We live in Northern California, where irises are blooming around the corner on this mild January day. I just had a conversation with our neighbor about the fires (his child is in college in LA) and immigration (he's been here for 25 years, started a business, brought up a kid who's at a private school on a merit scholarship, but he may be at risk). Welcome to 2025.
Here's my plan: while we all move through whatever the year has in store for us, I'm going to be back here writing more or less weekly. I have thoughts for possible next projects. If you're game, I hope you'll come along as I noodle with them. I'm still curious about Louis Roy, so you'll read more about him. I'm also curious about Léon Marseille, the art dealer who consigned Flowers and Fruit to auction in 1923. Marie Henry is with me most days as I think about her life in the buvette and how she held her own with a houseful of complicated men. And: there are a number of other paintings out there that may or may not be Gauguins. One of the reviewers of my book proposal in 2022 suggested that the topic--the biography of one painting--was not broad enough. Instead, he proposed that what the field really needed was a Big Book of Fake Gauguins, a tome that would examine all of the lost, faked, forged, and generally uncertain Gauguins in the world. I politely declined three years ago but I haven't forgotten. There's so much more to explore.
Critical thinking, curiosity, and delight matter now more than ever. We cannot give in to the glorification of ignorance, the anti-intellectualism that has dogged our country since before its founding. We cannot cease from exploration, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot. Exploration makes us more human and more humane. I have no illusions as to the scope and reach of my work, but I know that it matters. As does yours, whatever it is. We are in this together.
Comments