Page 28 - Studio International - April 1970

much importance to artists' theoretical tedly— in man's technology. In the lines tem take place at differing speeds in different
rationalizations—is Delaunay, whose Fenêtres following those I have already quoted, he parts of the system with constantly changing
series (1912-13) would seem to substantiate writes : rhythms, tempo and multiple interactions due
the case. The final concept of his window- All things counter, original, spare, strange; to many thousands of factors inside and out-
pictures was (in 'Vriesen's words) 'an inter- Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) side the body. ... It is this complex of timing,
lacing of several window views in a differenti- With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim . . . rhythm, tempo, sensation, and emotion which
ated, simultaneously seen whole'.4 In one of What is Hopkins celebrating other than the is of central importance in the system's
his more lucid statements Delaunay writes: interference or interpenetration of wave- relation to art. It is the counterpoint, feed-
`Everyone's eyes are sensitive to colour and to patterns as a fundamental principle of life? back, and accumulation of process, tempera-
the wave play and vibrations, rhythms, (A more complex poem, 'Spelt from Sibyl's ture, time and tension in the autonomic
counterpoints, fugues, depths, variations, har- Leaves', supports this analysis. Here the system, that is opposed to or contradicts or is off-
monious chords, monumental ensembles of oppressive moral absolutism which Hopkins balance with the timing, rhythm, tempo,
these colours. This signifies architecture. By painfully obeyed as a Jesuit is figured as night tension, relaxation and character of the
which I mean a certain kind of order. Not an blotting out the 'skeined stained veined observed work (and here we can also refer to
artificial order but a construction that corre- variety' of daytime.) music and dance) which leads to a height-
sponds with our sense of proportion, man's Max Imdahl's essay? `Delaunay's Place in ening, a stretching of complexity, to new
feeling for proportion... It is the heartbeat of History' contains some interesting analyses of depths of sensation and experience—including
active, living man.'5 Delaunay's colour interactions and an account aesthetic, intellectual and other factors— that
I believe these paintings of Delaunay are very of the nineteenth-century colour theory, have as it were, been forced through the wave-
fine, but don't know why, and have not Chevreul's, which influenced him. However, like( ?) contradictions.' 9
come across any satisfactory explanation of if the scientific assumptions of Chevreul and Raymond Williams has also written on
why they are good. It is easier for art his- Delaunay are to be raised at all, they need to rhythm in the arts :
torians and critics to discourse on the origin be related to modern knowledge about visual `We are only beginning to investigate this on
of the term Orphisme (a singularly unhelpful perception; it is too vague to write, for any scientific basis, but it seems clear from
term), and to recount in detail how the public instance, as Imdahl does, `Delaunay's pic- what we already know that rhythm is a way
was shocked, to the extent of complaining to tures from 1912 to 1914 make the eye open of transmitting a description of experience, in
the government and police, by the painting wide; they exist in total activation of the eye such a way that the experience is re-created
of this period. Few such writers seem to through the picture—and of the picture in the person receiving it, not merely as an
believe that there is still power in these through the eye'. Moreover, as soon as we `abstraction' of an 'emotion' but as a physical
pictures to disturb, and indeed we tend to be introduce the question of perception it surely effect on the organism—on the blood, on the
shockproofed by urbane academicism. I am becomes inadequate to discuss colour inter- breathing, on the physical patterns of the
reminded of D H Lawrence's comment on actions purely in terms of formal elements, brain.'10
Cezanne since motor activity is apparently provoked Of these two statements Metzger's is the more
. . . Who of Cezanne's followers does anything by colours. Merleau-Ponty discusses this forceful because it emphasizes opposition or
but follow at the triumphant funeral of using the evidence of experiments with contradiction—in my terms, interference— as
Cezanne's achievement? They follow him in patients suffering from brain disorders where a source of creativity.
order to bury him, and they succeed. sensory excitation has an exaggerated effect: In reviewing Professor Waddington's book,
Cezanne is deeply buried under all the `The gesture of raising the arm, which one I suggested that some of his thoughts on
Matisses and Vlamincks of his following, can take as an indicator of motor disturbance, painting, when developed, could have the
while the critics read the funeral homily.' 6 is differently modified in its amplitude and effect of restructuring the hierarchy of
Lawrence writes of the 'smashing of the its direction by a red, yellow, blue or green twentieth-century reputations. I make no
cliche' which 'lasted a long way into Cezanne's visual field. In particular red and yellow claim to have done this here—only to have
life; indeed it went with him to the end.' favour sliding movements; blue and green, presented a small fragment of an argument
Delaunay, though not of quite the same jerky movements; a red field applied to the which may or may not be regarded as having,
stature as Cezanne, also struggled with the right eye, for example, favours a movement so to speak, a holographic integrity.
cliché as a genuine artist does. In his theori- of extension of the corresponding arm out- JONATHAN BENTHALL 0
zing he seems to have tried to find a vocabu- wards, and green favours a bending and
lary to describe his intuitive insights, but no turning back of the arm towards the body.
serviceable vocabulary existed then, or ... When we say that red augments the
Notes
exists now, to help. In the statement I have amplitude of our reactions, this must not be I am indebted to Mr Adrian Nutbeem, who made some
already quoted, he uses musical and archi- understood as relating to two distinct facts, of these points to me, especially as regards the impor-
tectural analogies to help explain the new a sensation of red and motor activity; it must tance of Delaunay, before the publication of Professor
Waddington's book.
kind of organization of colour interactions be realized that red, by its texture that our
1 C H Waddington, Behind Appearance (Edinburgh
that he tries to achieve. Finally he suggests attention follows and attaches itself to, is University Press and MIT Press, 1970), p. 13 ff.
that man's feeling for proportion has its already the amplification of our motor being.'8 2 ibid., p. 124 ff.
source in (or some connection with) the It is thus disappointing that Imdahl can make 3 ibid., p. 133 ff.
heartbeat—that persistent, but idiosyncratic an imaginative comment—`The painter (De- 4 Gustav Vriesen and Max Imdahl, Robert Delaunay:
and not wholly regular, rhythm on which the launay) has manipulated optical provoca- Light and Colour (Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1969),
p.47.
body's pulses and other functions depend for tions not for the sake of aesthetic playfulness
5 Quoted by G. Vriesen, ibid., p.61.
their well-ordering. This, from a painter, is but in order to express a "multiple rhythm" 6 D H Lawrence, 'Introduction to These Paintings',
interesting. which permeates nature itself ...' — without 1929. See John Remsbury, '''Real Thinking": Law-
Reference to a poet rather than an art- following up its implications. rence and Cezanne', Cambridge Quarterly, Spring 1967.
critic may help. Hopkins's simple and charm- Gustav Metzger sketched out some ideas in 7 Gustav Vriesen and Max Imdahl, ibid.
8 M. Merleau-Ponty, La Phénoménologie de la Perception
ing poem 'Pied Beauty', whose first lines 1965 which may be usefully related to
(Gallimard 1945), pp. 242, 245 (my translation).
I have used as an epigraph, conveys this Delaunay's words on the 'wave play' of 9 Gustav Metzger, 'Auto-Destructive Art', 1965, p. 24.
poet's intuitive feeling for the rich variety of colours : 10 Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (Chatto and
colour in nature, and also—rather unexpec- `Processes within the autonomic nervous sys- Windus 1961), p. 24 ff.