The other day, I was reading Billy Collins poetry and he started one with the Paul Cézanne quote, “With an apple I want to astonish Paris.” It only took a quick Google search to find that he did a lot of still-life paintings of apples, baskets of apples, apples and wine bottles, apples with skulls, and this pile of skulls.

My boys love skulls and skeletons. Ben has had a spine (a gift from a Chiropractor) in his closet since he was four or five. He has collections of body books, because he showed a very early interest in becoming a doctor. Who knows if that interest will continue, but the fascination for bones is still big.

Tonight was Art and Music night, and I thought they would like to copy some of the art of Paul Cézanne while listening to music that was potentially an inspiration to him. We found that Claude Debussy was of the same basic time-frame. So, we listened to sweeping, gorgeous, classical music and sketched skulls. Good times.

Bean was bummed that we missed out on Math Games last night because wrestling seemed to be more important and all consuming at the time. So, Bean and I started working on puzzles while Ben sketched.

Suddenly, Ben’s head popped up and with wide eyes, he announced that he was going to blend the artistry of Cezanne and “the guy who painted the melting clocks” (Salvador Dali) to come up with his own version of the two. And therefore, tonight we have melting skulls. It’s not as twisted as it might appear at first. These are two great artists. This is a very young artist at play, exploring, mashing-up, and learning from other artists that he is learning about along the way.

This Cezanne artwork is in the Public Domain…