I like to imagine evolutionary development as lots of spirals of inspiration twisting through feed-back loops, around and on, more and more inclusively dynamic; the trick is to leap on one near-by – but you have to be ready, and just spontaneously jump into it! As I stand before this painting of ‘Auvers’ painted in 1873 with the buildings of the village arranged in a swirl, on my fifth visit to the Cezanne Exhibition at the Tate Modern in London, I’m going to enjoy a particular spiral of inspiration that still makes me smile: probably because I’m still in it!
This spiral starts with Camille Pissarro, born ten years before Cezanne, in the Caribbean Island of St Thomas; by the time the two met in Paris, Pissarro had been around the world, and he had lived! Cezanne had only just left Aix for the first time. “The Louvre will burn, museums and antiquities will disappear and…from the ashes of the old civilization a new art will arise.” Pissarro’s talk on their walks together was intoxicating.
It’s a good hour’s walk along the river Oise from Pontoise, where Pissarro lived with his wife Julie and family of seven children in a rambling house with a large vegetable plot, to Auvers-sur-Oise, where Dr Gachet lived. The printing press was at Dr Gachet’s house. They would walk there and print off Pissarro’s radical leaflets. The three would go into Paris – Pissarro to hand out the leaflets, Dr Gachet to tend to the poor of the slums of Paris, and Cezanne to go to the Louvre to examine a work suggested by Pissarro for discussion later. Often staying for the night, Cezanne felt like he was part of the Pissarro household.
In those few years of simplicity and activism, Cezanne found inspiration for art and life from “the humble and colossal Pissarro”: “he was a bit like God!” Cezanne would muse later in life. (cf Alex Danchev: Cezanne, A Life, a wonderful biography by one who has sadly passed away).
After Cezanne passed away, a young poet was fascinated by the works in the Cezanne retrospective of 1907: “I’m still going to the Cezanne Room” he wrote to his wife on the tenth day: “I sense this is somehow useful for me..I remember the puzzlement and insecurity of my first confrontation with (Cezanne’s) work...and suddenly, one has the right eyes”. Rilke recorded his thoughts and feelings in letters and poems to his wife: “Paris, October 9th 1907. Today I wanted to tell you a little about Cezanne…” Rilke wrote that Paul Cezanne had now become his ‘supreme example’, and through-out Rilke’s life he would “follow Cezanne’s traces everywhere”. Of Cezanne’s paintings, Rilke would say: “It's as if every part were aware of all the others – it participates that much.” The spiral of inspiration continues.
“To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe – to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it – is a wonder beyond words.” So writes Joanna Macy, author and teacher, scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking and Deep Ecology. Joanna began her journey with inspiration from Rilke’s poems; and wrote three volumes of translations and commentary on Rilke’s poetry. As the root teacher of The Work That Reconnects, Joanna has created a ground-breaking framework for personal and social change, as well as a powerful workshop methodology for its application.
And so, this spiral of inspiration came my way, and I’m so glad to have jumped into it!