Paul Georges and Still Lifes

Still Life was what Paul painted in between things, many time it lead to something else. Raphael Rubenstein wrote

"Georges’s achievement in any single of the modes he explored would be enough to make his name; taken as a whole his oeuvre presents a grandness of ambition that few viewers during his lifetime could understand." 

That sounds right. Still Life was one of those genres he excelled in. The ones in my mind are away somewhere in storage.

I remember one in the Autumn, a table full of cauliflower and broccoli from the farm stand, rhubarb and a big white basin, the fall cumulous clouds show the chill in the air. I always think of it when I see a day such as that.

The still lifes are always looked up at in perspective and so it was not much to have them take off into the sky and the pictorial freedom he always spoke of.

I hope we can fill in here as there are so many wonderful ones. On the cover of Dan's paper one year, 

was a photo of a still life that to me just makes Long Island. Amazing the people out there don't miss them. They gave Long Island so much a look of the place, along with Jane Freilecher and Fairfield Porter.

When I arrived in 1972 to Sagaponac, Paul was making big Matisse like Studio still lifes with printed fabric, at the end he was thinking of Cezanne again. Where Matisse was coming from also.

This painting from 2002 Salander O'Reilly show. He was going backwards a bit. Something I know little about though is this red background. He used it in the Nixon paintings when he used to talk a lot about the Villa of the Mysteries.

I know he liked pictorial power. He liked size. He liked the idea of a red center. I guess he was guaging every thing to red. A friend used to paint on a pink background and I think that was value to Paul.

He started on red and every thing radiated from that intensest color relationship.

I hope they don't all turn black. I always worried of that. Red is so close to black in a value way. It reads black in photos, and that would be an irony that maybe Paul would have even liked.

He really liked Balzac and a story, The Wild Asses Skin, there is another story too which has to do with the artist thumbing his nose at the public.