David Dunlop Art Talk

Finding our hillside shot of the valley of the Seine above Giverny proved that anxious desperation can be rewarded. Connie (the director) and I were searching for a paricular hillside location on the morning we were to shoot “American Impressionists In Giverny”. We had wandered to the outskirts of Giverny (this amounts to a two block stroll). I asked a Giverny resident if she knew who owned the hillside above us. It looked as if it were the location for Theodore Robinson’s famous paintings of the valley and, it overlooked Monet’s Giverny Farmhouse and gardens. She directed us to the home of an old French farmer. “Yes,” he said they were his fields and the access to them was on a small road above the town. He would guide us from the front seat of our rental car. This search had gone too easily.

Ten minutes later we were on a dirt farm lane then, there was no lane just a sea of tall meadow grass and, we were driving through it. He wasn’t alarmed but, we were. The grasses were up to the windows. Navigating this field was impossible. I couldn’t tell if were were about to hit a hole, a ditch or an obstacle. Every view of the earth was blocked by the meadow grass. The farmer directed us to drive on. We held a tenuous grip on both the French language and our rental car. And, our old French farmer was neither clear nor reassuring. I hoped we wouldn’t fall in a ditch. How would we drive all the other vehicles and equipment up here? How could we find it again without the farmer?

But, he wasn’t finished with us yet. We stopped the car. Filed through a barbed wire fence. He indicated that we should walk to the woods about 100 yards away then hike through the woods to find his promised hillside. We were dubious. He said he would wait in the car. We saw no prospect of a hillside, no view of the valley of the Seine; there was just a massive line of woods. We started walking. Both of us saying we’ve got to get out of here. This was hopeless. We were wasting precious daylight. This can’t possibly be the right place and on and on. At last we met the edge of the woods, then a fence gate, then a small overgrown trail. We walked in expanding circles in the woods. Our skeptism and anxiety grew….until Eureka! Look it’s the hillside fields! It’s the valley of the Seine! There’s Monet’s farm below! This is the place! Now, we just had to find and haul everyone and everything up here. This is the hillside location on which you see me painting.

What a windy day on the hill overlooking Mt St Victoire! I pulled my hat down low and hard to keep it from blowing off. We set a canopy over the cameras to give shade to the artwork, lens, and me. It tried to fly away as well. Watching it wrench and crash I was reminded of sailing mishaps. That afternoon the wind was our mischievous partner even throwing its voice into our microphones.

Earlier that day we had searched in loud and comic (Buster Keaton style) desperation for Jas du Buffon, the grand estate of Cezanne’s father and the site of Cezanne’s first studio and landscape paintings. Our GPS was no help because the entire neighborhood was known as Jas du Buffon. The best the GPS coulld do was take us to the Jas du Buffon bus stop. At last, a knowledgeable local gave a hand but, warned us that the neighborhood was unsafe for items left in cars. We left a security detail ( my wife, Rebecca, and head of cinematography’s wife, Amy) with the cars and equipment while I walked and talked on the grounds of Jas du Buffon.

Later that day director Connie’s persuasive gifts were needed in order to film in Cezann’es studio. They limited our time. While the last tourists wandered upstairs in the studio we shot the garden entrance area. The studio itself still held the aura of Cezanne. To see his still life props ( the very ones made famous in his paintings), his paint stained clothes and his paint encrusted palette all in the space where he used them was eerie. I felt like we were yoyeurs peeking under the sheets.

The main street of Giverny, named Rue Monet, is filled with tourists by 10 AM. I was trying out an introduction at that time on Rue Monet infront of the historic Hotel Baudy. I ususally try these in repeated variations. This intro became more difficult because, instead of simply staring into the camera lens I was aware of a crowd gathering behind the director(Connie). I wasn’t sure if they were watching my performance or just impatiently waiting to head up the street. Either way, I felt unusual conflicting pressures to satisfy them, the director, and my own motivation. I was verbally stumbling and, I had a vague predator/prey feeling in which I was the prey and my predator stalked behind me. Connie laughed and suggested I turn around. There at the nape of my neck, breathing heat and softly rumbling, loomed a large double decked tour bus.

I found the naming of main street after Monet to be ironic. In his first 20 years here Giverny did not welcome, appreciate, or accommodate Monet. When he tried to paint poplar trees along the Epte River here, they cut them down. When he tried to paint a field of tall grass, they mowed it. They blocked his shortcuts through their fields. The town and Monet found each other mutually incomprehensible and irritating. They could not understand how a working man could make an honest living painting pictures, especially his blurry pictures which didn’t satisfy their notion of good painting. But, Monet became the economic engine for Giverny. Once his economic virtue was revealed the town named their principal street after him. There are still farmers linving in Giverny. Today they accept Monet’s legacy and the tourists as condition of being, like sun and rain.

As he aged Monet retreated to his gardens to do more of his painting within his own property than in the environs of Giverny. Not only did this insulate him from the townspeople of Giverny but also the intrusions of ambitious young American artists. Only a few of these American aspirants became friendly with Monet. He wanted time to paint not teach. The Americans turned to painting Giverny ( most being barred from Monet’s garden). They painted Giverny’s hills, farms, architecture, people and streets. By the 1890’s Giverny must have thought of Monet’s idiosyncasies as small compared with the invading American Artists. Imagine if those early Giverny townsfolk could have foreseen the half million visitors who wander through the town today.

As always time was short. We were staying an hour away at Salon De Provence in the historic center. The parking garage was 4 blocks away and I scraped the top of my rental car getting into it. Our cameraman, Jeff, had already dented the side of his rental van outside our hotel. Our director, Connie Simmons, teased us about our inattention until she arrived at the Nice airport where the rental return attendant informed her of the damage to her own car. We looked like a crippled caravan.

Arriving at St Paul de Mausole, Van Gogh’s asylum outside San Remy, we negotiated about the best place to set my easel for my painting in the style of Van Gogh as well as student Lisa’s. I had to accede to the requirements of camera lighting and the notion of what makes the best televised image as an approaching thunderstorm loomed. No paint likes a downpour!

The sky was wondrous and theatrical as the storm approached on my right flank. I would have loved to painted that but, it didn’t work for the show because, the effects were too ephemeral. Every time the cameras would look up they would measure a changing light and, the raking light on my canvas (linen) would have been difficult with my shadow. There are so many considerations when you have HD video cameras involved.

I could feel the weight of the approaching storm. I hurried the painting, wishing I had more time to demonstrate more of Vincent’s process. Director Connie Simmons confidently said it’s going to miss us. I said, “No Way!”. Go figure; it missed us. You see me running down the path to get to my student before my anticipated storm hits.

This blog gives me the chance to explore specific ides in greater depth than the 26 minutes the show allows. For example, another writer asked me about “Starry Night” and “The Cypresses”, two paintings we showed and discussed in the program. Both were painted in San Remy, our location. But, the question was about Van Gogh’s frame of mind while he painted them. Was he in a wild frenzy, an inspired fit of madness or, something else? Vincent was not in a state of confusion or mental breakdown when he painted. He waited to paint (as he said himself) for periods of clear rationality, when he could be in control of his painterly intentions. He applied paint from a position of rational choice, deliberate and careful consideration. He didn’t want his illness to paint his pictures. He was extraordinarily careful about that. His paintings are the result of a man who studied art, considered how to generate a theatrical effect in color and design then, employed the effects and evaluated their impact. Like Turner or Corot, Vincent wandered about the landscape questing for inspiration. After finding a spot which offered some correspondence with art historical precedents (in terms of design and subject, subjects that preceding artists had tried for example, works ranging from Van Ruisdael and Rembrandt to Millet) Vincent would stop and paint for an hour or more. He felt he could find art history right outside the doors of his hospital, St Paul de Mausole in San Remy. He had confidence that his audience lived in the future. He was right.

My new 13 episode PBS series, Landscapes Through Time, will begin this Saturday, June 28th, at 6pm on Connecticut Public Broadcasting Network.