Landscape

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?

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.

All of reality is on his side

November 14, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

Here, all of reality is on his side: in this dense quilted blue of his, in his red, and his shadowless green, and the reddish black of his wine bottles.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

Finally, Cézanne. After the long detour of yesterday’s letter, Rilke faces this new reality head-on, without further delays.

He says so much in a single sentence that I had to add four paintings to re-create it in images. These might not be the exact same paintings he saw on that day, but he isn’t really writing about individual paintings, but rather about all of them simultaneously.

OCTOBER 7, 1907

You know how much more remarkable I always find the people walking about in front of paintings than the paintings themselves. It’s no different in this Salon d’Automne, except for the Cézanne room.

Here, all of reality is on his side: in this dense quilted blue of his,

Paul Cezanne. Mont Sainte-Victoire and Château Noir. 1904-1906. Click to zoom in (on Google Cultural Institute site)

in his red

Paul Cezanne. Madame-Cezanne with a yellow-armchair. 1890.

and his shadowless green

and the reddish black of his wine bottles.

Paul Cezanne. Still life with soup tureen. 1884.

And the humbleness of all his objects: the apples are all cooking apples and the wine bottles belong in the roundly bulging pockets of an old coat.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

STORYLINE: COLORs and WORDS

How can one make landscapes and things out of WORDS as Cézanne made them out of colors?

This challenge is implicitly always there in the letters, and one way Rilke faces it is through finding new ways of naming the colors themselves.

This letter is a tentative beginning of what would blossom into color-filled prose by the end of the month.

SEEING PRACTICE: COLOR BLUE

I have chosen one painting for each color mentioned in Rilke’s letter, but my choice may be arbitrary and subjective. ALL Cézanne’s colors are there in every painting, but in very different versions of themselves.

I wonder what Rilke really meant, and Clara Rilke saw in her mind’s eye when she read this phrase, “this dense quilted blue of his“. There are many different blues even in the paintings included here.

What came up in my mind’s eye was this very specific kind of blue, the blue of the sky above Mont Sainte-Victoire and Château Noir (1904-1906), spilling into the folds of this painting’s mountain, and into the shadows of its greenery.

Paul Cezanne. Mont Sainte-Victoire and Château Noir. 1904-1906.

But I wonder, can this phrase also point to ALL of Cézanne’s blues, to something they all share?

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.

A great splendor from within

November 11, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

But in his paintings (the arbre fleuri) poverty has already become rich: a great splendor from within.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

In this letter, Rilke is still under the impression of Van Gogh’s reproductions. He writes:

Would that you were sitting with me in front of the van Gogh portfolio (which I am returning with a heavy heart). It has done me so much good these two days: it was the right moment.

Isn’t that what we are doing here, trying to be with him in front of these paintings?

But this letter is as much about van Gogh’s life as it is about his paintings. Rilke recounts his biography — from his work in an art gallery, to service as an evangelical pastor, and then to being a painter, and then to madness. This is where the part of the letter included below begins…

OCTOBER 3, 1907

What a biography. Is it really true that everyone is now acting as if they understood this and the pictures that came out of it?

Shouldn’t art dealers and also art critics be really more perplexed about or else more indifferent to this dear zealot, in whom something of the spirit of Saint Francis was coming back to life?

I am surprised by his quick rise to fame. Ah, how he, too, renounced and renounced.

His self-portrait in the portfolio looks needy and tormented, almost desperate, but not devastated: the way a dog looks when it’s in a bad way. He holds out his face and you take note of the fact: he’s in a bad way, day and night.

But in his paintings (the arbre fleuri) poverty has already become rich: a great splendor from within.

Vincent Van Gogh. Peach trees in blossom. 1886.

And that’s how he sees everything: as a poor man; just compare his parks.

These too are expressed with such quietness and simplicity, as if for poor people, so they can understand; without going into the extravagance that’s in these trees; as if to do that would already be taking sides.

Vincent Van Gogh. Park at Asniers in spring. 1887.

He isn’t on anyone’s side, isn’t on the side of the parks, and his love for all these things is directed at the nameless, and that’s why he himself concealed it. He does not show it, he has it.

And quickly takes it out of himself and into the work, into the innermost and incessant part of the work: quickly: and no one has seen it!

That’s how one feels his presence in these forty pages: now, haven’t you been next to me after all, just a bit, in front of these pictures? …

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

STORYLINE: POVERTY. SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE

Rilke returns to the concept of poverty several times.

In this letter, it can be understood as literal, material, “real-life” poverty: the lack of money. But as this storyline unfolds, the more profound, inner meaning becomes more apparent — touching the biblical meaning of poverty as a prerequisite for reaching the kingdom of heaven.

Poverty as the lack of heritage, the lack of cultural baggage we bring to any new experience. In the modern parlance, the lack of “cognitive biases” and social conditioning.

This concept is intrinsically linked to the theme of not being “on anyone’s side”, of love being so completely spent in the act of painting that what remains is simply reality as it is.

SEEING PRACTICE: AS A POOR MAN

In my lifetime, I have certainly spent more time in front of van Gogh’s painting than Rilke did at the time he was writing this letter (if only because I am much older than Rilke was at the time).

And it would have never occurred to me to say that van Gogh sees things “as a poor man”. That is, that something in his vision is set free by his poverty. That he sees something that a rich person would never be able to see.

Can you see in van Gogh’s paintings what Rilke is writing about? More interestingly, is it possible to pause the flow of daily life and see one’s surroundings “as a poor man”, without the baggage of our possessions, our heritage, our experiences, our identities?

Reality indescribable down to its smallest details

November 8, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

… I believe that the only time I lived without loss were the ten days after Ruth’s birth, when I found reality as indescribable, down to its smallest details, as it surely always is…

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

In this letter, Rilke refers to the birth of his daughter, Ruth (1901), and its effect on his state of being.

I looked around for a painting which would embody this effect, and found this painting by Cézanne, which I had never seen before, nor even known of its existence.

Paul Cezanne. Hortense breat-feeding Paul. 1872.

It is so unusual for Cézanne, so utterly unlike any other portraits of his wife, so filled with humble tenderness, so in resonance with Rilke’s letter (although he never mentions it). Perhaps, Cézanne, too, experienced reality differently just after the birth of his child…

SEPTEMBER 13, 1907

One lives so badly, because one always comes into the present unfinished, unable, distracted. I cannot think back on any time of my life without such reproaches and worse.

I believe that the only time I lived without loss were the ten days after Ruth’s birth, when I found reality as indescribable, down to its smallest details, as it surely always is.

<…>

Now that winter’s already impending here. Those vaporous mornings and evenings are already starting, where the sun is merely the place where the sun used to be, and where in the yards all the summer flowers, the dahlias and the tall gladiolas and the long rows of geraniums shout the contradiction of their red into the mist.

This makes me sad. It brings up desolate memories, one doesn’t know why: as if the music of the urban summer were ending in dissonance, in a mutiny of all its notes; perhaps just because one has already once before taken all this so deeply into oneself and read its meanings and made it part of oneself, without ever actually making it.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

STORYLINE: LANDSCAPES OF WORDS. PRESENCE

As though in contradiction to his own words about “indescribable reality”, Rilke concludes the letter with one of his striking LANDSCAPES-IN-WORDS, which recreate the visual reality in one’s mind’s eye.

As these landscapes appear in the letters, one after another, we see (or hear?) how Rilke’s vision changes and expands as he takes in and absorbs Cézanne’s way of seeing. This one is not yet quite informed by Cézanne, more “impressionist” in style and quality.

PRESENCE, which appeared in the very first letter as a quality of space, now re-emerges as a quality of life-altering moments in time.

SEEING PRACTICE: Renoir’s indescribable reality

As we go through our days, we don’t really see reality as indescribable. We seem to have names for everything we encounter, often more than one. But in the space of a painting, we glimpse the inadequacy of these words: just how little of what Renoir’s landscape contains and shows can we describe in things-naming words?

But reality is just as indescribable; the trick is to open one’s eyes to see it.