Comments | yankee_in_texas: Bert's Poem inspired by a painting and a discussion of color

yankee_in_texas

Bert's Poem inspired by a painting and a discussion of color

Mar 17, 2009 16:03

An Untitled Poem by Bert
inspired by "Portrait of Emile Bernard" by Emile Schuffenecker, c. 1889
on display at the MFAH
(no online image is available and believe me, I looked!)

The man in the twilight-zone blue coat has sleepy pink thoughts of flowers.
He has watery blue-green worries
And his sadness is green like the ocean.

Comments 10

photosprout March 17 2009, 21:50:00 UTC

But look! This has to be it, I knew it was this picture when I saw it:

https://www.1st-art-gallery.com/Henri-De-Toulouse-Lautrec/Portrait-Of-The-Artist-Emile-Bernard-1886.html

yankee_in_texas March 17 2009, 21:57:54 UTC

Nope, that's not it! The one we were looking at was another portrait of Emile Bernard, painted by this French guy with a not-French last name. Bernard was in the foreground, with a diagonal background showing a table with some pink flowers in the upper left corner and the upper right corner full of blue-green-yellow tones. Emile Bernard is painted with red hair and beard, and over his right shoulder floats a small image of a woman's head, no facial features, with dark hair and a sky-blue scarf flowing over her hair.

It didn't look sad to me, until Bert said it did. Then suddenly I could see it, the longing in his face.

photosprout March 17 2009, 23:15:50 UTC

Aww, I was so sure! He looks sad and longing, and there is blue/green all over.

yankee_in_texas March 18 2009, 00:09:20 UTC

I guess Emile Bernard was sad a lot. The one you found was from 1886, and the one we saw was from 1889.
Wikipedia on Emile Bernard's life

anonymous March 18 2009, 01:02:21 UTC

I think you have a poet for a son!

anonymous March 18 2009, 01:03:37 UTC

(That last comment comes from a friend in Vermont, btw.)

yankee_in_texas March 18 2009, 06:41:32 UTC

Wow! So cool you are reading! Hi!

The poems came out of a family art museum tour. There were my two plus one other little girl. Bert wrote about feelings, Ernie wrote about movement and colors, and the other little girl wrote a beautiful poem that described the picture she chose. They were amazing.

We looked at a piece of art and wrote down the colors we saw, plus a descriptor (so, watery blue, green like the ocean, spinach green, shining white, etc). Then we wrote some connecting phrases about the colors. You guys can try it too - it makes for really nifty kid poems.

Ernie didn't exactly follow the directions. How unusual for her (not). She felt it was more important to rhyme.

allochthon March 18 2009, 04:27:15 UTC

watery blue-green worries
Yeah, that.

anonymous March 18 2009, 13:55:21 UTC

I don't know many adults that could write this. This in incredible! The conceptualization far exceeds what would be normal for someone three times his age.
DFIL

yankee_in_texas March 20 2009, 23:03:54 UTC

He had a lot of help, though. There were instructions (color plus descriptor) and he had help thinking of what to write. He came up with all the feelings himself. But the poem would be less impressive, I think, with more lines (he ran out of time before he could come up with something about "silly orange").

On the other hand, it was sure fun, and the coincidence (priming of each by the others?) of all the ocean/water words made it nifty, to me.