[Image: “A Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte” by Georges Seurat (1884)]
“White. A blank canvas, his favorite, so many possibilities …”
“Sunday, by the blue purple yellow red water!” So begins the entry to Steven Sondheim’s magnificent choral rendition from the musical “Sunday in the Park with George,” an exploration of the art of imagination and an unbridled musical celebration of the co-creative drama of life. Ostensibly, the story is about a historical 19th-century artist, Georges Seurat, whose mastery of “Pointillism,” the conjoining of color and light by the human eye, marked a watershed in art history. His innovative work, blending impressionism with the emergent science of visual acuity, was largely reviled by his peers, and he remained a pariah in his professional circles during his life. By painting millions of colored dots on an enormous canvas, colors that were not mixed on the palette but fused by the human eye from a distance, Seurat invited his audience into a dance with the art itself, preferring to titillate and inspire the imagination with perceptual nuance rather than paint easily discernible faces and natural features to impress the observer. He invited the co-creative act to be the heart of the art itself, “the art of making art,” as Sondheim mused.
Act 2 of the musical takes place in the 20th century and features George’s reputed great-grandson, also named George, through the lineage of his mistress and model, aptly named “Dot.” The second act highlights the journey of the great grandson, George—an artistic inventor—as he struggles with professional malaise, depression and interpersonal discord. His grandmother, Dot’s and Seurat’s illegitimate daughter, encourages him to make a trip to the Isle of La Grande Jatte, the original George’s inspiration for the now-famous painting. George acquiesces, only to discover that the island has been overrun by industrial development, overcome with smog and noise. Almost nothing but a single tree is left to identify the island from the painting, the legacy of the Industrial onslaught that the original George’s mother decried in Act 1. At the end of Act 2, young George’s great grandmother, Dot, appears in his imagination to encourage him in his melancholic quest to make a connection, and to create something new.
“What are you working on?” she asks him. “I’m not working on anything new,” he replies. “Move on!” she tells him. “Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new. Give us more to see!” The younger George begins to read from her 19th-century diary, left to him as a legacy by his grandmother. “Dot, I cannot read these words.” “They are your words, George!” she tells him, thinking he is her own beloved Georges who painted the masterpiece. He reads them aloud: “Order. Design. Tension. Composition. Balance. Light. Harmony.”
Have a listen: https://youtu.be/qFBbmsThAR8
When we create, when we open to the light, we are called into the wonder that is the co-creative act, conjoining the colors and contours of our lives with the creative energy alive in the universe. The medium is never quite the same, but the message is consistent: Delight! Joy! Love! Connection! Creation! Unity! We reflect God’s own joy, God’s pure delight at the infinite possibilities, the sheer exuberance and excitement of being able to create something totally new, something truly beautiful and unique. If we feel spiritually stuck, remaining in old habits, patterns or ways of thinking that do not give life, but instead perpetuate malaise, discord, boredom, anxiety or hopelessness, it’s time to take a page from the artist’s sketch pad, or a bit of parchment from open manuscript. We have to “leave a little space in the way, like a window … to see! It’s the only way to see.” The artist knows that in order to put it all together and enter into the co-creative drama, we have to have a little bit of space for reflection, for contemplation. Then, we must take that first fierce step. We must act our way into a new way of thinking and being. “We have to move on!”
Live in de-Light. Live in Love. Connect. Connect. Connect.
“Sunday” from “Sunday in the Park with George”
[Chorus]
Sunday, by the blue purple yellow red water
On the green purple yellow red grass
Let us pass through our perfect park
Pausing on a SundayBy the cool blue triangular water
On the soft green elliptical grass
As we pass through arrangements of shadow
Toward the verticals of trees
ForeverBy the blue purple yellow red water
On the green orange violet mass of the grass
In our perfect park[George]
Made of flecks of light
And dark
And parasols
Bum bum bum bum bum bum
Bum bum bum[Chorus]
People strolling through the trees
Of a small suburban park
On an island in the river
On an ordinary Sunday
Sunday—Steven Sondheim (1930–2021), rest in Peace
—Laura Weber, Prairiewoods associate director and retreats coordinator