Jeffrey Scheuer: A Visceral Connection to Art

Our connection over art was visceral, not intellectual. At some point early in my life, I remember, I was a stamp collector for a few years. One of my stamps was the French stamp of Cézanne’s The Card Players. Even at age ten or eleven, that stamp and that picture had an iconic power over me. I think I knew by that time that my grandfather had some Cézannes in his collection, but that’s all I knew. The stamp somehow became a totem for me. As I grew older, I became a pipe smoker and a card player myself. It is a very contemplative, peaceful image that somehow gave me pleasure in ways I couldn’t explain. Maybe what I got from Henry was a sense of the mystery of art. Sometimes you don’t have to explain it or understand why it pleases you. So the stamp was an emblem for me of my relationship to art through Henry.