Thomas Schlesser > Quotes

“collector at the time called Charles Ephrussi had commissioned Manet to paint a picture of an entire bundle of asparagus. The artist named his price at eight hundred francs. That might seem derisory compared with the millions just one of Manet’s paintings would be worth today, but it was a far from negligible sum. The average pay for a day’s work at that time was around five francs. Anyhow, Charles Ephrussi was so happy with the painting (now in a museum in Germany) that he sent a thousand francs to Manet! And the artist, with wit, ingenuity, and generosity, painted this extra asparagus on a separate canvas and gave it to the collector, along with the following note: ‘There was one missing from your bundle.’ Manet is urging us to see that there’s basically very little to see. It’s a simple asparagus, or a banal bit of table, and it’s a small burst of generosity that made him create a painting from it and give it away. But this painting tells us that life’s charm lies precisely in the almost nothing; if that almost nothing is present, life brightens up. Without these almost nothings that we overlook, things would only be what they appear to be. But with just a certain something, they suddenly become delightful. ‘Less is more,’ as the English say, with perfect brevity.”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel

“The lesson is that one must ceaselessly, time and again, compose one’s being.”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel

“La peinture, censément un art de l'espace, se fait expression du temps qui file”
― Thomas Schlesser

“fact, that’s what we learn from childhood: loss. Starting with the loss of childhood itself. We learn what it was by losing it, and we learn that we’ll lose everything, always. We learn that losing is the indispensable condition for feeling alive, for the intensity of the present. We think that growing up is about accumulating gains: gains in experience, in knowledge, material gains. But that’s a delusion. Growing up means losing. Living our life means accepting that we lose it. Living our life means being able to bid it farewell, at every second.”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel

“she understood why her grandfather had taken her to the museum. That was the point of all those visits, from the start: for her to archive herself through the beautiful works he’d chosen for her, for her to archive mentally these treasures, and for them to remain forever her reservoir of colors and joys, should blindness catch up with her one day.”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel

“Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: ‘It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel

“Vincent wanted to set up, with Gauguin, a colony of artists, for example. They go to Arles, in the South of France, and stay for a while. But it doesn’t go well: the arguments multiply, Gauguin, unable to tolerate his friend anymore, announces that he’s returning to Paris. Distraught, Van Gogh slices off part of his ear with a razor. He is confined to a hospital for the insane. He gets out a few months later, but his condition requires serious medical attention. He ends up in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise, probably because there’s a doctor named Gachet living there, a few meters from this church, who keeps an eye on him.”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel

“She was originally called Julia Jackson and was the niece and adored goddaughter of Julia Margaret Cameron. Since she was phenomenally beautiful, she often posed for the greatest painters of the time. And she became the mother of a novelist who, in the 20th century, had the noble idea of unearthing and publishing the entirely forgotten photos of her great-aunt, Julia Margaret Cameron. Without the help of that woman, we would never have got the chance to gaze at this Mona Lisa of photography.” “What was the novelist’s name?” “It was Virginia Woolf.”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel

“Vincent said something very moving on that subject, in a letter to his brother Theo in 1888. He wrote that ‘there’s nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel

“human nature, to be capable of great and beautiful things, must be ready to embrace the kindness of others, their desire to give pleasure, to embrace what it doesn’t yet have, and what it isn’t yet.”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel

“«I suoi dipinti non mostrano alcun segno dei tremori che accompagnavano i suoi movimenti. Capisci il paradosso? Pur scosso dai tremiti, Poussin non ha mai tremato di fronte a nulla! E la sua pittura ci esorta ad aspirare a questo tipo di dignità.»”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes

“Conversely, this tinge of sadness stirs emotions that enable us to penetrate the mysteries of existence a little. Mona, listen to me: it’s wonderful to enjoy a lovely life, but being happy makes the surface of things crackle; melancholy, because it’s a flaw within us, opens a breach through which to glimpse the meaning and meaninglessness of the universe; it allows us to contemplate the abyss, the depths. Artists knew this and cultivated it to create their works. What this painting is saying, my dear, is that one must know how to cherish melancholy.”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel

“Vers quoi s'échappent le blanc de la neige quand elle fond, le rouge d'un volcan quand il s'éteint, le pourpre de l'amarante quand elle se fane, le brun des cheveux quand ils grisonnent, l'azur du ciel quand fuit le jour ? Peut-être y a-t-il un paradis pour les couleurs ? Je suis sûr qu'elles y chantent, qu'elles tonnent et détonent, qu'elles s'y bousculent et s'y entremêlent. Et puis s'envolent. Et puis reviennent, à l'infini.”
― Thomas Schlesser

“Yes, for Van Gogh, this church represents Love. He was Protestant not Catholic, typical for someone from the Netherlands. He was a fervent believer; in his youth, he’d wanted to become a pastor, so as to live constantly among the humble folks. This humility can be seen in his approach to the church here: he doesn’t choose the side with the grand entrance, that’s to say, the face of the building, but rather its back, low and squat: its chevet.”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel

“Hannah Höch was linked to the Dada movement, which I briefly told you about outside the BHV, in particular the outrageous cabarets they would organize.”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel

“And Picasso’s voice was among them. Spanish, born in Malaga in 1881, the son of an artist, he had first been an exceptional technician, gifted with a highly precocious pictorial mastery. ‘When I was a child,’ he would say, ‘I drew like Raphael, but it took me an entire lifetime to learn to draw like a child.”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel

“tone became sadder when she outlined Monet’s esthetic journey: as the years went by, she explained, this artist, who captured a person’s features better than anyone, chose to leave behind faces and human figures. The curator pointed to the right-hand side of the painting:”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel

“Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s painting found its way there.”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel

“Art is a guaranty of sanity.”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel

“To Christ”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel

“I swear to you, on all that's beautiful on earth. - Monas Grandpa”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes

“What are the three stages?” “The first consists of knowing how to give”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel

“unprecedented”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel

“Exactly. It’s a veritable manifesto campaigning for anyone—poor or powerful—to have the right to be represented in paint”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel

“Mona, écoute-moi : c'est formidable de profiter d'une belle vie mais être heureux fait crépiter les choses en surface ; la mélancolie, le sens et le non-sens de l'univers, nous permet de regarder les abîmes, les profondeurs. Les artistes le savaient et la cultivaient pour créer leurs œuvres.”
― Thomas Schlesser

“La mélancolie, c'est la tristesse dénuée de raison précise et difficile à consoler, c'est une sensation plus vague et d'une douleur plus intense, aux limites de la folie parfois, où rien n'a plus de signification et où tout ce qui se construit pour l'avenir semble destiné à disparaître.”
― Thomas Schlesser

“La mélancolie, c'est quand rien ne se passe d'autre que ce qui passe.”
― Thomas Schlesser

“But you see”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel

“Tu as tout compris : disparus, nos aînés ne nous demandent pas de nous conformer à ce qu'ils ont fait ; ils nous disent juste d'être dignes de ce qu'ils furent.”
― Thomas Schlesser

“The “7” also reminded Henry of the (supremely mythical) age at which Basquiat had died—he overdosed at twenty-seven.”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel