Soutine: A Poem

One of the advantages poetry has in telling a story is its cinematographic quality-its reliance on imagery and a creative interpretation of events. Meetings and dialogue included in Soutine are created on the basis of biographical sources such as those listed below. While I have accorded myself a great deal of what might be called, in the best sense, poetic license, few scenes are entirely imagined, and these tend to take place in bedrooms. The book is finally my depiction of the artist's experience as I interpret and intuit it from his work and from the small spread of biographical sketches available in English, from letters, and from photographs. In essence, I present my experience of Soutine.I hope the reader of Soutine will also have a book of his paintings at hand as a reference. The Taschen catalogue raisonné, with essays by Maurice Tuchman, Esti Dunow, and Klaus Perls, is the most comprehensive. Rick Mullin, October 31, 2011Here the mystery of the greatest painting shines forth, flesh more like flesh than flesh itself, nerves more like nerves than nerves, even if they are painted with streams of rubies, with sulfur on fire, droplets of turquoise, emerald lakes crushed with sapphires, streaks of purple and pearl, a palpitation of silver that quivers and shines, a wondrous flame that wrings matter to its depths after having smelted all the jewels of its mines.-Elie FaureThis painter of genius came from a society in which there was not simply no background of painting but a positive hostility to painting, so that painting for him was not just a luxury but a forbidden fruit.-David Sylvester