Adam’s Hat Trick, 2007
Glazed porcelain
Hat: 3 ¾’ x 10 ½” x 5 ½”, with 25 cards
When I learned that our son Adam was becoming adept at online poker in college, like any good mom, I freaked. When he began having success in European, Australian and Las Vegas casinos, we made sure he engaged a financial advisor and a spiritual advisor. I, in turn, turned to too many websites on addiction, etc., and finally found solace in Leonard Cohen’s “Stranger Song”. There he muses about the “holy game of poker”, evoking images of a window sill, smoke curling up, and “sweeping up the jokers left behind”. The quiet camaraderie of the game was also visualized by Paul Cezanne in his paintings of card players made in the 1890’s. Learning that Cezanne was a devout Catholic, and considered card playing to be a metaphor for art making, I began to look closely at those paintings. Sometimes we see what we want to see, but I think there is a good chance that Cezanne, the most irascible of artists, is presenting us with a sacramental activity. In my own faith experience this means that ordinary objects and activities become invested with the holy, release truth and grace, and offer us a deep sense of being fully known. A sacrament enables us to see more than what is visible—divine Presence--and to sense that we and the world are all connected. As Frederick Buechner says, a sacrament is “a transparent glimpse into the center of life, an almost unbearable preciousness.” The Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation—that the bread and wine actually become Christ’s body and blood—is not too far from present day theories in quantum physics. Much has been written about Cezanne’s apples…”Be an apple” he said, as he endlessly explored the apple as matter, existing as it is. As it is, which is compacted energy…not a far leap from the transformation of the host.
Cezanne’s faith has been explained away as a symptom of anxiety or old age, and he’s sometimes called a church-going heathen. What church-goer isn’t? He was a very flawed character; he was an argumentative workaholic, suspicious, acutely lonely and disliked being touched. However, in his painting technique of layering brushstrokes, he evokes the mystical notion of interconnectedness. He rarely used religious subject matter, but spoke of interrelationships that evoke permanency and universal truths. Like many artists today, Cezanne saw the oneness of spiritual vision and physical sight. Cezanne apparently had a conversion experience in his 50’s. He ceased fighting his solitude and was able to see it as the incubator for his art, an act of acceptance that heightened his creative powers. By the 1890’s, when he painted five versions of the “Card Players”, he was devoted to weekly Mass. Tables and wine appear in many of Cezanne’s still lifes. Wine on table is Spirit on altar to a Catholic, and in the latter Card Player paintings the table is up front and obvious and the bottle becomes central. Was Cezanne familiar with Caravaggio’s “Supper at Emmaus”, with its similar composition of figures around a table?
It is my conjecture that the Eucharist ameliorated Cezanne’s pain, gave him a place to direct his thanks, and possibly fueled his art making. It didn’t make him nice or pious (thankfully), but it sustained him. Even when it is bungled, holy communion is about communion, togetherness. Modern interpretations of the doctrine of the Trinity also emphasize its relational qualities-- its threesome--and the Trinity may also be subtly evoked in these paintings. Perhaps Cezanne realized this Presence as an antidote for the emptiness that cannot be filled by either people or work. As the paintings progress, the hands of the players draw closer together, recalling the all-too-familiar hands of God and Adam in Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling fresco, and much later, the gap between hands in Matisse’s “Dance”.
My reconciliation with poker has come from our son himself. Adam has shown responsibility, self-control, and philanthropic instincts. He respects strong, ethical competitors and admires players. For his graduation from Trinity University I made him a porcelain sculpture that attempts to playfully honor his serious intentions.
In the following story, a version of which will be published in The Blue Rock Review, Chlora mixes metaphors of art history, poker, scripture, politics and Christian theology into a loose narrative about seeing. All of this was spawned by those five Cezanne paintings, which can be found here. I am indebted to my friend Rick Brettell, an expert on 19th century French art, for encouraging me to delve into the spiritual dimensions of modernism, and especially to the book he recommended by Kurt Badt, “The Art of Cezanne”.
CHLORA PLAYS JOKER POKER
Ginger Henry Geyer
Cezanne, grave man,
pondered the scene
and saw it with passion
as orange and green,
and weighted his strokes
with days of decision,
and founded on apples
theologies of vision.
(John Updike, excerpt from “Les Saints Nouveaux” from Telephone Poles, Alfred A. Knopt, Inc., 1963.)
A big dinner accompanied by rain made an already
sleepy Sunday even sleepier. Chlora rubbed her eyes,
took a jolting gulp of grape soda and propped up her
library book closer to her face.
She had on her comfy corduroy whistle britches,
and she curled up on the window seat in her grandfather’s study,
or library, or game room, whatever you call it.
She called it his smokin’ room.
Drips, like vertical rivers, made a mirage on the window; it fogged up.
Chlora was seeing through the glass darkly. She drew cartoons
face to face on the cool glass with her finger.
She wiped off the pane with the hem of the burgundy velvet drapes.
In the reflection, she practiced her best poker face,
then noticed a curious overlay of images.
The bookshelves behind her appeared on the glass,
superimposed on the view outside—it was lush with the greens and blues
of afternoon--and the montage of books and nature broke up the space
into flat planes, like the Cezanne landscape paintings in her book.
When you’re looking for something, it pops up everywhere.
She glanced at her book again.
It was the one on “French Impressionism: A New Way of Seeing”
that she had checked out last month. It had practically jumped off
the shelf and into her hands. But her puppy chewed up the corner of it,
which meant Chlora had to empty her piggybank
to pay for the damage. But then the nice librarian gave her the book.
The slobbery teeth marks certainly didn’t deter Chlora from flipping through the pages.
On the last page it showed the same picture that was on Granddaddy’s wall right here.
Figure the odds on that!
Paul Cezanne, The Card Players, (Musee d’Orsay, Paris)
It was just a poster, curled up at the bottom,
of Cezanne’s “Card Players”, who seemed quite at home
here in the silent smokin’ room.
Granddaddy and his old geezer friends like to play
the holy game of poker in here on Saturday nights.
They told Grandmother they were just playing bridge.
Granddaddy and his friends didn’t talk much, just concentrated on their cards
and drank wine. As they fiddled with stacks of chips it sounded like
squirrels chattering. They chuckled about smoker poker
as they puffed on their cigars and pipes.
The room swelled with a sweet haze of cherry tobacco.
It lingered, blended with the musty smell of old books,
and embedded in the mahogany walls and drapes.
The room was a like a small cathedral coated with centuries of incense
that carried the prayers of the people into every nook and cranny
that God stuck his nose into.
Chlora didn’t know jack about poker, except that it used no jokers, no dice.
Whenever the geezers used a new deck, they’d discard
the jokers, so Chlora began collecting them to make her own deck.
Jokers from “Adam’s Hat Trick”, 2007
God seemed to like wild cards; she doubted that God ever threw them out,
even the racy ones. Chlora liked the one with the fancy Russian stripper.
She needed the cigar box or the fruit bowl to store her jokers,
but both of them were full. Instead she found an old ball cap to put her cards in.
It was the one Granddaddy wore when he mowed the lawn.
He let her ride in a small trailer behind the tractor mower,
and he taught her to whistle while you work, like the Seven Dwarfs.
“Adam’s Hat Trick” (Trinity University cap with cards), 2007.
Hat 3 ¾” x 10 ½” x 5 ½”
Chlora prided herself on being able to whistle five different ways.
If it weren’t raining, she’d go outside and work on her bird calls
with her hand clasp, her number two whistle.
But no self respecting bird would venture out in this rain.
A duck might, since water rolls right off a duck’s back,
but for her duck call she needed a blade of thick summer grass,
number three. The clenched jaw whistling method was the loudest,
best used at ballgames and beauty contests. But that number four
made her jaw ache worse than when she chewed an oversized wad of gum.
The first way of whistling was great for tunes like
“I see the moon, the moon sees me, the moon sees somebody I want to see.
God bless the moon and God bless me,
and God bless the somebody I want to see.”
That one was a favorite of Granddaddy’s, good for night or day.
He was always blessing somebody even though he wasn’t a bonafide minister.
Or maybe he was, because his blessings carried on for years.
Chlora’s fifth way of whistling was her very own invention,
like a ventriloquist’s whistle, high up in her throat,
above the spot where humming originates.
She did this whistle with her mouth closed, but it could be heard only
in a very quiet place, like the classroom during a test
when you had to be still and know.
Chlora pitched her throat whistle to drive her teacher crazy.
She trilled “Be Thou My Vision” in her throat, even though
nobody was listening. She never could remember the lyrics
of this favorite hymn, but the tune alone was worth it.
It suddenly occurred to her that if there were five ways to whistle,
there could be five types of vision.
If those French artists found a new one, maybe she could too.
Why not give seeing as much attention as hearing,
since whatever you take in becomes part of you, like it or not.
First was the normal way of just opening your eyes to reality.
This is always a good idea before you get too creative,
and Chlora lamented that more people didn’t do it.
Second, there was her X-ray vision for seeing through.
This required sitting like a zombie and staring into thin air
until you could see the air molecules moving.
You could stare through something so long that it stared back.
A third way was seeing visions or signs from the great beyond,
not unlike having a slide show projected in your head.
These couldn’t be invented, just received, like omens to an old coot
prophet like Amos or Ezekiel. They could see connections everywhere
and warned people about hanging out in Sin City.
Fourth, you could always enhance your seeing with lenses,
like the dark glasses worn by poker players and Jesus.
Rose colored glasses did wonders for the world until you took them off.
Or you could blur reality and get a headache by borrowing
Granddaddy’s trifocals or binoculars.
Chlora once looked through a microscope and saw a whole new world,
and through a telescope she saw it’s opposite, making her wonder
if they weren’t all the same thing, just separated by size.
Fifth, Chlora could see things differently by simply altering her eyeballs.
Squinting sharpened her focus as did pulling back her eyelids.
And, by jiggling the Jell-O inside her eyeballs,
Chlora could also focus on different depths of field.
If you look at the surface of a bush you see its leaves,
farther in, you see its branches,
and beyond that you see what’s behind it all.
The book explained that Cezanne did the same thing with his landscapes.
Chlora decided to see what she could do with her collection of joker cards,
flat as the red rooftops in Cezanne’s paintings.
Most looked like court jesters who performed for kings and queens.
If their humor got too truthful, they could get booted out of the kingdom
or get their heads chopped off like John the Baptist.
She shuffled the wild cards and told them they’d be better off by seeking
the kingdom within. Those wild cards shouldn’t be domesticated,
but if they were to act like a true deck,
they needed a more uniform look on their backsides.
Chlora removed the thumbtacks from the poster of The Card Players.
She found a ruler, pencil, scissors and glue in the drawer.
She drew a grid on the poster and cut it into card size rectangles.
Then she carefully stuck them to the backs of the jokers.
The picture, now fragmented like a bad case of Postmodernism,
was more puzzling than ever. She couldn’t make head or tails of it.
She brought over her book and discovered that you had to look closer than ever,
because there was not just one picture of those Card Players, but five.
Cezanne “The Card Players”, Musee d’Orsay version, adaptation as card puzzle
in “Adam’s Hat Trick”
The first painting had five people, then four people,
and the last three paintings got down to the final table of two.
The paintings were like triplets who weren’t quite identical twins.
Barnes Collection
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Courtauld Museum, London
Embiricos Collection, Lausanne, Switzerland
Musee d’Orsay, Paris
It was like time lapse photography where two or three
had gathered together. It felt like something was in the midst of them,
a Third Thing—and yes, there it was, a wine bottle, smack in the center
of the picture where a third man had sat before.
The card players’ hands didn’t quite touch, but they got closer with each picture,
and the wine bottle seemed to bridge the gap.
The table seemed to be on fire, like a Presence seen.
The two old friends weren’t looking at the table or at each other,
but at their cards, and they were down to just a few.
They were calmly searching those cards like they wanted to bring out the best in them,
or perhaps they could stare them into a royal flush.
Chlora decided that the man on the left had become ordained in the process,
as his shirt had evolved into a priest’s collar.
This might happen to her Granddaddy’s shirts; she would go check later.
The whole scene had the solemnity of holy communion, even if it was just a game.
Something was unseen, yet you know it when it’s there.
Cezanne challenged Chlora to come up with a sixth way of seeing.
Cezanne apparently had eyes in the back of his head,
like her mother did. He could paint oranges and apples
with their backside and front side showing all at once.
Chlora attempted to curve her eyes around things but it made her go cross-eyed.
She wished she was an owl, and could turn her entire head around,
but then it might snap off, so seeing sideways would have to suffice.
Perhaps the sixth type of vision was seeing nothing and becoming invisible,
like love overtaking a body and floating it away, as when Jesus ascended.
Matter and energy take turns transforming all the time,
so she should try it. This would require the intensity of X-ray vision in reverse.
Darkness would help and silence was crucial.
Chlora found two wine corks in the ashtray and plugged her ears.
She crawled under the heavy oak table.
She covered her eyes with her cupped hands.
She opened her eyes and couldn’t see a darn thing.
She could hear nothing, no-thing.
She concentrated, held her breath, and felt herself becoming part of the table,
and part of the floor, and disappearing into the dark.
She pinched herself to be sure she hadn’t evaporated.
Then she attempted a faint bird call for morning doves.
In the waiting, a tingly, pale whistle replied in her right ear.
The nothingness glowed and Chlora was quite sure that she
was being seen, searched, and known.
It must be God since the moon wasn’t out yet. She rose up.
The light was as thick as sherry, no talk needed.
This sixth way, stop-look-and listen,
set off a challenge that now must be matched with a sixth way of whistling.
On top of the poker table there was an empty wine bottle.
Wine was off-limits, but it just sat there, being itself, gathering in the light.
She knew how to blow into a pop bottle, but this bottle was bigger than life.
She filled up her lungs, raised the bottle to her lips and blew
downward into it with all her heart, soul, and strength.
The green glass resounded with a low, rich moan like the
color of the draperies. The sound smelled like the fruit of the spirit.
This was a clue that next she must work on her sense of smell.
Maybe Granddaddy’s old bloodhound, Howard, could show her the way.
If love is blind, then love deserves to have a good seeing-eye dog.
She whistled for the dog and hollered:
“Howard-be-thy-name,
thy kingdom come, thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.”
Howard came bounding down the hall.
Together, till kingdom come,
they would discover six ways to sniff out a sacrament.
Later they could work on touching and tasting.
Chlora hummed “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and segued
into “O Taste and See, How Gracious the Lord Is”.
She observed the fruit bowl on the shelf and took an apple.
She turned it around and felt its shape change in her hands.
It smelled even better than an apple should, and she took a decisive,
toothsome bite, listening for the drippy, nameless sound that only apples make.
Cezanne was right, apples have it all.
She stuffed the jokers into the hat. They were all in this together.
Who knows? Maybe there is a sixth sense too.
It’s all in the cards.
Copyright 2007: All text and photographs of Ginger Henry Geyer’s art