On an exotic summer Sunday I step into the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and head not toward a vision but a sound.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cIt\u2019s the light or, rather, the lack of light in The Outskirts of Paris that makes this dirt road and the man in it faceless and gray and in need of southern France sunlight which my incandescent brain will soon enliven with images of imminent death,\u201d says the painter, exhaling on canvas. <\/p>\n
\t\u201cI\u2019m tired of always hearing about you and not only from others but from you, especially you, forever painting yourself and even fields and buildings and rooms to reflect the agony you want everyone to know about,\u201d says the man in the road. \u201cI ran into you too early, in 1886, before you understood portraiture and transcended the blurry shortcut of impressionistic faces. Had you been more advanced, you\u2019d have painted me as gritty and disturbed as you later portrayed yourself and others, and I\u2019d be on book covers and posters and in magazines and exhibition catalogues and celebrated as a glamorous misfit instead of a dreary, unidentifiable poor man in one of your journeyman works.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cDrop that stick, I warn you,\u201d says the painter. <\/p>\n
\t\u201cYou want the stick, here it is,\u201d he says, striking from canvas. <\/p>\n
\tI rush to the fallen painter. \u201cAre you all right?\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWhy don\u2019t you ask me?\u201d says the man in the road. <\/p>\n