Indescribable reality

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.

He sat there in front of it like a dog, just looking

November 25, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

He (Cézanne) sat there in front of it like a dog, just looking, without any nervousness, without any ulterior motive

Mathilde Vollmoeller to Rainer Maria Rilke

OCTOBER 12, 1907 (Part 2)

I recently asked Mathilde Vollmoeller to go through the Salon with me sometime, so that I could see my impression in the presence of someone whom I believe to be calm and not distracted by literature. Yesterday we went there together.

Cézanne prevented us from getting to anything else. I notice more and more what an event this is. But imagine my surprise when Miss V., with her painterly training and eye, said:

He sat there in front of it like a dog, just looking, without any nervousness, without any ulterior motive.

And she said some very good things about his manner of working (which one can decipher in an unfinished picture). “Here,” she said, pointing to one spot,

this he knew, and now he’s saying it (a part of an apple); right next to it there’s an empty space, because that was something he didn’t know yet. He only made what he knew, nothing else.

Paul Cezanne. Still life with water jug. 1893.

“What a good conscience he must have had,” I said. “Oh yes: he was happy, way inside somewhere …”

THE WORK

On October 9, Rilke described Cézanne’s process as “willful“.

What a distance to today’s insight (in the span of only three days, and one conversation with a painter friend): he only painted what he knew.

The very opposite of willfulness.

This is the essence of Cézanne process.

SEEING PRACTICE: LIKE A DOG (INDESCRIBABLE REALITY)

What does it mean: he sat there like a dog? I think it means LANGUAGE-LESS: without letting words interfere with his perception of reality, indescribable reality.

It must have been especially significant for Rilke, whose life’s work was to reenact reality in WORDS.

But it is also something nearly impossible to achieve to any of us, so deeply we are all caught in the internalized models of reality created by our languages. Most of the time, we only see things we can name.

What if we all could find some time and space today to see the world as it is, as vibrations of light and color, if even for a brief moment?

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.

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.

Devotion to what is nearest

November 12, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

But this devotion to what is nearest, this is something I can’t do as yet, or only in my best moments, while it is at one’s worst moments that one really needs it.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

OCTOBER 4, 1907

… one is still so far away from being able to work at all times.

Van Gogh could perhaps lose his composure, but behind it there was always his work, he could no longer lose that. And Rodin, when he’s not feeling well, is very close to his work, writes beautiful things on countless pieces of paper, reads Plato and follows him in his thought.

But I have a feeling that this is not just the result of discipline or compulsion (otherwise it would be tiring, the way I’ve been tired from working in recent weeks); it is all joy; it is natural well-being in the one thing that surpasses everything else.

Perhaps one has to have a clearer insight into the nature of one’s “task,” get a more tangible hold on it, recognize it in a hundred details. I believe I do feel what van Gogh must have felt at a certain juncture, and it is a strong and great feeling: that everything is yet to be done: everything.

But this devotion to what is nearest, this is something I can’t do as yet, or only in my best moments, while it is at one’s worst moments that one really needs it. Van Gogh could paint an Intérieur d’hôpital, and on his most fearful days he painted the most fearful objects.

Vincent Van Gogh. Ward at the hospital in Arles. 1889.

How else could he have survived.

This is what must be attained, and I have a definite sense that it can’t be forced. It must come out of insight, from pleasure, from no longer being able to postpone the work in view of all there is to be done.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

THE WORK

Is it possible to “work at all times”? Science tells us that it is not (but then, its findings change so dizzyingly rapidly nowadays…)

For Rilke, staying “within the work” all the time is unequivocally a prerequisite for any real achievement. This is the lesson he reads in the lives of Rodin, van Gogh, and then, later on, Cézanne… He looks at them, and finds himself lacking.

But in the course of these letters, one sees how his work unfolds when he as it were is not looking, effortlessly.

This book itself, undoubtedly one of his major achievements, is being written while he is trying to force himself to do something else (and even, at some later point, resolving that he must never write about Cézanne at all…).

SEEING PRACTICE: FEARFUL OBJECTS

Rilke writes: “… on his most fearful days he (van Gogh) painted the most fearful objects — how else could he have survived”. Here is another example, a drawing from the asylum van Gogh stayed in after his breakdown.

Vincent van Gogh. Vestibule in the Asylum. 1889. Click to zoom in (on van Gogh museum website).

We now know it must have been one of the bad, most fearful days, because when van Gogh felt up to it, he ventured to paint outside. And he is drawing the most fearful things: the walls he imprisoned himself in, the door which only seems open, because he cannot cross the threshold.

Can we, too, look at our fears with this courage, with this kind of attention?

Face-to-face with van Gogh reproductions

November 9, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

And (I) had them today, and gained such joy and insight and strength from them.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke, on van Gogh reproductions

On October 1, 1907, Rilke met an acquaintance of his, Mathilde Vollmoeller, a German painter. She had just returned from Amsterdam with a portfolio of van Gogh reproductions, which she lent to Rilke for a few days.

In this letter, he describes the portfolio, and I did my best to include all the paintings he mentions. Some of them were easy to find. In other cases, many of van Gogh’s paintings would fit Rilke’s description, so I had to choose one or two to bring you as close as possible to re-living Rilke’s experience face-to-face with van Gogh’s reproductions.

I split this letter in two, to give you more time with the paintings.

OCTOBER 2, 1907 (PART 1)

I spent a good, quiet hour: under the protection and in the feeling of yesterday’s letter from you, drinking my last sip of tea, face-to-face with the van Gogh reproductions.

We hadn’t gone through the whole portfolio yesterday, and so I was permitted to take them home with me, and now I have them to myself for a few days. And had them today, and gained such joy and insight and strength from them.

These are plain, not especially sophisticated but very appealing, reproductions of forty works, twenty of them dating back to the time before van Gogh came to France. Paintings, drawings, and lithographs, especially paintings.

Blooming trees (as only Jacobsen could do them),

Vincent van Gogh. Orchard in blossom. 1889. Click to zoom in (on Van Gogh Museum site).

plains in which human figures are distributed and moved about far and wide; and it still goes farther back behind them into the sheet and gets all bright at its farthest reach, as if continuing beyond the limits of the page.

Vincent van Gogh. Tulip fields near the Hague. 1886. Click to zoom in (on Van Gogh Museum site.)

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

STORYLINE: COLORS and Words

How implicitly obvious it is for Rilke that there is fundamentally no difference between art forms, between language and color…

Van Gogh does blossoming trees as only Jacobsen could do them (Jens Peter Jacobsen was a Danish poet and novelist, whom Rilke called him his “tutelary spirit” (Back to text)). Be it paints or words, they are but materials for an artist to re-enact reality.

In a sense, what Rilke is gradually learning in these letters is to do landscapes as only Cézanne could do them.

SEEING PRACTICE: VAN GOGH’S indescribable reality

A click on any (or all) of reproductions will bring you to the high-resolution versions on Van Gogh Museum website. You can then zoom in on the blossoms to see just how exactly they are done out of paint (a luxury Rilke couldn’t even dream about).

The more I look at them, the more I appreciate just how alchemy-like painting really is.