Vincent Van Gogh

Secretly listening in his eye’s interior

December 14, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

… he (van Gogh) wanted or knew or experienced this and that; that blue called for orange and green for red: that, secretly listening in his eye’s interior, he had heard such things spoken, the inquisitive one.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

Rilke continues his thoughts on the conflict between artistic insight and the artist’s conscious awareness of it, their ability to put their insights into words (here is the first part of the letter). The “writing painter” he mentions here is Émile Bernard.

OCTOBER 21, 1907 (Part 2)

Vincent Van Gogh. The Langlois bridge at Arles with women washing. 1888.

That van Gogh’s letters are so readable, that they are so rich, basically argues against him, just as it argues against a painter (holding up Cézanne for comparison) that he wanted or knew or experienced this and that; that blue called for orange and green for red: that, secretly listening in his eye’s interior, he had heard such things spoken, the inquisitive one.

And so he painted pictures on the strength of a single contradiction, thinking, additionally, of the Japanese simplification of color, which sets a plane on the next higher or next lower tone, summed up under an aggregate value; leading, in turn, to the drawn and explicit (i.e., invented) contour of the Japanese as a frame for the coordinated planes; leading, in other words, to a great deal of intentionality and arbitrariness—in short, to decoration.

Vincent Van Gogh. Self-portrait with felt hat. C. 1887. Click to zoom in (on van Gogh’s museum site).

Cézanne, too, was provoked by the letters of a writing painter—who, accordingly, wasn’t really a painter—to express himself on matters of painting; but when you see the few letters the old man wrote: how awkward this effort at self-explication remains, and how extremely repugnant it was to him.

He was almost incapable of saying anything.

The sentences in which he made the attempt become long and convoluted, they balk and bristle, get knotted up, and finally he drops them, beside himself with rage.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

THE WORK

The idea that a painter shouldn’t be able to express their insights in words would rob many a great painter of the title. Cézanne, by the way, would be one of them (his letters to Bernard, the only ones Rilke read, represent only a fraction of his writing).

This is one of Rilke’s ideas I find really hard to swallow (I wrote more about it here.)

On a more personal note:

I know, of course I know, that my resistance to this idea is not about defending van Gogh at all (who absolutely doesn’t need my defense).

It is my own self I am defending, my own identity, being as I obviously am a “writing painter”, and so perhaps not really a painter.

But when all is said and done, each of us has to follow the path of one’s own unique expression, towards and beyond one’s “custom-made” risks and dangers. In the end, all of them have to be faced and transcended for something new and meaningful to emerge.

Thus Rilke shows me the trail of the law of my own growth, at the time when this help across time and space is most needed and welcome.

SEEING PRACTICE: VAN GOGH’s indescribable reality

There are two self-portraits in this post, Cézanne’s and van Gogh’s, for you to compare.

This is one of van Gogh’s self-portraits that may lead the spectator to the idea of “intentionality and arbitrariness”, so unprecedented and unusual is the mutual intercourse of colors here.

Vincent van Gogh. Self-portrait with grey felt hat. 1887. Click to zoom in (on Van Gogh Museum site).

But what if we take a leap of faith and see it AS IS, trusting van Gogh to show us HIS indescribable reality, not an arbitrary stylistic invention?

Self-overcoming on the way to new bliss

December 10, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

This lying-down-with-the-leper and sharing all one’s own warmth with him, including the heart-warmth of nights of love: this must at some time have been part of an artist’s existence, as a self-overcoming on the way to his new bliss.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

OCTOBER 19, 1907 (Part 1)

I’m sure you remember … in The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, the place that deals with Baudelaire and his poem: “Carrion.” I couldn’t help thinking that without this poem, the whole trend toward plainspoken truth which we now seem to recognize in Cézanne could not have started; first it had to be there in all its inexorability.

First, artistic perception had to surpass itself to the point of realizing that even something horrible, something that seems no more than disgusting, is, and is valid, along with everything else that is.

Vincent van Gogh. Prisoners’ round. 1890.

Just as the creative artist is not allowed to choose, neither is he permitted to turn his back on anything that exists: a single refusal at any time, and he is cast out of the state of grace and becomes sinful all the way through.

Flaubert, in retelling the legend of Saint-Julien-l’hospitalier with so much discretion and care, showed me this simple believability in the midst of the miraculous, because the artist in him participated in the saint’s decisions, and gave them his happy consent and applause.

This lying-down-with-the-leper and sharing all one’s own warmth with him, including the heart-warmth of nights of love: this must at some time have been part of an artist’s existence, as a self-overcoming on the way to his new bliss.

Paul Cezanne. Preparation for the funeral. 1869.

You can imagine how it moves me to read that even in his last years, Cézanne had memorized this very poem—Baudelaire’s Charogne—and recited it word for word. Surely one could find examples among his earlier works where he mightily surpassed himself to achieve the utmost capacity for love.

Paul Cezanne. Hortense breat-feeding Paul. 1872.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

STORYLINE: Limitless objectivity

Rilke writes:

Just as the creative artist is not allowed to choose, neither is he permitted to turn his back on anything that exists: a single refusal at any time, and he is cast out of the state of grace and becomes sinful all the way through.

But is this only about artists, or about every single one of us?

I think we have reached the point in evolution where neither of us is permitted to turn their back on anything that exists. Otherwise, we are all doomed.

Artists were just in the vanguard (haven’t they always been in the vanguard of humanity’s evolution?)

SEEING PRACTICE: LOOKING AT UGLINESS

Is it as simple, and as difficult, as this: to see the sheer beauty of the world, one must learn not to turn back on its ugliness?

In “The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge”, Rilke writes:

Do you remember Baudelaire’s incredible poem “Une Charogne”? Perhaps I understand it now. Except for the last stanza, he was in the right. What should he have done after that happened to him? It was his task to see, in this terrifying and apparently repulsive object, the Being that underlies all individual beings. There is no choice, no refusal. Do you think it was by chance that Flaubert wrote his “Saint Julien l’Hospitalier”? This, it seems to me, is the test: whether you can bring yourself to lie beside a leper and warm him with the warmth of your own heart—such an action could only have good results. (Translated by Stephen Mitchell, Vintage International Edition (1990)).

Charles Baudelaire. The Carcase

The object that we saw, let us recall,
This summer morn when warmth and beauty mingle —
At the path’s turn, a carcase lay asprawl
Upon a bed of shingle.

Legs raised, like some old whore far-gone in passion,
The burning, deadly, poison-sweating mass
Opened its paunch in careless, cynic fashion,
Ballooned with evil gas.

On this putrescence the sun blazed in gold,
Cooking it to a turn with eager care —
So to repay to Nature, hundredfold,
What she had mingled there.

The sky, as on the opening of a flower,
On this superb obscenity smiled bright.
The stench drove at us, with such fearsome power
You thought you’d swoon outright.

Flies trumpeted upon the rotten belly
Whence larvae poured in legions far and wide,
And flowed, like molten and liquescent jelly,
Down living rags of hide.

The mass ran down, or, like a wave elated
Rolled itself on, and crackled as if frying:
You’d think that corpse, by vague breath animated,
Drew life from multiplying.

Through that strange world a rustling rumour ran
Like rushing water or a gust of air,
Or grain that winnowers, with rhythmic fan,
Sweep simmering here and there.

It seemed a dream after the forms grew fainter,
Or like a sketch that slowly seems to dawn
On a forgotten canvas, which the painter
From memory has drawn.

Behind the rocks a restless cur that slunk
Eyed us with fretful greed to recommence
His feast, amidst the bonework, on the chunk
That he had torn from thence.

Yet you’ll resemble this infection too
One day, and stink and sprawl in such a fashion,
Star of my eyes, sun of my nature, you,
My angel and my passion!

Yes, you must come to this, O queen of graces,
At length, when the last sacraments are over,
And you go down to moulder in dark places
Beneath the grass and clover.

Then tell the vermin as it takes its pleasance
And feasts with kisses on that face of yours,
I’ve kept intact in form and godlike essence
Our decomposed amours!

— From Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952). Click for other translations.

Here is a translation of Flaubert’s retelling of The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller.

Always postponing and yet already painting

December 7, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

OCTOBER 17, 1907 (Part 5)

… and finally: one of those landscapes he was always postponing and yet already painting again and again:

Vincent van Gogh. Wheat field with a Reaper. 1890. Click to zoom in on van Gogh Museum site.

a setting sun, yellow and orange red, surrounded by its glow of yellow, round fragments.

Against it, full of revolt, Blue, Blue, Blue the slope of curved hills, separated from the twilight by a strip of assuaging pulsations (a river?), in which, transparent in dark antique gold, in the slanted front third of the picture, you can make out a field and leaning groups of upright sheafs of corn.

THE WORK

The work we are postponing, waiting for the time when we are finally ready to do it: and yet already doing it.

Rilke writes about van Gogh, but perhaps even more so, about himself.

He is postponing the work on his autobiographical novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, and already writing it, in these letters. Some passages were eventually included in the book verbatim.

He is full of doubts about writing about Rodin, and yet already writing about him, too.

And, strikingly, as we will see soon, he doesn’t just POSTPONE, but resolves NOT to write about Cézanne… because he doesn’t consider himself qualified.

But the work gets done, in its own time and rhythm, quite oblivious to our decisions.

The best we can do is not to get in its way with our doubts and transient concerns.

SEEING PRACTICE: VAN GOGH’S indescribable reality

Yesterday, I wrote about the moment I got a glimpse of van Gogh’s visual reality in front of his self-portrait.

But even after that moment, it took a long, long time to even begin to integrate his expansion of vision into my experience of life, to finally get “the right eyes”.

It takes essentially the same practice Rilke describes in these letters: the practice of paying your full attention first to paintings, and then, with the eyes trained and cleansed by them, to the world around us.

As if woven of fresh reed

December 6, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

Rilke continues to describe van Gogh paintings he saw in Bernheim gallery.

OCTOBER 17 (Part 4)

<…> A man’s portrait against a background (yellow and greenish yellow) that looks as if woven of fresh reed (but which, when you step back, is simplified to a uniform brightness):

Vincent van Gogh. Portrait of Trabuc, an attendant at Saint Paul hospital. 1889

An elderly man with a short-cropped, black-and-white mustache, sparse hair of the same color, cheeks indented beneath a broad skull:

the whole thing in black-and-white, rose, wet dark blue, and an opaque bluish white——except for the large brown eyes—

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

COLORS AND WORDS

“As if woven of fresh reed”: could one even imagine a more precise way to describe not only this particular painting, but ALL of van Gogh’s mature work?

Vincent van Gogh. Wheat field with a Reaper. 1890. Click the image to zoom in.

SEEING PRACTICE: VAN GOGH

I remember the exact moment when I realized that what van Gogh shows us is a precise and truthful depiction of HIS visual reality, his unique experience of fluid, dynamic color. It was in Amsterdam, in front of this self-portrait.

Vincent van Gogh. Self-portrait with grey felt hat. 1887. Click the image to zoom in.

Click the image to zoom in (on Van Gogh Museum site) and see this intensified reality, as though woven of fresh reed which borrowed its colors from the rainbow?

Blows and slashes of tree- and bush-green

December 5, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

Another painting by van Gogh, but how different are its greens… one can hardly believe that we can use one word to name these colors.

OCTOBER 17, 1907 (Part 3)

A park or an alley in a town park in Arles, with black people on benches on the right and left, a blue newspaper reader in front and a violet woman in the back, beneath and among blows and slashes of tree- and bush-green.

Vincent Van Gogh. Entrance to the public garden in Arles. 1888

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

STORYLINE: COLORS AND WORDS

Yesterday, we looked at a green that was deep and utterly shallow in artificial wakefulness. Today, it is tree- and bush-green in full sunlight.

SEEING PRACTICE: COLOR GREEN

Compare the greens of the park with the greens of the night cafe. What is it that makes them so radically different?

Deep and utterly shallow green

December 4, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

… artificial wakefulness in wine red, lamp yellow, deep and utterly shallow green…

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

Rilke goes to Bernheim’s gallery to see Rodin’s drawings, but there he encounters van Gogh again.

There is only a couple of sentences in today’s segment, and the painting Rilke talks about. I didn’t want to dilute the sheer power of synergy between this painting and the words.

OCTOBER 17, 1907 (PART 2)

First Mr. Bernheim took me to his storage room and showed me: van Goghs. The night café I already wrote about;

but a lot more could be said about its artificial wakefulness in wine red, lamp yellow, deep and utterly shallow green, with three mirrors, each of which contains a different emptiness.

STORYLINE: COLORS AND WORDS

How can something be both deep and utterly shallow?

And yet, this paradoxical phrase captures the quality of this painting’s green with perfect precision.

SEEING PRACTICE: COLOR

There is striking, painful, naked simplicity in this color composition. But for all its simplicity, I think no one but van Gogh could have pulled this off.

I don’t want to influence your perception here, but if you are interested in my take on it, you can read it here (preferably after you’ve spent some time with the painting on your own).