Picasso on the Beach
This morning I awoke early and put on the coffee-maker. Still tired, I relaxed on the couch. Almost instantly, I fell into this dream. In the dream, I’m painting a still-life, a bowl of apples. As I paint the first two, I realize they look like Cezanne's apples, but the painted edges of the fruit in my painted bowl are undefined and appear to shift. Perhaps, in my dream, I am Cezanne, painting in my own studio. I withdraw my brush from the canvas and realize that I’ve broken the rules of perspective, the table appears to tilt forward, and though the tablecloth in the painting is not yet finished, one side of the table is not aligned with the other. I keep painting what I think I see. The colours are alive, the apples seem almost spherical. Atmospheric. I sketch in the kitchen around the table. I paint a box of vegetables on the counter, and it takes on a cube-shape. A wicker wastebasket on the floor emerges as a raw-sienna cone. The kitchen expands to include the entire cottage. I’ve seen images of Cezanne’s cottage. In my dream I am unable to tell if I am myself, or I am Cezanne. I keep brushing and sketch in the outside of the cottage, then, the tangled garden, and then, the surrounding countryside with fields arranged according to their geometric essentials, quadrangles with varying surfaces, shifting colours. The canvas keeps expanding. It’s a warm summery day with a light breeze. Birds flit among the trees. I hear the seashore nearby. I walk across a meadow connected to the backyard. Grasshoppers flit to and fro as my legs brush through tall grass and wild-flowers. Amber stems. Leaps of green. At the far end of the meadow, I pass over a hill to a sandy beach, with the ocean just beyond. I descend to the shore. An infinity of blue. Sky and water. As I walk the shoreline, the gentle rhythm of surf massages the soft beach sand, my bare feet. At a distance, I see Picasso sketching on a paper pad. He uses a crayon. Somehow, even in my dream, I remember that Cezanne and Picasso both kept places in the south of France along the coast of the Mediterranean, near Marseille, by the sea, not far from Cannes. Picasso is on the beach, sitting atop a checkered blanket watching two naked women playing in the waves with a small toy boat. Large bathers. At the Beach. A third woman’s head appears just above the water nearby. Their relaxed bodies are massaged by the to and fro wave action. A series of rhythmic caresses. One of the women lowers the toy boat into the water, the other watches, the third, at a distance, raises only her head above the waves; raises her head as if above the horizon itself. The women with the toy boat seem gigantic, much larger than the lie of representation one finds in drawings or on canvases. Incongruous. Grown women, playing with a toy boat. The sea embraces them, a warm, light, blue. One woman might be pregnant. It’s hard to tell. I think of Hans Arp, Henri Moore. I think of Frida Kahlo on a shell beach. With brush in hand, I sit nearby. I watch and paint the beach and Picasso, as he watches and sketches the women. I pause to flick small flat stones across the water. A fish pops its head out of the bending waves. In the slowly rolling swells, the fish comes closer, then away, then closer again. The fish speaks, “Why do you suppose those naked women are playing with that toy boat? It seems incongruous. Why does Picasso confront us with those constructed forms, those peculiar biomorphics? Surely, he’s seen Cezanne’s apples? Cezanne’s still-lifes? The reduction of form to simple geometrics? Surely, by now we know art is not copying an object, but communicating sensory awareness?” I consider the fact that I am speaking to a fish. The wave-action of brings him closer, then farther, then closer. I politely tell the fish that the theory it’s discussing is antiquated. The fish replies, "Well, yes, but that’s because I'm a Coelacanth. We were thought to be extinct.” I ask the fish how it learned to swim. The fish smiles, if a fish could smile, but only says, “I can’t say, it comes naturally. I’ve been doing it all my life.” Then, the fish says, “Nonetheless, the split focus, the ruptured of vision I'm discussing, still applies as much to Cezanne's apples, as to Picasso’s large bathers." When the fish mentions Cezanne's and Picasso’s names together, I awake to the smell of coffee brewing.
Karl Jirgens, former
Head of the English Dept., at U Windsor, is author of four books (Coach House,
Mercury, and ECW Presses). He also edited two books, one on painter Jack Bush,
and another on poet Christopher Dewdney, as well as an issue of Open Letter magazine. His scholarly and
creative pieces are published globally. His research on digital media
investigates literature and performance. Jirgens also researches 20thC and WWII
genocides, as featured in his novel-in-progress on the Cold War. From 1979 to 2016,
Jirgens edited and published Rampike,
an international journal featuring contemporary art, writing and theory. He
currently serves as a professor at the University of Windsor.