Category Archives: Escape Into Life

Chardin and Proust, on the Beauty of the Everday

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Still Life with Plums, 1730

Rather I should say: Me, on Chardin and Proust, on the beauty of everyday things like jugs, water, and fruit in an article up on Escape Into Life magazine.  Being able to see the beauty in the commonplace is surely a quality to be valued.  Chardin’s still life above looks nothing like my messy kitchen table–but then perhaps it does more than I can appreciate.

I’d love to hear what you think about the article.  This train of thought spun off my enjoyment of De Botain’s How Proust Can Change Your Life, an enjoyable book I shared earlier this month here and also worth a look.

Julie Heffernan’s Constructions of Self

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My article has been included in the new edition of Escape Into Life Magazine about the paintings of Julie Heffernan:

Julie Heffernan creates sensuous figurative paintings, like co-Yale MFAS, John Currin and Linda Yuskavage, but her luminous oils are patently unique among them and most working artists today. A Victorian impetus to conjoin, edging toward pastiche, creates artfully staged Surrealist environments. They avoid the mawkish or macabre by virtue of an evocative 17th century Baroque styling and the dignity with which she handles her primary subject, herself. Good construction is essential to the success of such works, built of disparate things suggesting disparate philosophies and ages. Yet the finished product is seamless, making it easy for the viewer to willfully suspend disbelief in the face of rampant artifice.

Heffernan currently has a show up at PPOW (which I have yet to actually see) in NYC, so go check out her fantastic, intriguing work if you have the chance. Her “Booty” show in 2007 made such a lasting impression on me I wrote this piece years later.