His way with faces.

I have a favorite painter. I even remember the exact moment I discovered him. Well, not exactly--maybe not the date or time or the context beyond barest detail. But I do remember it, mostly, and that it--and his work--still moves me.

I was in Boston for one reason or another, and I went to the Fogg museum, for one reason or another. I remember it being an impressive building, but that's about it; it was right before some major renovations, so who knows what it's like now. That being said, philistine that I am (or was, hopefully), I can't remember anything I saw there. Except that one painting--one painting and one pivotal moment I can otherwise only slightly remember.

It was Renoir. It was always going to be Renoir, it seems now. It was his self-portrait at age 35. Something about his face and its intimacy, its immediacy; something about the way it popped, without leaping, from out of those drab colors. It caught my eye, and I was transfixed.

I've never stopped loving him since--I seek his work when I go to other museums, I tell people about him and his way with faces.

I am, perhaps, still a philistine in that I can't say much more about him than that--I don't know things about brushwork, nor can I say much beyond the obvious about lighting or color. I just know that I like him and that seeing his paintings makes me happy.

He's been on my mind lately because there's a thing at the Phillips Collection built around one of his apparently most famous paintings. I was also telling my cousin all about that moment at the Fogg this weekend. You best believe I've sent her a link to it since she lives there in Boston, and you best believe I'll be seeing that show at the Phillips at least once, probably more.

Comments

Other things that might interest you...

On aging, and fear.

To begin with, I’m not sure you’re aware of it, but I’m middle aged. Oh? What gave it away? Using a blog as my primary literary medium?¹ Hm. But in fact, the APA defines 35 years as the end of “young adulthood.” Yeah. I found out via some shitpost on twitter when I was already 35, so it didn’t sit well with me then either. But my worries about aging began much sooner than that. See, even in my 20s, I feared I’d been wasting my life. I’d struggled with school and life and everything since graduating high school, arguably sooner, and nothing seemed to be going anywhere meaningful . I felt I had a limited social life, a dead-end job, no money, no great travels, a limping love life; I was, generally, a loser, wasting away... There were none of the usual hallmarks of success or happiness. And that scared me. Would my life have been worth it if I continued in this direction? Would it have been a “life well lived” by the end? So, this is my existential struggle. Even now, as I lurch ever nea...

Changing lanes.

I was driving home in some traffic last night when I drifted, in my mind, a long way back (about 20 years) to high school. I was caught in one of those periodic traffic slowdowns as I floated back; you know, those waves of congestion that seem to pass backward through the columns of cars in each lane. (I've heard they start because someone switches lanes, and in response, a rippling emergent slowness travels backward and outward as the cars behind it accommodate the change, one by one.) What drew me back to those younger days was that, back in high school, similar phenomena of congestion took place in the halls between classes, when eddies of young humans would get caught in and around those clumps of those chatting by lockers or retrieving books. Occasionally, backups would occur when groups of people got caught in these eddies, or collided with other groups by the lockers, and slowdowns would ripple back from there. Maybe it's not exactly the same, but as I drove it seemed si...

Oatmeal is tasty.

{slurps up berry-oatmeal-deliciousness} Indeed. I need to work on rebuilding a morning schedule. I can be zombie-like enough that I'll waste a perfectly good morning, and have often slept through many. And, really, it's such a useful time of day.

palmerpink

Search This Blog