Due to Peter's enthusiasm and due to a brooding mood (believe it or not I can only take so much Kant and postmodern art), tonight I went shopping for books and music and bought a Monet art book and The Best of the Ring.

My feeling of appreciation of that music and art exceeded my joy of a gourmet meal (Jennifer's hackles raise) or drinking great wine (Lindsay's, and Jennifer's, hackles rise). The apathy of the mood was not blown away but it slowly evolved onto a different level of thinking and feeling.

Karl Bohm conducted The Ring, after twenty years of "can't standing" Mozart Bohm managed to convince me of Mozart's beauty and genius, I guessed correctly that if any conductor was going to help me with Wagner it would be him.

The book on Monet is unbelievably good. Over 400 pages and at least that many images, the writing seems to be great as well, the few tidbits I read described the work (very well) and what Monet was doing around the time of the work.

I listened to the music as I looked at the paintings.

But truth be known, in-between,  I also prepared and ate a superb Smithfield ham steak with Grey Poupon mustard, extremely fresh Brussels sprouts that had a hint of a woody taste, and a huge glass of crisp, clean, and very cold Pinot Grigio!

Revisiting Monet was startling. Every single painting was different. Different colors, moods, temperatures; his ingenuity is amazing, how in the world does he find such combinations of glorious colors that truthfully convey a fog-ladened day in London?

I was thinking that the contrast between Monet and Wagner huge but perhaps it is not. With Wagner it is not about the what but about the how, and how! The music is stunningly grand, layered with sparkling colors, big themes and interspersed with a strangely sensitive intimacy.

Sometimes Monet's sea or fields has an area of color that is compelling and particular, like a gray earthy violet surrounded by a sea of lime green dotted with pale pinks...but it is not just wacko colors thrown together as an experiment...there is something very truthful about it...I have seen something just like that odd violet, really looking direct at nature! He didn't make it up it was there, in his field of vision, at that moment; he had a magnificent eye for the freshness and importance of direct perception of reality.

I didn't do any work last night but I woke up at 6 am, drank a cappuccino in a large, chipped ceramic cup with a French design, and studied five paintings, all of them not too far from completion.

One of them, Venus, has something wrong with the color scheme, it needs a major neutral color scheme as a bridge between the startling pinks and oranges and the dark violet blues...and today, clarity arrived into my head, an off gray-pale-green is the ticket, and it already works! But for such an important work I am now certain I will need more studies and I just booked a ticket to visit a friend in Salt Lake and I will take my easel and pastels and do a series of mountains and water with the same lighting and same general background as Venus.

The grandness of Wagner's vision and the startling freshness of Monet, recharged my spirit.

And isn't that what art is about?

 

(Edited by Newberry on 9/25, 2:18pm)