Page 18 - Studio International - February 1966

how concerned to find an equivalent in paint for gets periodically and which depend upon the subject.
the actual process of seeing with its ambiguities and We would be subject to those kinds of ambiguity in
confusions. Of course this—an art of process—is a fairly front of nature as well as in front of the picture.
common thing in 20th-century art; it's the basis of the I accept that what is distinctive about the oscillations
art of Paul Klee, for example. set up in our attention by Bonnard are those which
Podro Even in the case of Monet I don't think one can depend much more upon painting than upon the
completely separate two kinds of ambiguity. This ambiguities of ordinary perception. But I really only
probably wasn't really the intention. On the one hand accept that because I believe he is after things which
there is the ambiguity inherent in the subject—an don't normally remain in view when we sustain our
ambiguity which might be there if we were just looking attention on objects ; a mist remains a mist when we're
at the real thing and not at a picture. Then there is the looking at it. The odd way in which a woman's face, or a
ambiguity which depends upon the fact that paint is child's body, may get distorted when we catch-it out
being used. There are certain kinds of Monet in which of the corner of our eye when looking at something
the paint obstinately stays as strokes of paint and will else, is something which disappears as our attention
suddenly transform itself into the shimmer of light on a closes on it. This is in a way what I would think under-
girl's dress. This is the kind of ambiguity which depends pinned the ambiguity of Bonnard, that in fact like a
on the fact that it is a painting. There are other kinds of number of devices of Cezanne they work because we
ambiguity in Monet—reflections, mists, the difficulty of recognise in them things we dimly experienced in our
determining the direction of a group of trees—that one peripheral or momentary vision. And I think this is what
often underpins a very curious image. We recognize
these fleeting experiences—painters perhaps had never
been able to play upon them before.
Sylvester I don't know why you want to localise it in
peripheral vision. It seems to me that the suggestion of
peripheral vision is just an aspect of its being about the
process of vision. You gave a concrete example of what
I've been trying to say when you talked about a child
seen out of the corner of one's eye distorted, and then
concentrating on it and finding that the form changes.
This seems to me an example of the process of vision.
So why do you want to localise it just in peripheral
vision ? When Bonnard takes account of peripheral
vision, isn't this because he is really trying to deal with
vision the way it happens ?
Podro Yes and no. Even in the most highly-clarified
Renaissance painting, where you get a number of dis-
creet objects which you also see as one continuous
form, you have to move to some extent between seeing
the objects as continuous and as discreet, or between
seeing something as in deep space and seeing it as if it
were a relief. This also recapitulates the ordinary
processes of vision, of sorting out the uncertainties, and
La grand-mère aux poules 1891
using ambiguities to produce greater clarity.
Canvas 15 1/2 x 13 1/2 in.
Signed Sylvester But does it?
Lent by M. Claude Terrasse Podro I think it does . . . perhaps I'm not sure that it
does.
Forge Well, it provides a different kind of model on
La rue en hiver 1894
Panel 10q x 14 in. which to sort out the ambiguities of vision. After all,
Signed and dated Renaissance painting always depends on some kind of
Lent by Mr and Mrs Emery Reves
central focus. The notion of focus in relation to the
difficulties of vision seems to me absolutely crucial in
painting right up to Seurat. It is not there in the same
way in Cezanne, but it seems to me not to be there at all
in Bonnard. He seems to me to have a completely novel
notion of the role that focus can play in a picture. His
pictures seem completely open and all-over, in a way
that even the most all-overish Monet is not all-over. His
forms not only lead one out in all directions, but this
relationship that I've already suggested between the
figure and field, between foreground and back-
ground objects, is such that there is a kind of all-
overness in depth. So that one is left very much with the