Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.
—Oscar Wilde
image: Pierre Bonnard, L'Atelier au Mimosa, Le Cannet—even more amazing in the flesh (or in the oil and canvas, rather). As my character Isabel experienced it, in my Bonnard novel Nude Against the Light:
For Isabel it became suddenly bright again. At the Centre Pompidou there was among the others a Bonnard beyond telling—colors in absolutely perfect combination, a red worth having lived for. Studio with Mimosa, lost in reproduction. She sat and bathed in its radiance, marvelling. The others were good too, very good indeed, but this was perhaps the best of all, ever. Not a wrong note. As she sat lost in the colors, she was saddened to see people come into the room and leave again almost immediately, not realizing what a transformative experience they might have had, if they had only paused, looked closer. She felt sorry for them. She repeated the artist’s words, “And it’s because people have no idea how to look that they hardly ever understand.”
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