DEAR MARY<\/p>\n
\u201cI fail to see what the Moderns are supposed to have discovered about color.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mary Cassatt (letter to Berthe Morisot & her daughter Julie Manet, autumn 1879)<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve never met a color I didn\u2019t love, but what you? All this bother about discovering color makes me nervous. As if painting was a game of one-upmanship. Who\u2019s got the best\/most\/clearest\/sincerest\/most outrageous perception. As if we all see\/saw things the same way as each other.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
And I can\u2019t help but wonder if there\u2019s anything new to explain about say, shades of blue \u2013 that you or Renaissance painters didn\u2019t know? The blues in your \u201cLittle Girl in a Blue Armchair\u201d don\u2019t strike me as virginal. Your little girl appears thoroughly modern \u2013 slouched, legs akimbo as if bored to death of waiting for something \u2013 not a Renaissance Madonna. And that lapdog isn\u2019t some lamb in a creche. Nor does he seem stuffed in the painting to show a patron\u2019s wealth. I suspect he\u2019s the family pet.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Maybe your blues aren\u2019t medieval lapis, but let\u2019s be modern. I\u2019d rather be sprawled in those two peacock\/cobalt overstuffed chairs than almost anywhere else.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(response to Mary Cassatt, “Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, 1878)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DEAR MARY \u201cI fail to see what the Moderns are supposed to have discovered about color.\u201d Mary Cassatt (letter to Berthe Morisot & her daughter Julie Manet, autumn 1879) I\u2019ve never met a color I didn\u2019t love, but what you? All this bother about discovering…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":768,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/768"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38159"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38226,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38159\/revisions\/38226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}