Someone said Provence was the place to paint, naturally preferable to, say, Gainesville, Florida, or to my home town or your home town. It's superiority was something that went without saying ... at least I never heard anyone offer an explanation about why painting in France was intrisically better than painting in Newark. Well, other than the light. Hey, we've got light. All things being equal, is a tree in France better than a tree in Sacramento?
Okay. I have nothing against France, love France and would happily paint France as well as paint any other place. The motif would be wonderful. To that I'll attest. But I'm fairly certain the real locale will be the France in my head, or in my eyes, and not the France of the French.
Many have become disciples of the "modern," which is to say they don't even want to paint France anymore. Why do people adopt the modern way of the Donald Judd box? (Or, Donald Judd box knock offs.) I can understand why those who cannot draw and cannot see do. But artists of genuine and potential talent, why do they abandon their own vision for the ubiquitous and suspiciously facile path of Modern Art.
Am I not modern? Are my thoughts not as much of the present tense as anybody elses? What becomes of the personal insight, the life lived in art, through art, once we give ourselves up to trends? Why do people not defend their own view? Even especially when if their thing has the added gravitas of having been "made in France."
Why do we not, like Delacroix, paint "par coeur"?
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