Up to the Sky

Cafe de la Tour Eiffel
August 6, 2015
La Belle Epoque
August 6, 2015

Up to the Sky

11-I10-直接雲霄UpToTheSky102cmx76cm

Up to the Sky

#89013     40″ X 30″     ac

  • Utrillo: “Impasse Cottin” (1910)
  • Picasso: “Self-Portrait with a Palette” (1906)
  • Van Gogh: “Artist on the Road to Tarascon” (1888)

High above the Butte in Montmartre appears the Eiffel Tower. Beneath it, we find a narrow impasse with houses crowded in both sides. It’s a picturesque corner of Montmartre where Picasso and van Gogh ought to be very familiar since both had lived for some years in that area.As a son of Montmartre, Maurice Utrillo, a shy alcoholic loved to paint the Bohemian little streets, the old bistros, the charming relatively quiet artists quarter of Montmartre as it existed before the World War 1. He liked to paint the houses and walls and unsatisfied with the zinc white from the tube, he mixed it with plaster and applied thickly with the palette knife, thus produced an exquisite ambiance of urban corners which made him famous and in turn he made Montmartre famous. In this well-structured street scene Picasso, once a resident of “Bateau-Lavoir” there, appeared on the foreground while van Gogh strolled behind.

The Picasso in Chen’s version of Utrillo’s Montmartre is of his “Rose Period”: “Self-portrait with a Palette”. It’s a static, pensive portrait in yellowish pink. The simplified treatment with wided-open eyes seems to suggest the self-confidence and ambition of a young genius. Van Gogh, roaming afar with his materials to paint, seems prepared to set up his easel and start to paint any time as painting is his only reason to live, ignoring the existence of the Eiffel Tower and other artists.

Yet all of these three Icons, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso and the Eiffel Tower are destined to go “Up to the Sky” physically or spiritually.

– T. F. Chen