The old and the new

If it is good, one can’t live to see it recognized

December 2, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

Basically, if it is good, one can’t live to see it recognized: otherwise it’s just half good and not reckless enough …

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

In the first part of this letter, Rilke observes visitors to the Salon, and their utter inability to see Cézanne’s work (even when it is already in the Salon, allowed and sanctified by the art world).

OCTOBER 16, 1907 (Part 2)

… One cannot expect that a time that is capable of gratifying aesthetic requirements of this order should be able to admire Cézanne and grasp anything of his devotion and hidden splendor.

The merchants make noise, that is all; and those who have a need to attach themselves to these things could be counted on the fingers of two hands, and they stand apart and are silent.

Edouard Manet. A bar at the Folies Bergere. 1882.

And someone told the old man in Aix that he was “famous.” He, however, knew better within himself and let the speaker continue.

Paul Cezanne. A boy in a red vest. 1890.

But standing in front of his work, one comes back to the thought that every recognition (with very rare, unmistakable exceptions) should make one mistrustful of one’s own work.

Vincent van Gogh. Sower with setting sun. 1888.

Basically, if it is good, one can’t live to see it recognized: otherwise it’s just half good and not reckless enough …

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

THE WORK. THE OLD AND THE NEW

… if it is good, one can’t live to see it recognized: otherwise it’s just half good and not reckless enough …

These words have been playing themselves in my head for many years now, as a counterbalance to our age’s pervasive belief that if the work is not recognized, it cannot be any good. This belief is built into the very foundation of what is called “art world”: quality in art is in effect equated with the art world’s recognition of it.

As though our age were somehow better at seeing than that of Cézanne, Monet, van Gogh, Rilke… But is it?

SEEING PRACTICE

Kandinsky believed that every work of art is eventually understood. For him, that meant a lot: that the spectator partakes in the same inner experience as the artist. In Kandinsky’s own words: the spectator souls vibrates in response to the work, playing as it were the motive embodied by it.

It is not the same as “recognition”: an art work can be “officially” recognized without being truly understood.

Nowadays, Cézanne, Monet, van Gogh are as “recognized” as it gets. Their exhibitions tend to be blockbusters, so much so that tickets often have to be secured well in advance. And the public certainly behaves more respectfully than those ladies and gentlemen Rilke witnessed in 1907.

But do we truly see the paintings, do we fully understand them? Is our age capable of grasping anything of Cézanne’s devotion and hidden splendor?

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.

Apples indestructible in their stubborn thereness

November 17, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

In Cézanne they cease to be edible altogether, that’s how thing-like and real they become, how simply indestructible in their stubborn thereness.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

Earlier in this letter, Rilke wrote about the evolution of the colour blue in painting, and Chardin as the intermediary on the path from the eighteenth-century blue to Cézanne’s blue.

Here, he traces a fundamentally similar development in the way objects are treated in painting.

OCTOBER 8, 1907 (Part 3)

… Chardin was the intermediary in other respects, too; his fruits are no longer thinking of a gala dinner, they’re scattered about on kitchen tables and don’t care whether they are eaten beautifully or not.

Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin. The Silver Goblet. 1728.

In Cézanne they cease to be edible altogether, that’s how thing-like and real they become, how simply indestructible in their stubborn thereness.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

POVERTY

In this letter, the theme of poverty may not be obvious (elsewhere, Rilke writes that Cézanne’s apples are all “cooking apples”; that is, a poor man’s apples). Here, it is not about poverty in the narrow, literal sense, but about the lack of pretenses, cultural symbolisms, refinements — these hallmarks of civilized, wealthy society.

Cézanne’s apples are simply things, seen and painted as they are, without any human meanings attached or implied (including being edible).

Paul Cezanne. Still life with apples and pears. 1887

SEEING PRACTICE: SIMPLY THINGS (APPLES)

We go through life projecting meanings and emotions onto things, and not even noticing that we do it most of the time. These projections shape our reality, which essentially means that they prevent us from SEEING reality.

Just notice how hard it can be to see an apple as it is, in its plain, objective thereness, without attaching any words and sensations to it, so that it is not tasty, or fresh, or healthy, or beautiful, or anything like this at all. It is neither a sign of autumn harvest, nor the symbol of the fall of man. It simply is.

It is in this plain THERENESS that Rilke feels affinity with Cézanne.

Every insight has its parvenus

November 15, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

… you notice two things right away: that every insight has its parvenus, upstarts who make a hue and cry as soon as they catch on,—and then, that perhaps it’s not so much a question of insights, which bring up too much consciousness.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

We often hear nowadays that all one needs to do to unleash one’s creativity is to go deep inside oneself. It is there, and only there, that our unique insights are to be revealed.

But this is not enough. If the artist’s vision, and their consciousness, are not informed, refined, expanded by the art of the past, then we are bound to re-invent wheels, and blindly believe our naive inventions to be new and unique.

Cézanne’s was a magnificent achievement, but it is deeply grounded in the work of his predecessors; just like no peak can exist without a mountain.

So Rilke goes to the Louvre.

He keeps dancing between the past and the present, discovering the past in the present (and vice versa).

OCTOBER 8, 2017 (PART 1)

It’s strange to walk through the Louvre after two days in the Salon d’Automne: you notice two things right away: that every insight has its parvenus, upstarts who make a hue and cry as soon as they catch on,—and then, that perhaps it’s not so much a question of insights, which bring up too much consciousness.

As if these masters in the Louvre didn’t know that painting is made up of color. I’ve looked at the Venetians: they’re of an indescribably radical colorfulness; you can feel how far it goes in Tintoretto.

Tintoretto. The coronation of the virgin. C. 1580. Click to see on the Louvre’s website.

Almost further than with Titian.

Titian. The Pastoral Concert. C. 1509. Click to see on the Louvre’s website.

And so on into the eighteenth century, where the only thing separating their color scale from Manet’s is the use of black.

Guardi has it, incidentally; it was unavoidable, right there in the middle of all that brightness, ever since the laws against extravagant display decreed the use of black gondolas.

Francesco Guardi. The Rialto Bridge with the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi. 1763.

But he still uses it more as a dark mirror than as a color; Manet was the first—encouraged by the Japanese, certainly—to give it equal value among the other colors.

Edouard Manet. Berthe Morisot with a Fan. 1872.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

INTERCOURSE of Colors

For Rilke, Cézanne’s major achievement is in color — in recreating reality in colors, in their mutual intercourse. Not every artist would agree with that, but I do.

So it is the pre-history of this achievement that he is looking for and seeing in the Louvre: opening the palette to pure primary colors, and including black as a color (rather than simply the absence of color, “the dark mirror” which absorbs all light).

SEEING PRACTICE: the COLOR BLACK

The difference between black as absence of color, as pure darkness, versus black as an equal among colors is rooted deeply in the biology of human vision.

The human eye has different photoreceptors for these two visual perceptions.

“Rods” are responsible for detecting the amount of light; for them, “black” means darkness. They are concentrated on the periphery of retina, and we use them mainly when there isn’t enough light to detect color differences.

“Cons” are concentrated in the centre of the retina, and they are responsible for color recognition. There are three types of cons, “red”, “blue” and “green”; for them, “black” means a certain combination of these signals, just like any other color.

To notice the difference between the two perceptions of black in real life, you can either squint (to decrease the amount of light perceived by the eye) or turn your head to use your peripheral vision.

For us, Cézanne is valid and moving and important

November 13, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

Cézanne is no longer possible for the old lady; but for us he is valid and moving and important.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

Rilke’s first visit to the Salon d’Automne, to Cézanne’s retrospective exhibition which is at the heart of the boo (Cézanne had died in 1906). A strange letter, suspended as it is between two alternative realities, the fictional no less real than the real.

Cézanne is not mentioned till the very last sentence, as though Rilke didn’t yet know how to approach him with words, and so invented a longer, round-about, path between the past and the future, lingering in the past.

OCTOBER 6, 1907

The old closed-down hotels in the Faubourg Saint-Germain with their white-gray shutters, their discreet gardens and courtyards, the locked ironwork gates and heavy, tight-shutting doors.

Some of them were very haughty and sophisticated and inaccessible. These may have been the Talleyrands, the de la Rochefoucaulds, unapproachable gentry.

But then came a street that was just as quiet with somewhat smaller houses, no less noble in their manner and quite reserved.

One of the gates was just about to close; a servant in his morning livery turned around again and looked at me carefully and thoughtfully. And at that same moment it seemed to me that it would have taken only a very slight shift in the pattern of things at some time in order for him to recognize me and step back and hold open the door.

In order for an old lady to be up there, a grand-mère who would make it possible to receive her favorite grandson even at this early hour.

Edouard Manet. Interior at Arcachon. 1871

Now it is hard to believe that this was the way that led to the Salon d’Automne. But finally I did arrive at the bright and colorful picture market, which, for all its straining to make an impression, did not dispel my inner mood.

The old lady persisted, and I felt how much it would be beneath her dignity to come and look at these pictures.

I wondered whether I might not find something I could tell her about after all, and found a room with pictures by Berthe Morisot (Manet’s sister-in-law)

Berthe Morisot. Young-woman on a couch. 1885

and a wall with works by Eva Gonzales (Manet’s student).

Cézanne is no longer possible for the old lady; but for us he is valid and moving and important.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

The OLD and THE NEW

The old lady that Rilke conjures up in this letter resonates so strikingly with this painting by Edouard Manet, but it is never mentioned in the letter: both Manet and Cézanne, with their radical, world-overthrowing newness, are touched only obliquely here.

Rilke is not that old lady, but the old lady is Rilke. Where else could she have appeared from?

Isn’t it the past within him, the past in Cézanne is not yet possible, and which longs still for something calmer, something less radical?

SEEING PRACTICE: Cézanne indescribable reality

Paul Cézanne. Trees and Rocks, Near the Château Noir. 1900-1906. Click to zoom in (on Google Art Project site).

It may be hard for us now, in the twenty first century, to recognize Cézanne’s radical newness. The expansion of vision he expressed in painting has been integrated, to a degree at least, into our own sense of vision.

Can a modern viewer experience the original puzzlement and resistance Cézanne’s contemporaries, including Rilke, must have felt in front of his paintings? Well, we can try — if only to appreciate afresh how different our sense of vision now is.

For this seeing practice, I chose a painting which, I believe, makes it easier. Click through to zoom in and see how hard it must have been to reconcile this way of seeing with more conventional representations of visual reality.