JS Cartier . . . Peintre Extraordinaire . . .

While on the subject of excellent painters, an earlier posting below in this blog covered an incredible book (Traces de la Grande Guerre) of black and white photographs done by Jean Cartier showing visible traces of World War One along the entire Western Front from Belgium to Switzerland as they could still be seen over the years it took to produce the photos for the book in the late 1980's, early 1990's. But Jean Cartier is also an extraordinary painter. . . and I would like to extend a giant "Thank You" to him for taking time the other day to show my wife and I some of his beautiful paintings, as well as a stunning series of photographs he did in southern Utah quite a few years ago. His photographs are equally as good as work by some of my favorite photographers like Eliot Porter, Ansel Adams, or Garry Winogrand. The only problem is, now I'm hooked, and I want to see alot more. . .

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This postcard was on a wall in his studio. As you can imagine I loved the zebras. . . and it also reminded me of the Calvin & Hobbes cartoon posted way below here about the world only turning color in the 20th century.

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And Jean's two cats were perfectly happy sharing the radiator that chilly March afternoon. . .

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Traces of War

One of the most incredibly beautiful books I've ever had the good fortune to find by chance in a bookstore is this one by J.S. Cartier ; "Traces de la Grande Guerre". Mr Cartier spent literally years and thousands of kilometres travelled to photograph sites in lovely large format black and white where traces of the 1914 - 1918 war remain visible in Belgium and France. This book is out of print at present, but if you have the chance to purchase it somewhere, don't miss it. He also has a web site where more of his widely varied photography and paintings can be seen. Merci Mr Cartier pour tout cela... it is clearly a labor of love...

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Musical Echoes

While still thinking about that stone quarry cave complex where that fleet of dream cars is parked, there was another piece of graffiti there dating from the 1914 to 1918 conflict, carved to immortalize the 262nd musical group... I wonder if the band played in the quarry halls, and if so, how the acoustics were? And whether the skeleton crew mentioned below can hear the echoes all these years later...
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