Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park" taught me a few things about painting. "Color and light" -- these can be major subjects, or even *the* subjects, of a work of art. The light can be more important than the faces or the hands.
"Why should I paint like you or like anyone else?" The job of the artist is to absorb the world and shine out whatever he or she has taken in. The work of art isn't an attempt to document facts. It is half-world/half-artist -- you can't disentangle the subject from the person who has observed and recorded that subject.
"Mademoiselles, I and my friend, we are but soldiers..." The artist melds with his subjects -- becomes a ventriloquist -- before he is able to make something truthful and new.
Beyond La Grande Jatte, the Art Institute of Chicago had two great features last week: a Frida Kahlo self-portrait and a doodle by Jean Cocteau. The Kahlo made me think of Nan Goldin bravely confronting her own scars -- showing her scars to the world. The Cocteau reminded me of soft-core "porn" sketches that the artist made at another point in his life -- Cocteau seems to say, through his drawings, "I'll draw whatever I want, in my own style, whenever I feel like it."
Three musicals (that I have seen) won the Pulitzer after "Sunday"'s Pulitzer win: "Rent," "Next to Normal," "Hamilton." Not one of these is on par with "Sunday in the Park With George." There are rumors of a Jonathan Groff revival. We can hope.
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