them. So, when I saw that the Metropolitan was putting on this show of his late interiors and still lives, I called my Bonnard junkie in crime and we headed off in the cold.

To say these paintings “warmed me” on that cold, blistery day may sound cliché, but I welcomed the cliché! The paintings at the Met not only warmed me, they made me hot. They made my blood boil, and my heart quicken with excitement and absolute passion for painting and color. Is that a ridiculous statement? Maybe. Did I have the uncontrollable sensation to rush home and paint? Yes. For Gary and me the degree to which a show is “good,” is whether or not you run out wanting to make art. I haven’t felt that in a long, long time.

Where to begin with Bonnard’s Late Interiors? There is so much information to pull from and so many different aspects to touch on. However, for this the first posting I am making in almost a year, I am going to keep it honest and simple. For me, Bonnard is a painter’s painter. If I had to sum it all up in a few words: touch, composition, color. Within these simple elements Bonnard has an ability to turn the most mundane objects, still lives and tabletops into beautiful pictures of the most importance.

Flowers on the Mantelpiece at Le Cannet, oil on canvas, 1927

Maybe that is the important thing to take form these late paintings. For Bonnard, the still life objects have the same significance as the human elements in the work. A teapot or plate is created and sculpted with the same care and absolute abandon as the figures and landscapes, spaces and objects in the room. Bonnard doesn’t simply paint a picture like a window shade pulling from top to bottom. He paints in a holistic way, he moves from every corner to every corner and in and out like a fly buzzing and landing on different spots. From the exhibition I learned that Bonnard rarely made paintings from life, rather he worked from sketches made at the scene and then painted the actual canvas in his studio. All that color and space he essentially “made up.” And yet, Bonnard’s pictures don’t seem entirely unreal. This shift from live sketch to studio painting enhances that impeccable touch. The paintings maintain freshness and immediacy dancing the line between sketch and finished work, real and abstract space.

Work Table, oil on canvas, 1926/1937

Bonnard also never lets you forget you are looking at a painting. He leaves under drawing revealed, and often white space is actual raw canvas that Bonnard left unpainted. When he does use it, Bonnard applies white in an unbelievable way. I am a painter myself and I know how hard white can be to control. The difference between “light” and chalky pastels is extremely difficult to work between. Bonnard creates luminosity with his whites and his yellows and reds. By combining contrasting colors within the lights Bonnard creates energy in the color; yellows in the violets, blues in the reds and orange/reds. These combinations of color create these electrified canvases.

One of the most striking works in the exhibition is Bonnard’s own self-portrait. Made towards the end of his life, Bonnard paints himself in the bathroom mirror. His expression melds into the color and his form becomes as innocuous as his many teapots and table linens, that is to say it is painted with care and fresh perfect touch. In the end the artist is no more or less important than the objects he loved to paint. He is stripped bear, ghostly, a part of his own work.

Self-Portrait, oil on canvas, ca. 1938 - 40