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Unfinished, exaggerated designs of vastness

November 23, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

A large fan-shaped poplar was leafing playfully in front of this completely supportless blue, in front of the unfinished, exaggerated designs of a vastness which the good Lord holds out before him without any knowledge of perspective.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

OCTOBER 11, 1907

… it was wonderful to come to the quais today, spacious, wafting, cool. In the east behind Notre-Dame and Saint-Germain l‘Auxerrois all of the last, gray, half-discarded days had bunched together, and before me, over the Tuileries, toward the Arc de l’Étoile, lay something open, bright, weightless, as if this were a place leading all the way out of the world.

Paul Cezanne. View of L’estaque and Chateaux d’If. 1885.

A large fan-shaped poplar was leafing playfully in front of this completely supportless blue, in front of the unfinished, exaggerated designs of a vastness which the good Lord holds out before him without any knowledge of perspective.

Paul Cezanne. Bottom of the ravine. 1879. Click the image to zoom in on Google Cultural Institute.

LANDSCAPE OF WORDS

No paintings are mentioned in this letter, but do you notice how Rilke’s own landscapes are changing in response to his encounter with paintings? I have included some to share with you my own perception of this change…

SEEING PRACTICE: SKY

What is the sky? A blue horizontal plane above us? Or a backdrop, a vertical plane against which we see whatever it is we see, without any knowledge of perspective? How do you think about the sky? How do you see it?

And suddenly one has the right eyes

November 22, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

But it takes a long, long time. When I remember the puzzlement and insecurity of one’s first confrontation with his work, along with his name, which was just as new. And then for a long time nothing, and suddenly one has the right eyes …

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

Here we are, finally: the letter that inspired this program.

The right eyes: suddenly seeing what has been invisible before. The miracle of an insight born out of chaos, confusion, puzzlement.

October 10, 1907

Meanwhile I’m still going to the Cézanne room, which, I suppose, you can somewhat imagine by now, after yesterday’s letter. I again spent two hours in front of particular pictures today; I sense this is somehow useful for me.

Would it be revealing for you?

Paul Cezanne. Ile de France landscape. 1880.

I can’t really say it in one breath. One can really see all of Cézanne’s pictures in two or three well-chosen examples, and no doubt we could have come as far in understanding him somewhere else, at Cassirer’s for instance, as I find myself advancing now.

But it takes a long, long time.

When I remember the puzzlement and insecurity of one’s first confrontation with his work, along with his name, which was just as new. And then for a long time nothing, and suddenly one has the right eyes …

I would almost prefer, if you should be able to come here some day, to lead you to the Déjeuner sur l’herbe, to this female nude seated among the green mirrorings of a leafy wood, every part of which is Manet, shaped by an indescribable expressive capacity which suddenly, after many unavailing attempts, came about, was there, succeeded.

Edouard Manet. The luncheon on the grass. 1863.

All his means were released and dissolved in succeeding: you’d almost think no means were used at all. I stood in front of it for a long time yesterday.

But it’s valid, the miracle, only for one person, every time; only for the saint to whom it happens.

Cézanne had to start all over again, from the bottom…

THE WORK

Rilke writes:

But it’s valid, the miracle, only for one person, every time; only for the saint to whom it happens. Cézanne had to start all over again, from the bottom…

I wonder whether this is really true. Or, to be more precise, in which sense it is true, and to what extent.

How does it align with Rilke’s own earlier observations on the evolution of painting insights?

Every artist must follow their unique experience of reality all the way to the end. This is the only path to a universally valid insight, an insight that EXPANDS human vision and consciousness: through this artist, in their artwork, humanity sees something it couldn’t see before.

This miracle, then, is valid for all of us, the spectators and fellow artists alike.

And even though every single one of us has to follow the path of our own unique experience, but do we really start “from the bottom”?

Do we not start with the sense of vision expanded and transformed by others?

SEEING PRACTICE: Cézanne radical newness

Above is another of Cézanne’s painting that shows us his singular vision in the process of its emergence. Can we still experience Rilke’s puzzlement? Can we still see how radically new Cézanne’s vision was at the time?

And he was just studying the nature, just painting what he really saw, just following the path of his experience all the way to the end.

To stand for the whole world and all joy and all glory

November 21, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

And (like van Gogh) [Cézanne] makes his “saints” out of such things; and forces them—forces them—to be beautiful, to stand for the whole world and all joy and all glory, and doesn’t know whether he has persuaded them to do it for him.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

OCTOBER 9, 1907 (Part 4)

… Out there, something vaguely terrible on the increase; a little closer by, indifference and mockery, and then suddenly this old man in his work, painting nudes only from old sketches he had made forty years ago in Paris, knowing that Aix would not allow him a model.

“At my age,” he says—“I couldn’t get a woman below fifty at best, and I know it wouldn’t even be possible to find such a person in Aix.” So he uses his old drawings as models.

And lays his apples on bed covers which Madame Brémond will surely miss some day, and places a wine bottle among them or whatever he happens to find. And (like van Gogh) makes his “saints” out of such things; and forces them—forces them—to be beautiful, to stand for the whole world and all joy and all glory, and doesn’t know whether he has persuaded them to do it for him.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

SEEING PRACTICE: THINGS as Saints

Rilke returns to the idea of making “saints” out of simple things, like van Gogh, as though forgetting that this is actually his own idea. Van Gogh wanted to paint saints, or people-as-saints.

That everything he painted became as-saints: this is pure Rilke.

So is it the artists — van Gogh, Cézanne, Rilke — that make “saints” out of things, and “force” them to be beautiful?

Or is it their essence, their inalienable quality, to be sacred, and beautiful, and joyful — and all the artist does is show us what already is, as it is?

Once we have seen them as saints in paintings, can we then, from now on, see them like this in our daily lives?

In painting you can suddenly come upon something so huge that no one can deal with it

November 20, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

Zola had understood nothing; it was Balzac who had foreseen or forefelt that in painting you can suddenly come upon something so huge that no one can deal with it.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

OCTOBER 9, 1907 (Part 3)

He became well known in Paris, and gradually his fame grew.

But he had nothing but mistrust for any progress that wasn’t of his own making (that others had made, let alone how); he remembered only too well how thoroughly Zola (a fellow Provençal, like himself, and a close acquaintance since early childhood) had misinterpreted his fate and his aspirations in L’Oeuvre.

From then on, any kind of scribbling was out: “Travailler sans le souci de personne et devenir fort—” he once shouted at a visitor.

But when the latter, in the middle of a meal, described the novella about the Chef d’Oeuvre inconnu (I told you about it once), where Balzac, with unbelievable foresight of future developments, invented a painter named Frenhofer who is destroyed by the discovery that there really are no contours but only oscillating transitions—destroyed, that is, by an impossible problem——,

Paul Cezanne. On the bank of a river. 1904-1905. Click to zoom in (on Google Cultural Institute).

the old man, hearing this, stands up, despite Madame Brémond, who surely did not appreciate this kind of irregularity, and, voiceless with agitation, points his finger, clearly, again and again, at himself, himself, himself, painful though that may have been.

Zola had understood nothing; it was Balzac who had foreseen or forefelt that in painting you can suddenly come upon something so huge that no one can deal with it.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

Rilke recounts an episode from Émile Bernard’s ‘Memories of Paul Cézanne’ (1907):

one evening, when I spoke to him of “Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu” and Frenhofer, the hero of Balzac’s tragedy, he got up from the table, stood before me and, striking his chest with his index finger, confessed wordlessly by this repeated gesture that he was the very character in the novel. He was so moved that his eyes filled with tears. One of his predecessors, who had a prophetic soul, had understood him. (Translated by Alex Danchev, in The Letters of Paul Cézanne).

Even though Bernard doesn’t say so explicitly, Rilke seems to have inferred that Cézanne hadn’t read the novel. Nothing could be further from truth. Cézanne was a well-educated and well-read man. Alex Danchev writes in his introduction to “The Letters”:

His bedside reading was Balzac: a well-thumbed copy of the “Études philosophiques”, including “Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu”, another source of self-projection.

SEEING PRACTICE: ONENESS AND SEPARATION

The painting I added to this letter is one of those where Cézanne went through the experience of contour-less sensations of color “all the way to the end”. No contours, only “oscillating transitions”, so that the reality itself seems to dissolve just as we are beginning to see it as it is.

A mutual struggle between two procedures

November 19, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

I think there was a conflict, a mutual struggle between the two procedures of, first, looking and confidently perceiving, and then of appropriating and making personal use of what has been perceived.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

Cézanne created his own process of building up color in paintings from life. It was unlike anything the world of painting had seen before.

We know this process from his own letters, and from observations of fellow painters, and, most significantly, from his unfinished works.

To complement Rilke’s description, I have included three paintings of the same motive, which show three different stages of his process.

October 9, 1907 (Part 2)

And all the while <…> he exacerbated the difficulty of his work in the most willful manner. While painting a landscape or a still life, he would conscientiously persevere in front of the subject, but approach it only by very complicated detours.

Beginning with the darkest tones, he would cover their depth with a layer of color that led a little beyond them, and keep going, expanding outward from color to color, until gradually he reached another, contrasting pictorial element, where, beginning at a new center, he would proceed in a similar way.

Paul Cezanne. Mont Sainte-Victoire. 1887.

I think there was a conflict, a mutual struggle between the two procedures of, first, looking and confidently perceiving, and then of appropriating and making personal use of what has been perceived;

Paul Cezanne. Mont Sainte-Victoire. 1890.

that the two, perhaps as a result of becoming conscious, would immediately start opposing each other, talking out loud, as it were, and go on perpetually interrupting and contradicting each other.

Paul Cezanne. Mont Sainte-Victoire. 1895.

And the old man endured their discord, ran back and forth in his studio, which was badly lit because the builder had not found it necessary to pay attention to this strange old bird whom the people of Aix had agreed not to take seriously.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

INTERCOURSE OF COLORS. CONSCIOUS AWARENESS

At this point, Rilke doesn’t really understand the whys and wherefores of Cézanne’s process, but this will change in a few days.

His use of the word “willful” is particularly jarring to my ear, because there is simply no other way to achieve Cézanne’s realization of color. There is nothing willful, nothing random about this process.

Rilke’s note about the mutual struggle of two procedures touches a theme which he returns to, time and again: the artist’s CONSCIOUS AWARENESS of their own process and insights.

SEEING PRACTICE: ONENESS AND SEPARATION

Cézanne wrote to Émile Bernard on October 23, 1905:

So, old as I am, around seventy, the color sensations that create light are the cause of abstractions that do not allow me to cover my canvas, nor to pursue the delimitation of objects when their points of contact are subtle, delicate; the result of which is that my image or painting is incomplete.

On the other hand, the planes fall on top of one another, from which comes the neo-Impressionism that outlines [everything] in black, a defect that must be resisted with all one’s might. But consulting nature gives us the means of achieving this goal.

In the three paintings I attached to this letter, one can see this struggle between overlapping “color sensations” and black contours trying to hold everything together, or rather to keep objects apart.

I don’t see it as a struggle between perception and “appropriation”, as Rilke describes it. Rather, it is a struggle between two modes of perception, one that sees separate objects, and one that sees only unified vibrations of color.

A reality intensified and potentiated to the point of indestructibility

November 18, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

To achieve the conviction and substantiality of things, a reality intensified and potentiated to the point of indestructibility by his experience of the object, this seemed to him to be the purpose of his innermost work.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

In his description of Cézanne as a man, Rilke relied mostly on Émile Bernard, and his article “Souvenirs sur Cézanne” (1907); it doesn’t seem to have been the most reliable of sources (which Rilke intuited).

But Cézanne himself also contributed to a vaguely caricature legend of himself as (in Bernard’s words) “an event which most people no longer had the patience to experience”.

OCTOBER 9, 1907 (PART 1)

… today I wanted to tell you a little about Cézanne.

With regard to his work habits, he claimed to have lived as a Bohemian until his fortieth year. Only then, through his acquaintance with Pissarro, did he develop a taste for work. But then to such an extent that for the next thirty years he did nothing but work.

Actually without joy, it seems, in a constant rage, in conflict with every single one of his paintings, none of which seemed to achieve what he considered to be the most indispensable thing.

Paul Cezanne. Self-portrait in a felt hat. 1894.

La réalisation, he called it, and he found it in the Venetians whom he had seen over and over again in the Louvre and to whom he had given his unreserved recognition.

To achieve the conviction and substantiality of things, a reality intensified and potentiated to the point of indestructibility by his experience of the object, this seemed to him to be the purpose of his innermost work.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

THE WORK

Cézanne writes to Bernard on July 15, 1904:

<…> The greatest, you know them better than I, the Venetians and the Spaniards.

In order to make progress in realization, there is only nature, and an eye educated by contact with it. It becomes concentric by dint of looking and working.

I mean that in an orange, an apple, a ball, a head, there is a culminating point, and this point is always the closest to our eye, the edges of objects recede towards a centre placed at eye level.

With only a little temperament one can be a lot of painter. One can do good things without being either a great harmonist or a great colourist. All you need is an artistic sensibility. And doubtless this sensibility horrifies the bourgeois. So institutes, pensions and honours are only for cretins, jokers and rascals.

Don’t be an art critic, paint. Therein lies salvation.

SEEING PRACTICE: Cézanne

It is interesting to look at Cézanne’s own head, in this self-portrait above, with his own description of his way of seeing it:

I mean that in an orange, an apple, a ball, a head, there is a culminating point, and this point is always the closest to our eye, the edges of objects recede towards a centre placed at eye level.

Can you see what he means?