Influences
Vermeer, Morandi, Seurat, Cezanne
Vermeer
"Although he believed strongly that ‘literary allusion militates against an appreciation of visual art, especially in painting’ in the paintings of Jan Vermeer, an artist whom he held in the highest regard, the fulfilment of an ideal. Of Vermeer’s paintings he wrote, “ and what are they, but still lives with human beings. What is it that makes an unassuming picture such as one of these one of the greatest master pieces of all time?” He goes on to say that "In regard to the relationship of art to incident, the subject matter, in the case of Vermeer, the two are suspended in a state of sublime equilibrium and yet I submit that for Vermeer initially and always, the incident was subservient, although it was to become part of the warp and weft of the picture. Only if the necessity of art supersedes the imperative of incident in artist and audience is it possible to describe a work as a Work of Art.”
TGM Guise, December 1968
Chopin
"Chopin, I am told, is suspicious of Beethoven’s romanticism, great genius though the latter most undoubtedly is. I have a fellow feeling for Chopin, because I am uncomfortable, and, at the same time, deeply moved by Beethoven’s music. There is a point in the scale between warm and cool, sweet and dry, vigour and serenity, at which, I suppose the average temperament is most at home. I am conscious of being aware of this feeling very definitely in the latest paintings of Cezanne, and in the music of Chopin. For the artist, it is indeed possible to indulge his particular disposition, - to take extreme examples – for romanticism, like Vlaminck and Tchaikovsky, or, for classicism, as in the case of Mondrian, Nicholson and Bach not to mention the practitioners of hard edged minimal art. By the same token, beware of the prophet whose vision is restricted to the landscape of his own particularly temperamental disposition."