LATE RENOIR and THIS SUMMER FEELING
Posted on July 31, 2010
I saw The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s exhibition of LATE RENOIR, and something clicked for me about Jonathan Richman. (I’ve pretty much been listening to nothing but Jonathan Richman, Leon Russell and Willy DeVille, and Jonathan’s “This Summer Feeling” and “Vincent Van Gogh” had been repeat-playing in my car all the way from my apartment in Rofo to my parking space in Philly’s Fairmount Park.)
In Renoir’s later years, he was stricken with rheumatoid arthritis, the pain so severe that he had to choose between walking and painting because he did not possess the energy for both.
He chose painting.
A system was devised to allow his family and assistants to raise, lower and relocate the position of his chair so he could reach various portions of the canvas. From his wheelchair, he painted. When he was almost too weak to hold a brush, he painted.
When asked why he continued to paint when he was in such excruciating pain, he replied, “The pain will pass, but the beauty will live forever.”
Renoir had been so successful for so long that he had earned the privilege of being able to paint only what he wanted. (Interestingly enough, I recently read an interview with the late Sterling Morrison in which Sterling said that The Velvet Underground’s artistic success was due to PLAYING only what they wanted without regard for the pressures of the marketplace. What commercial success did for Renoir, commercial failure did for The Velvet Underground.)
Given the freedom to do whatever he chose, what did Renoir choose to paint? Beauty. For Renoir, beauty was most often expressed in the form of a woman. Women bathing. Women brushing their hair. The world was at war, and men were dying on an unprecedented scale, but Renoir was painting Venus-figures.
Part of me wants to object to his choice of subject-matter given the pressing issues of the times. Hey! Wake up! Men are being slaughtered because the rich cannot agree as to how to carve the carcass they’ve debauched. Take a stand! Workers of the World, Unite!!
But Renoir couldn’t be bothered with the babble of politics. His time was limited, and he was going to devote it to beauty, and he didn’t care what you said or what you thought.
Jonathan Richman didn’t wait to be stricken with a painful disease before he devoted his life to beauty. Had he stuck with the alienated, lovelorn schoolboy shtick he invented with songs like “Girlfren” and “She Cracked”, he’d have been easily as big as any of the CBGB bands like Blondie and Talking Heads.
But something happened to Jonathan Richman. My research indicates that he has not spoken much about it, and various biographers and journalists have had little insight on the matter. But it is clear that Jonathan Richman reached a point at which he felt that he had to choose, and he chose beauty.
I recall walking into Jim’s Records in Bloomfield (a neighborhood in Pittsburgh) in 1983 and seeing a display for the newly released “Jonathan Sings” by Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers. I’d heard and liked “Roadrunner,” and something told me to get this new album.
The opening song, “This Summer Feeling,” spoke of being haunted for the rest of your life by a nameless joy that cannot be tamed.
I had the privilege of seeing and hearing Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers at The Decade (legendary rock venue in Pittsburgh) as they toured in support of the album, and it was a life-changing experience. Jonathan Richman was the living example that tied it all together for me. He had rejected the things I was trying to reject and was doing what I had been trying to imagine myself doing.
He’d washed his hands of all the bullshit and had held onto the timeless truthful joyous elements of peoples’ rock’n’roll.
The poignancy and depth of his songs often come from what he does NOT say. He does not whine. He does not complain. But like the angels going through Sodom and Gomorrah in search of good men and finding none, Jonathan Richman searches for beauty and finds it in the form of chewing gum wrappers on the ground, the smell of diesel fumes from a bus, the dirt on the ankles of a girl on the swings in a park, a saxophone that “sounds like the cat dragged it in,” the proverbial lilies of the field.
Like Renoir, he is uncompromising but not arrogant or judgmental. He doesn’t resent or condemn. He praises, reflects, celebrates and shares. The world is at war, and men are dying on an unprecedented scale, but Jonathan Richman sings of beauty.
In Renoir’s later years, he was stricken with rheumatoid arthritis, the pain so severe that he had to choose between walking and painting because he did not possess the energy for both.
He chose painting.
A system was devised to allow his family and assistants to raise, lower and relocate the position of his chair so he could reach various portions of the canvas. From his wheelchair, he painted. When he was almost too weak to hold a brush, he painted.
When asked why he continued to paint when he was in such excruciating pain, he replied, “The pain will pass, but the beauty will live forever.”
Renoir had been so successful for so long that he had earned the privilege of being able to paint only what he wanted. (Interestingly enough, I recently read an interview with the late Sterling Morrison in which Sterling said that The Velvet Underground’s artistic success was due to PLAYING only what they wanted without regard for the pressures of the marketplace. What commercial success did for Renoir, commercial failure did for The Velvet Underground.)
Given the freedom to do whatever he chose, what did Renoir choose to paint? Beauty. For Renoir, beauty was most often expressed in the form of a woman. Women bathing. Women brushing their hair. The world was at war, and men were dying on an unprecedented scale, but Renoir was painting Venus-figures.
Part of me wants to object to his choice of subject-matter given the pressing issues of the times. Hey! Wake up! Men are being slaughtered because the rich cannot agree as to how to carve the carcass they’ve debauched. Take a stand! Workers of the World, Unite!!
But Renoir couldn’t be bothered with the babble of politics. His time was limited, and he was going to devote it to beauty, and he didn’t care what you said or what you thought.
Jonathan Richman didn’t wait to be stricken with a painful disease before he devoted his life to beauty. Had he stuck with the alienated, lovelorn schoolboy shtick he invented with songs like “Girlfren” and “She Cracked”, he’d have been easily as big as any of the CBGB bands like Blondie and Talking Heads.
But something happened to Jonathan Richman. My research indicates that he has not spoken much about it, and various biographers and journalists have had little insight on the matter. But it is clear that Jonathan Richman reached a point at which he felt that he had to choose, and he chose beauty.
I recall walking into Jim’s Records in Bloomfield (a neighborhood in Pittsburgh) in 1983 and seeing a display for the newly released “Jonathan Sings” by Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers. I’d heard and liked “Roadrunner,” and something told me to get this new album.
The opening song, “This Summer Feeling,” spoke of being haunted for the rest of your life by a nameless joy that cannot be tamed.
I had the privilege of seeing and hearing Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers at The Decade (legendary rock venue in Pittsburgh) as they toured in support of the album, and it was a life-changing experience. Jonathan Richman was the living example that tied it all together for me. He had rejected the things I was trying to reject and was doing what I had been trying to imagine myself doing.
He’d washed his hands of all the bullshit and had held onto the timeless truthful joyous elements of peoples’ rock’n’roll.
The poignancy and depth of his songs often come from what he does NOT say. He does not whine. He does not complain. But like the angels going through Sodom and Gomorrah in search of good men and finding none, Jonathan Richman searches for beauty and finds it in the form of chewing gum wrappers on the ground, the smell of diesel fumes from a bus, the dirt on the ankles of a girl on the swings in a park, a saxophone that “sounds like the cat dragged it in,” the proverbial lilies of the field.
Like Renoir, he is uncompromising but not arrogant or judgmental. He doesn’t resent or condemn. He praises, reflects, celebrates and shares. The world is at war, and men are dying on an unprecedented scale, but Jonathan Richman sings of beauty.