from alta plaza park

On a fine day, almost any sort of song makes itself heard, according to Frederich Holderlin.

A certain gentlemen, just returned from the low countries in northern Europe, mainly to see the paintings there, reports that he had Vermeer all wrong. For years he thought "The View of Delft" was about the light; now he sees it's about shadows. He sends this from a Vermeer website:

        It is not just depiction of things, it's a model
        of how the visual plane is ordered, how the
        world works.

George Braque, co-pilot of cubism, painter of birds and fishes, fields and stones toward the end of his long productive life, said somewhere that "only one thing in art is valid, that which cannot be explained." 

For a modernist, Braque was pretty old school. He always wore a suit and tie when motoring, as well as when talking on the phone. My aunt Lois, working for the state department in Europe after the war, had contact with Madame Braque in Paris and remembers her as "quite proper."  His last paintings were of common things--a rake, a plough--just being themselves as he saw them.

Braque died in 1963 and is buried in the tiny village of Varengeville, Normandy in the church's graveyard very near his home. On his gravestone is a bird of his design, in mosaic.

If you're ever in northern France, it's worth a trip. You can see the sea from Varengeville and the light is always changing.