Simply things

The turning point in these paintings

December 8, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

It is the turning point in these paintings which I recognized, because I had just reached it in my own work or had at least come close to it somehow, probably after having long been ready for this one thing which so much depends on.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

October 18, 1907 (Part 1)

<…> I would not have been able to say how far I had developed in the direction corresponding to the immense progress Cézanne achieved in his paintings.

I was only convinced that there are personal inner reasons that allow me to see certain pictures which, a while ago, I might have passed by with momentary sympathy, but would not have revisited with increased excitement and expectation.

It’s not really painting I’m studying (for despite everything, I remain uncertain about pictures and am slow to learn how to distinguish what’s good from what’s less good, and am always confusing early with late works).

It is the turning point in these paintings which I recognized, because I had just reached it in my own work or had at least come close to it somehow, probably after having long been ready for this one thing which so much depends on.

Paul Cezanne. Still life with apples. C. 1879.

That’s why I must be careful in trying to write about Cézanne, which of course tempts me greatly now.

It’s a mistake (and I have to acknowledge this once and for all) to think that one who has such private access to pictures is for that reason justified in writing about them; their fairest judge would surely be the one who could quietly confirm them in their existence without experiencing in them anything more or different than facts.

But within my life, this unexpected contact, the way it came and established a place for itself, is full of confirmation and relevance.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

Storyline: limitless objectivity

The turning point Rilke feels in Cézanne, and in himself, is the point of LIMITLESS OBJECTIVITY (he will write more about it later on).

Here, it emerges in opposition to his own subjective experience of Cézanne, his “private access”.

But is it possible to see a work of art as an objective fact, without any inner “private access” to it?

SEEING PRACTICE: SIMPLY THINGS

In the beginning of this series, I asked you to pay attention to simple things surrounding you in daily life.

Has anything changed in the way you see them?

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?

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.

Utter lack of prejudice or of pride

November 10, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

… how much there is in all this that reminds one of the “saints” he promised himself and resolved to paint at some much later time! (In that one letter.)

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

This is the second part of Rilke’s description of van Gogh’s portfolio (the first part is here).

Van Gogh’s letter he mentions here is one of his many letters to Theo Van Gogh . On September 10, 1889, he writes:

Had I had the strength to continue, I’d have done portraits of saints and of holy women from life, and who would have appeared to be from another century and they would be citizens of the present day, and yet would have had something in common with very primitive Christians.

OCTOBER 2, 1907 (PART 2)

… Or an old horse, a completely used up old horse: and it is not pitiful and not at all reproachful: it simply is everything they have made of it and what it has allowed itself to become.

Or a garden, or a park, which is seen and shown with the same utter lack of prejudice or of pride;

Vincent Van Gogh. Public park with weeping willow. 1888.

or, simply, things, a chair for instance, nothing but a chair, of the most ordinary kind: and yet, how much there is in all this that reminds one of the “saints” he promised himself and resolved to paint at some much later time! (In that one letter.)

Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh’s chair. 1889. Click to zoom in (on the website of National Gallery, London).

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

STORYLINE: THE WORK. REALITY

Another recurrent motive: all aspects of reality are equal in their profound realness, be their chairs, or lawns, or saints. For Rilke, recognition of this fundamental equality is an essential quality of a newly emerging art.

And van Gogh makes this equality more visible to us than we are capable of seeing it ourselves.

SEEING PRACTICE: SIMPLY, THINGS

A click on the reproduction of “Van Gogh’s Chair” will lead you to the high-resolution version on the website of National Gallery.

But what if we could recall this image whenever we see a chair, and realize that they all have the same striking, saint-like, realness of presence and color? I sometimes think that this alone could awaken us from the slumber we tend to call “real life”.

On the trail of the law of our own growth

November 7, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

Basically it’s none of our business how somebody manages to grow, if only he does grow, if only we’re on the trail of the law of our own growth …

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

Rilke first came to Paris in 1902, to write a book on Auguste Rodin (he had been introduced to the language of sculpture by his wife, Clara Rilke-Westhoff, who studied under Rodin in 1901).

Rodin and his work had a profound impact on Rilke’s own growth. Now, in 1907, he is working on the second part of his book on Rodin (the first was published in 1903).

JUNE 28, 1907

Auguste Rodin. The Cathedral. 1908. Click to see the details (on Rodin Museum site)

.. and that Rodin does not “think about” his work but remains within it: within the attainable—that is just what we felt made him so exceptional, this humble, patient path he trod through the real: and I have not yet found another faith to replace this one.

In art, you can only stay within the “well done,” and by your staying there, it increases and surpasses you again and again.

It seems to me that the “ultimate intuitions and insights” will only approach one who lives in his work and remains there, and whoever considers them from afar gains no power over them.

But all that already belongs in the area of personal solutions. Basically it’s none of our business how somebody manages to grow, if only he does grow, if only we’re on the trail of the law of our own growth …

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

STORYLINE: THE WORK

The artistic process, THE WORK, is another major theme of the book. For Rilke, art is fundamentally the same work, be it poetry, painting or sculpture.

What he sees in Rodin (and later, in Cézanne and van Gogh) is something he strives for himself (and finds himself lacking): being always, unwaveringly “within the work”.

Here, ever-presence “within the work”, within the simple and unambitious “well done”, is opposed to “thinking about it” (and having grand ideas about it).

Here is a more precise description from his monograph on Rodin:

August Rodin. The Hand of God. 1896. Click the image to see the details (on Rodin museum website).

Rodin discovered the fundamental element of his art, as it were, the cell of his world. And this was the plane, the exactly defined plane, of varying size and emphasis, from which all else must be made.

From this time onward it was the subject of his art, the object of all his efforts, of his vigilance and his endurance. His art was not based upon any great idea, but upon the conscientious realization of something small, upon something capable of achievement, upon a matter of technique.

There was no arrogance in him. He devoted himself to this insignificant and difficult aspect of beauty which he could survey, command and judge. The other, the greater beauty, must come when all was ready for it, as animals come to drink when night holds sway and the forest is free of strangers.

In 1903, Rilke wrote to Lou Andreas-Salomé:

Somehow I too must discover the smallest constituent element, the cell of my art, the tangible immaterial means of expressing everything.

SEEING PRACTICE: HANDS

The sculptures in this post embody the idea of the grand seen and enacted in something small and ever-present, unnoticed, taken for granted: our own hands, and the hands of our fellow human beings.

This beauty we see in Rodin is there for us everywhere we go, literally in our own hands.

All it takes is to pay attention to one’s hands, and to the hands of others: their planes and shapes, and the cathedral-like spaces created when they meet with one another .

Whatever is present is utterly and urgently present

November 5, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

…and whatever is present is utterly and urgently present, as if prostrate on its knees and praying for you …

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

This book wasn’t written as a book. It is a sequence of letters to the poet’s wife, written in 1907 from Paris. Its intertwining themes and motives emerged organically — as though designed by the unfolding of life itself, both within Rilke’s inner space, and outside.

The Rilke we hear in “Letters on Cézanne” is not yet the Rilke we know from his mature work. He is right in the midst of becoming the artist he is destined to become. And these letters are not only on Cézanne, not only on painting — they record and embody this act of becoming, forged in a synergetic fire between poetry and painting, between words and colors.

JUNE 3, 1907

… seeing and working—how different they are here. Everywhere else you see, and think: later—. Here they’re almost one and the same.

You’re back again: that’s not strange, not remarkable, not striking; it’s not even a celebration; for a celebration would already be an interruption. But this here takes you and goes further with you and goes with you to everything and right through everything, through small things and great.

Paul Cezanne. Still life, bowl and Milk Jug. C. 1877. Click to zoom in on Google Cultural Institute website.

Everything that was rearranges itself, lines up in formation, as if someone were standing there giving orders; and whatever is present is utterly and urgently present, as if prostrate on its knees and praying for you …

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

Storyline: Presence

PRESENCE (a concept much less in vogue back in 1907 than it is now) is one the core themes of the book. Here, Rilke links it to a place, to being in Paris (he had returned there several days before).

But does this experience come from the place one is in, or from one’s inner space, or from some kind of emerging resonance between the two? (How many people in Paris felt it on June 3, 1907, I wonder…)

SEEING PRACTICE: Things lined up in formation

Although Cézanne is not present in the letter (at least not explicitly), this small still life jumped at me as a perfect companion to it, so full it is of the same urgent presence.

In later work, Cézanne would arrange complex still life set-ups, but this one is so utterly simple. It is a kind of “composition” every one of us passes by multiple times every single day without noticing. Two things lined up in formation on the kitchen table.

Just two things on the kitchen table — what is there to notice, to pay attention to? Even most painting textbooks would advise that two things never make a good composition.

In Cézanne’s eyes, they are “utterly and urgently present, as if prostrate on its knees and praying for you …”. This is the visual experience shared in this painting, and now it is up to us to expand it from the space of painting and into the space of our daily lives.