I haven't written much about the research paper and I thought I should since its taking up rather a lot of brain space!
As I expected, I'm really rather enjoying it. There's an awful lot written about Cézanne and I'm rather enjoying sifting through it all looking for the bits that are relevant to my idea. Neil Bousfield has less written about him, but I feel very familiar with his website and I've found a research paper he wrote and several articles about him, I'm sure if I look harder I'll probably find some press releases describing his work from the Gallery point of you.
I've contacted Neil and asked whether he might agree to an interview over the summer and today he replied, agreeing - hurrah! I'm really pleased although the prospect is also incredibly nerve wracking. Most of my research so far has been focused on Cézanne which I think is to be expected since there's so much more written about him and obviously I can't interview him. I feel like I had a little breakthrough recently when I was reading John Berger's landscape book. He mentioned a writer called Max Raphael, who had written a whole essay about one of Cézanne's Mont Saine-Victoire paintings, but try as I might, other than find the listing and the fact that the book existed I couldn't find an online copy or a library that I could access with it in. My backup plan was to go to the British Library since I'm sure it would be in there, and I wasn't willing to pay the £1200 Amazon wanted for the only listed copy. I had all but given up and emailed Julia Flood (the librarian) to see if she could help in my search when I managed to find a two hour online loan of it. I quickly took screenshots of all the pages of it (which are yellow and slightly fuzzy), photographed it and used the text reader on my phone to create a word document, and then spent three days deciphering all the spelling mistakes that the technology has made due to the original images not being terribly clear. It's now all neatly printed off and ready to read properly. I know it's full of gems having already read it on screen. I'm just slightly worried that next I'm going to want to read all Cézanne's letters as so many seem to be quoted and they look fascinating... there also seem to be rather a lot. I now completely understand how people end up going from an MA to a PhD - it's just so fascinating! I must remember the making is the thing! (I definitely do not have the time for a PhD... maybe when the children are older .... HA!)
Anyway, I managed to escape to London on Tuesday and had a wonderful morning seeing 'After the Impressionists: Inventing Modern Art' at the National Gallery. I stood in front of the Mont Sainte-Victoire painting by Cezanne (apparently we should now drop the accent to spell his name as he originally did - traditional Provence spellings do not have accents at all but Parisians mispronounced his name so he adopted an accent in Paris - I wish I could do something similar with both my names since both Boddy (body) and Frize (rhymes with prize) seem problematic!) for an awfully long time. In fact I stood there so long that the two areas with a long stroke and then a couple of short strokes in green above the mountain actually began to annoy me, they look like fists holding up a fore-finger; yet I can imagine him painting them, the long stroke first then a couple of dashes and they seem quite satisfying. I realised I'm developing favourites. I've been looking at so many paintings of the mountain (in books/on screen rather than the flesh, sadly!) and there are definitely some that I prefer to others. I wish I could go back and see the Tate exhibition again, at least I can get the catalogue.
I feel like I've read a lot and yet I'm only skimming the surface of what I need to know. I must start to focus in on exactly what it is that I'm after. I'm constantly looking for hints in the writing about how Cezanne felt about the landscape and what his motivations were, I'm making progress but I haven't updated the actual paper since I submitted it and had the tutorial with Maiko.
The tutorial was very reassuring in that she confirmed that interviewing Neil Bousfield would be great and that there would be lots of information out there about Cezanne and the psychology of attachment to place etc. I came away feeling reassured but nothing more. I don't know what I was expecting, maybe a book recommendation or a new angle (although admittedly that could have been annoying and not reassuring!), other that the reassurance there was nothing else. I wondered whether I had missed an opportunity, other than asking whether she approved of my topic and the angle I was approaching it from I didn't have any further questions for her. Maiko seemed rather surprised that we finished with a little time to spare but I just didn't know what else to ask or add. I felt fairly confident since Jonathan had reassured me that he though the topic was a good one in my tutorial earlier that week so I was more interested to know what she made of it btu she didn't have a lot to say about the first draft. Other than outlining the premise of the paper and proving that I can write in reasonable English I don't think there was really much to say... I just need to get on with it! I do hope I get more feedback after the second draft though as I really do want to do a good job. This might well be the last piece of academic writing I ever do that I get graded on so some feedback would be wonderful. (See - really not planning the PhD!)
On that note I need to bury my node in some more books and print outs that I've photographed and scanned from books - I'm making excellent use of the text reader function on my phone!