The private self
As a French-born artist who fell in love with America’s boundless energy a decade ago, whenever I think back to my evermore distant past, my strongest memories take place in Paris. But not just anywhere in Paris, though the beauties of the City of Light are legendary, and with every good reason.
My most vivid childhood recollections all take place in the corridors of the world’s greatest museum, which is, of course, the Louvre. There I wandered for hour upon happy hour as a boy. Today as an adult, I can still see many of those magnifient works in my mind’s eye; undimmed by time, they live in my memory and sometimes in my dreams too. And in a certain sense, they also live in my studio as well.
Not as an achievable goal, mind you, for masterpieces are by definition very rare and highly prized inequal measure. Call this instead an unattainable goal, to which we continue to aspire; in vain, but not in vanity. Though the power and sheer beauty oftheir art may remain unequaled, the Masters inspire all of us to do a little bit better each day, day after day. And then who knows?
As it happens, another Frenchman, Charles Baudelaire, offered us a useful and very hopeful answer when he proclaimed that, “Genius is the ability torecapture childhood at will.” His aphorism sends my mind racing back intime, back to the corridors of the Louvre, where the child is father to the man.
