Page 34 - Studio International - October1973

The use of colour contributes to the same end. her changes. It must give us a taste of her light, and thus towards substance. The history
A figure or object is defined first and foremost eternity. What is there underneath ? Maybe of the painting (the history of its idea, its
as an area of colour with the minimum of nothing. Maybe everything.' configuration) parallels a physical process.
contour (outline). Where two areas of colour Cezanne's determination to be faithful to (This parallelism along which there is only a
meet, they remain distinct, but at the same his 'sensations' was the result of his sensing screen, only the thinnest membrane, dividing
time they join to form part of a continuous field that his perception of nature was part of nature. mind from matter, appears in several different
of colour. Thus no object or figure is ever There was no frontier between nature, nature ways in Gill's work.) From the fragmented
locked in a fixed, separate state. The abstraction seen, and nature painted. Each brush stroke, colours aspiring towards undivided light a
of the outline is replaced by the reality of the which he made after so much concentration, concept is born; equally, and in parallel, from
totality. And in painting such an experience of needed to become a natural act. A natural the same colours aspiring towards undivided
totality can only be created by colour. As soon reflective act. The act of nature being seen. light substance is born.
as we see a single colour, we see a colour One can think of the sum of the brushstrokes in To see why this dualism is not vague but
awaiting completion with all other colours. a painting by Cezanne as forming a matrix or a achieves the utmost rigour, it is simpler at this
2. Grünewald's altarpiece is a work about light weave — like that of a carpet or tapestry — but stage to talk about the painting-method rather
as meaning. In the panel of the Crucifixion always remembering that it is not the image, the than physics or metaphysics.
the space in which the Cross rises up is filled scene, which is being constructed on this The paintings are built up on a white canvas
with darkness. This darkness is not just the `ground' : on the contrary, the ground is the (always, recently, of the same size so that the
obscurity of the objects within it: it fills the reality of what is being shown, stripped of the size of the canvas, as distinct from the event
entire sky, all the space of the painting, as temporary and contingent. The brushstrokes it represents, becomes unimportant) of many
anti-light. This anti-light is inseparable from, form simultaneously the nearest surface of the transparent overlays of colour. Each mark of
is perhaps the same thing as, the pain which painting — the pigment on the canvas which colour is a brushmark that defines the space in
also pervades the entire painting. For most you can touch with your finger — and, at the which it exists rather as birds, a hawk hovering,
other painters darkness was a background on to same time, the distant order underlying the or a swallow flying fast, define, in different ways,
which, or out of which, they painted; for painted events. It is as though the act of different properties of the space and air in
Grünewald it was a form of negative energy painting on the canvas has turned the garment which they fly. These marks are the modules
(`forces of darkness') which could fill the world. of appearances inside out. of the painting and of the event depicted.
Light was the opposite energy. The other Gill in following the demands of her vision has However many the overlaps, the pigment
panels of the altarpiece are about light as recognized — and therefore learnt from — these remains exceptionally thin, so that the grain of
energy and light as a symbol of knowledge. achievements of the past. It may be helpful the canvas is completely preserved. This means
This can be seen at its purest in the panel of immediately to do away with a possible that the colours (the light) appear first to be on
the Resurrection. Christ rises up out of the misunderstanding. It would be a mistake to the far side of the canvas, to lie behind the grain,
tomb surrounded by a circle of a kind of apply the term non-figurative (at least as it is which becomes a kind of transparent gauze or
spectrum light. His body and robe and winding normally used) to her art. Her paintings veil. Behind this gauze, the forms of colour
sheet are of the same colour as the light. The celebrate nature, not the activity of art. They radiate outwards, their radiation being the
wounds on his hands and feet radiate light. are in a direct line from Cezanne. To say that result of the concentration of their energy.
Through the circle, the stars in the sky still Cezanne sought the underlying forms of nature From this side of the canvas light strikes them
shine. Just as darkness was not merely a and that these new paintings are about the and is reflected off them. Behind the gauze, or
background for Grünewald, light was not nature of form is more than a play on words. veil, structures exist within their own activity;
merely a source of illumination. What made Since Cezanne, science has confirmed his on this side, their activity is received and
Grünewald unique as a painter was the intuition that form, far from being an aesthetic absorbed into the activity of the rest of the
significance he saw in the visible. Light, for him, category, is the structure of matter itself; world. But the gauze can equally be thought of
was the source of creation : and, at the same time, similarly, pattern is no longer a decorative as a screen, a skin, or a surface appearance : it
the symbol of knowledge. It was both the source category but the distribution of matter in the represents that balance of forces which
of the knowable and the power of the desire to process of creation. maintains the identity of an event, without
know. It would be absurd for a painter today, breaking the continuity which connects that
3. Grunwald aimed to depict the truth, as he concerned with nature as a totality, to paint event with all other events.
saw it, visibly. Three centuries later Cezanne a single scene. Cezanne's extraordinary struggle The Renaissance established the painted
struggled to make the invisible visible by cannot be repeated: the struggle now lies canvas as a window looking out into the world.
means of his painting. He wanted to paint what elsewhere. What such a painter today paints Its transparency measured the artist's skill.
was permanent, invariable in the world — or will relate recognizably to many different Cezanne used the painted surface to reveal the
cosmos — around him. His own words, quoted perceptual and spiritual experiences of nature. order lying behind appearances. These new
by Gasquet, are more telling than any others: It is neither sentimental nor anecdotal to see paintings use the surface of the canvas to reveal
`Here is my motif. (He put his hands together . . . birds, plants, seeds, stars, waters, biological the interaction between the event we see and the
drew them apart, the ten fingers open, slowly, organs, cells, crystals or galaxies in Gill's event of our seeing it. The painted surface has
very slowly brought them together again, paintings. And this multiplicity, not of meaning become analogous with consciousness itself.
clasped them, squeezed them tighter and but of reference, is part of their precision. They In this first article I have tried only to
tighter, as though meshing them into one). do not evoke: they make statements that have outline something of the history of the language
That's what you have to try to do. If one is many applications. of these paintings. I have scarcely discussed
higher or lower than the other, all goes to Basically these paintings are about light and their content. This may make them sound over-
pieces. Everything has so to mesh with growth. Light not as an effect — as in most cerebral. In fact they are sensuous, tender and
everything else that there is no way for the kinetic and electric art — but light as a form of beautiful in a very direct way. They appear to be
feeling, for the light, for the truth to escape. . . . the fundamental energy of the universe. Light the product of a totalizing vision, embracing
Everything we see falls apart, vanishes, doesn't from which matter and space/time are formed. many forms of experience of which the
it ? Nature is always the same, but nothing in Colour is fragmented light. Every colour intellectual is only one. Ultimately such a vision
her, nothing that appears to us, lasts. Our art aspires to white and its own completion. Some is poetic, revelatory and — for all its rarity and
must render the thrill of nature's permanence of these paintings reveal this aspiration and importance — extremely modest. q
along with her elements, the appearance of all chart its achievement — towards white, total JOHN BERGER
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