Super Bowl Sunday

by Philip Parodayco // written on 27 January 2003, saved in Pjournal

Christie and I attended a fascinating lecture today at the Portland Art Museum that centered on the life and times of Camille Pissarro. The talk was led by the charming and erudite duo of Richard Brettell, Impressionist scholar and consulting curator of the museum's show, and Joachim Pissarro, fellow art historian and great-grandson of the artist. These two gentlemen were extremely relaxed and familiar with each other and with the artist. They led a massive audience through the life’s work of a famous artist, introducing little-known facts about his background, his relationships with other artists and his influence on important movements in art beyond those with which he's normally associated.

Now, I must admit that I went to this talk with trepidation. Christie made plans to meet some friends and asked me to come. I’m not the world's biggest fan of French Impressionism and never focused much energy on the appreciation of Pissarro's work. I thought that my studies in college gave me a reasonable understanding of his art and its place in the “canon”. However, I'll admit here and now that I knew nothing of his true background or of his astounding impact on the development of younger famous artists.

For example, Pissarro is not even French. He is legally Danish, having been born on St. Thomas in the Caribbean — at the time, a colony of Denmark. Although he moved to France in 1855 and remained the rest of his life, Pissarro never became a French citizen. He was apparently quite an iconoclast and counter-cultural force. He renounced his Jewish faith and allied himself with the Anarchist ideals of the time, ideals he shared with younger artists such as Paul Cezanne. Pissarro and Cezanne were extremely close, sharing a studio for over ten years and having a great influence on each other's work. Cezanne has a piece, once renowned as an early masterpiece, which is actually a copy of one by Pissarro — the audience gasped at that revelation!

The lecturers made the point quite clearly that Pissarro was a mentor and friend to some of the greatest painters of the period: Cezanne, Gaugin, Seurat, and, late in his life, the young Matisse. Pissarro was a painter who reinvented himself several times in his lifetime and that makes him a difficult artist to place in the history books. He succeeded in getting several paintings into the Salon during the mid-eighteenth century; he then achieved notoriety as one of the major Impressionists; when that movement began to get recognition, he left it for the pointillism of the younger generation led by Seurat; when Seurat died, well, Pissarro said it best — “Seurat is dead, so is the dot.” — and moved on to yet another style and association with yet another group of younger artists.

After ninety minutes, I had a profoundly greater understanding of the period and appreciation for the artists. I wish to thank the lecturers for helping me see Camille Pissarro and the others with fresh eyes. Having attended four years of art school, read numerous books and visited so many museums and galleries, I thought I knew enough about the Impressionists to last a lifetime. How wrong I was.

Now, to see the exhibit!