Detail from Houses in Provence. Paul Cézanne, National Gallery of Art.
The only "C" I received in college was in an art history class - an irony, since even then I loved art history. I did not enjoy the history of being pummeled by slides or committing rote facts to memory, which accounted for my grade. I was interested in a history of phenomenology: why a landscape by Paul Cézanne altered me, why a Kandinsky watercolor made me want to paint - made me have to paint. At that time I worked as a janitor, bought books on Paul Klee and Goya and painted canvases horizontally - on top of my bed - in a thirty-five dollar a month room. Read more...
