Subjective and Objective

The good conscience of these reds, these blues, their simple truthfulness

November 28, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

As if these colors could heal one of indecision once and for all. The good conscience of these reds, these blues, their simple truthfulness, it educates you…

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

OCTOBER 13, 1907 (Part 2)

Today I went to see his pictures again; it’s remarkable what a surrounding they create.

Without looking at a particular one, standing in the middle between the two rooms, one feels their presence drawing together into a colossal reality.

As if these colors could heal one of indecision once and for all. The good conscience of these reds, these blues, their simple truthfulness, it educates you; and if you stand among them as ready as possible, you get the impression that they are doing something for you.

Paul Cezanne. Still life with apples. 1894. Click the image to zoom in on Google Cultural Institute.

You also notice, a little more clearly each time, how necessary it was to go beyond love, too; it’s natural, after all, to love each of these things as one makes it: but if one shows this, one makes it less well; one judges it instead of saying it.

One ceases to be impartial; and the best—love—stays outside the work, does not enter it, is left aside, untranslated: that’s how the painting of moods came about (which is in no way better than the painting of things).

They’d paint: I love this here; instead of painting: here it is.

In which case everyone must see for himself whether or not I loved it. This is not shown at all, and some would even insist that it has nothing to do with love.

The love is so thoroughly used up in the action of making that there is no residue. It may be that this using up of love in anonymous work, which produces such pure things, was never achieved as completely as in the work of this old man.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

THE WORK. LOVE. SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE

Isn’t it interesting, and revealing, that Rilke uses the exact same expression, “no residue”, with regard to LOVE and COLOR (in the previous letter)?

He is so decidedly on the side of painting of (and writing) THINGS, not FEELINGS. The objective, not the subjective.

If there is a place for LOVE in a work of art, it is in the process, completely used up in the making. Paradoxically, if it is intentionally expressed, it stays outside the work.

SEEING PRACTICE: CONSCIENCE OF COLOR

The good conscience of these reds, these blues, their simple truthfulness…

It is an unusual way to think about colors: do they have conscience, good or bad? Are they truthful, or false?

Or loud, pretentious, deceitful, manipulative?

It is not only about painting, it is also about colors we see daily (even as we look at the screens of our phones, or our computers).

The color of a flower, or a tree trunk, or the sky: they never lie. But what about our houses, and cars, and the visual noise of advertisements?

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?

Works of art are always the result of one’s having been in danger

November 6, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

… After all, works of art are always the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, to where no one can go any further.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

Nowadays, when more than a century has passed after this letter was written, and “uniqueness” and “self-expression” turned into buzz-words, it may be too easy to assume that everyone now knows what Rilke is talking about, that it is almost “common sense”, “old news”.

So let me mention, right now, a key word which doesn’t appear in the letter straightaway: MADNESS.

To see and experience what nobody else sees and experiences: isn’t it a symptom of madness? But this is also the quintessence of true art.

JUNE 24, 1907

… After all, works of art are always the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, to where no one can go any further.

The further one goes, the more private, the more personal, the more singular an experience becomes, and the thing one is making is, finally, the necessary, irrepressible, and, as nearly as possible, definitive utterance of this singularity.

Therein lies the enormous aid the work of art brings to the life of the one who must make it,—: that it is his epitome; the knot in the rosary at which his life says a prayer, the ever-returning proof to himself of his unity and genuineness, which presents itself only to him while appearing anonymous to the outside, nameless, as mere necessity, as reality, as existence—

So surely we have no choice but to test and try ourselves against the utmost, but probably we are also constrained to keep silence regarding it, to avoid sharing it, parting with it in communication before it has entered the work of art:

Vincent Van Gogh. Landscape from Saint-Rémy. 1889. Click to zoom in (on Google Cultural Institute)

for the utmost represents nothing other than that singularity in us which no one would or even should understand, and which must enter into the work as such, as our personal madness, so to speak, in order to find its justification in the work and show the law in it, like an inborn design that is invisible until it emerges in the transparency of the artistic.

—Nevertheless there are two liberties of communication, and these seem to me to be the utmost possible ones: the one that occurs face-to-face with the accomplished thing, and the one that takes place within actual daily life, in showing one another what one has become through one’s work and thereby supporting and helping and (in the humble sense of the word) admiring one another.

Vincent Van Gogh. Olive trees. 1889. Click to zoom in (on Google Cultural Institute)

But in either case one must show results, and it is not lack of trust or withdrawal or rejection if one doesn’t present to another the tools of one’s progress, which have so much about them that is confusing and tortuous, and whose only value lies in the personal use one makes of them.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

STORYLINE: SOLITUDE. SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE

Two interrelated themes of the book begin in this letter: solitude as a quintessential ingredient of art, and the paradoxical interplay between “subjective” and “objective”.

One has to go deep inside oneself, to a deeply personal place — to find the unique point of connection with reality, with existence, with the nameless objective, the utmost.

And this can only happen in solitude, in complete aloneness.

SEEING PRACTICE: van Gogh’s Indescribable reality

The artist Rilke is thinking about in this letter is Vincent van Gogh, and his disastrous attempt to share life and work with Paul Gauguin (he mentions this episode later in the letter).

The singularity of van Gogh’s vision is so utterly unique, so unfathomably deep, that that piece of utmost reality he has reached to and reenacted in his paintings — this piece is not yet integrated into the realm of shared experience. Not fully, not really.

There is still work for us all — to fully open ourselves to this as yet indescribable expansion of human vision he brought to this world.

In this letter, Rilke doesn’t mention any individual paintings, so I have chosen these two landscapes myself. Click either of them to zoom in and see how they emerge out of flurries of colors: a visual experience of objective reality lived through all the way to the end.