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Published: November 30th 2008
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Georges Seurat, the leading force behind neo-impressionist painting, died in Paris in 1891 at the age of 32. (The cause of his death is in dispute, but it's likely to have been diphtheria.)
His final major work,
Cirque, remained unfinished. It hangs today in the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, quite possibly the most beautiful and emotionally moving art museum ever built.
Actually, built is a bit misleading. Probably rebuilt is a better way to put it. The museum, which opened in 1986, was originally the Gare d'Orsay train station. But the words train station lessen the architecture's impact and purpose. With its facade and interior ceiling and walls refurbished to their original glory, this space stands as a monument to an era when our ability to move beyond the most basic means of transport was celebrated and honored as a history-altering occurrence.
And the grandiose clock at one end that is framed by a huge, arching ceiling lined with ornate plaster moldings marks a time when moving outside of your daily existence was a privilege and a matter of civic pride. Paris was proud of its ability to employ engineering and science to improve its inner workings, as
well it should have been.
As the space now stands, it's a marvel of how to get it right when you're faced with the unenviable task of transporting a building from its past into its future. Want to learn how to make a train station function as an art museum while still honoring its historical importance?
Then go to the Musee d'Orsay, my lovelies. It will take your breath away.
But that's not why I'm up at an ungodly hour killing my sleep and possibly putting a wrench into how well I'll live tomorrow (well, actually, later today).
I'm up after only a couple of hours' sleep because Georges Seurat is keeping me awake. Hard to do when you've been dead for 100+ years. But you know the French. Always vexing Americans.
Though he'd been painting for more than a dozen years at the time of his death, he'd never sold a painting in his lifetime.
Many reading this post have heard my version of this story. It's become a highly personal one ... my artistic talisman (note the Seurat painting as a tattoo that now snakes up and around the majority of my
right arm), as the fact that Seurat pursued his art ... his craft ... with such intensity until the end of his life has become an emotional shorthand and fuel for my desire to do the same.
He was doing something different. Something that his established contemporaries (Monet refused to show any works with him, and he was rejected by the Paris Salon) couldn't see past their own artistic myopia to embrace or support. He was breaking through to seeing things in a different way and to using the changing knowledge of society (his technique employs the principle of color melding where two colors close together are perceived by our brain as a separate color ... blue + yellow = green) to explore the possibility that art doesn't have to stay the same. It can improve. It can reshape itself. And the past can be made present in a heretofore unthinkable way.
Much like train stations can become art museums.
I stood in the Musee d'Orsay today and put my face and camera (as a substitute for your face) as close to his final, unfinished canvas as I possibly could.
I wanted to drink in the
possibility that I, too, can see things in ways that no one else will understand. That the way I will record these things in my own art will have validity. And that in doing so I will propel myself and everyone around me forward.
It may not be immediately successful. It may never be a source of financial or professional security. But it will have been done by my hand in a way that I believe Monsieur Seurat, a fellow passionate nut job, would himself have appreciated.
I wish the world could get to see the completed version of
Cirque that only Georges could see when he died. As it stands today, a pale but vibrant canvas, it's a reminder of all the possibilities we have within us.
Train stations can become art museums. Dots of paint can become paintings. We can all see past what exists into the lens of what could be. We only have to look. We only have to see. And we only have to dare to do it.
That was my trip to the Musee d'Orsay. I'm going to bed to sleep with a now restful mind and a very happy
heart.
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kirsten
non-member comment
Kenneth, my friend, your talent as a writer always moves me, inspires me and makes me smile. Your art does make an impact.