Page 34 - Studio-International-January-1974

'INTIMATE qualities of presence, without claiming drawing of his prototypes; his apparent
independence as things. This is, in fact, a higher `clumsiness' illustrates his difficulty. But, in his
SCAFFOLDING' truth of real perception. From which it follows developed style, what may look like bits of
that discussion of 'contours', 'local colour' or contour each actually mark a place where an
CEZANNES `essential tree', however useful in historical edge exists between a lighter and a darker tone.
DRAWINGS AND explanation, always begs his fundamental They have no kinetic suggestion or 'brio'. They
artistic question. merely state the locus and direction of a
WATERCOLOURS Cezanne's marks were never intended to distinction in tone. The stroke itself was meant
convey images of particular people, things or ultimately to be absorbed into the shadow-
The recent Cezanne exhibition was organized places. It was nice to see in this show the photos group on the darker side, which would be
by the Arts Council and the Northern Arts of those motifs before which he was able to developed by patches of hatching. For
Association. It was on show first of all in accumulate his insight; but they are, in one Cezanne drew only what he called 'contrasts'.
Newcastle for six weeks — a fine thing for the radical sense, irrelevant. For every mark he Starting from a nucleus he evolved out of these
North, because it must rate as one of the most made came both to refuse recognition to contrast-marking strokes his paths or tracks of
significant exhibitions we are ever likely to see, objects of everyday sense, and at the same time shadow. These grew like garlands over the
from every point of view — and then went to correspond absolutely with the system he was paper with a life and identity of their own,
to the Hayward Gallery, London. developing to realize in paint the undulant crossing and recrossing the boundaries and
Art-historically, the documentary catalogue oneness he perceived in each total field. This outline-shapes of 'things'. But since shadows
(alas, badly printed pictures) owes a great meant abstaining from any casual 'completing' are cast by volumes, and 'cut holes' (as one
debt to Robert Ratcliffe; and Lawrence strokes — as artists will realize, a heroic story, ben trovato, has him saying) in the field,
Gowing, in his catalogue essay, continues asceticism. In all of this he needed some moral volumes naturally emerge as the shadow-paths
his laudable search for Cezanne's meaning. support. Even Ratcliffe speaks, I believe, too weave more densely together, and give qualities
But artistically, the real importance of slightingly of Cezanne's later religious of solid presence to the field. These volumes, of
the show must be the unique opportunity it tendency. It ran far deeper than our sceptical, course, are all the rounded, essentially plastic,
gave of seeing deep into the workings of personality-oriented art history may care to volumes he once described (sphere, cone and
Cezanne's creative mind. admit. Indeed, one utterance on art not included cylinder), not cubist in the slightest degree. In
To go straight to the point: Cezanne devoted in Bernard's selection given in the many nude drawings undulant strokes may
his whole individual and artistic life to one task. catalogue, is that in which Cezanne writes of bond adjacent plastic volumes.
It involved him in great personal sacrifice, but `the spectacle the Pater Omnipotens Deus The other structural component in the
that sacrifice was in a supreme cause. He spreads out before our eyes' — a 'spectacle developed style is perhaps the most important.
devoted himself to learning painfully to grasp, spread', not 'things shown'. It is this which integrates his tonal paths; for
both in vision and in pigment, the unity of the However strange it may sound of this their stability is purely visual, and owes nothing
field of each motif as if it were a single thing. To profound colourist, the exhibition to any conceptual stability among objects (cf.
capture the unique entirety of each landscape demonstrated that Cezanne's painting and the legs of Vallier, the gardener, in no. 97). This
of terrain or table top he had to learn to drawing were essentially extended versions of component is the rhythmic spacing between
abandon all hold upon those objects on which each other. He began in his youth working from those constrast-marking strokes, read across
ordinary human attention seizes ; for such monochrome magazine pictures, engravings, their direction. To grasp them the eye must
attention separates and isolates one thing from and continued during his life to study his skip across their ladder-rungs, from one side of
another, whereas Cezanne was bent on uniting pictorial foundations by constant drawing from the format to the other. They may be parallels,
them without distinctions. All the `colourless' sculpture. The history of his or angled like tiny sections of huge radii crossing
characteristics of Cezanne's life and art spring evolution as a painter is to a large extent the beyond the picture's edge. Each segment of
from this overriding concern. It explains, for history of his efforts to defeat the tyranny of tonal path, each stroke, had to find its place in
example, why his portraits appear to lack banal, pre-formed notions of 'contour' and not one but many interlocking groups of
normal human feeling; for the sitter to him was `local hue'. In many of the works one can rhythmic associates. Until the place was found,
not distinguished in essence from background. actually watch how the brush with colour picks the stroke could not be set down.
At the personal level it was only possible for up from the pencil. But in the superb group of The watercolours developed exactly similar
him to cultivate and sustain this vision by late watercolours (catalogue nos 90-101), with 'shadow-paths' with the same chain-like
cutting himself off from ordinary human their radiant blues, yellows, reds and violets, integration and transverse rhythmic measures.
responses to people and things. He had to live one could see how his developed colour system But whereas pencil tone indicates degree of
himself into a special state of isolation. His fury (1887 on), being based on a definite palette of shadow, colour indicates a special modification
at being touched or intruded upon was one unmixed colours, has an independence from of light. Colour as local tint functions as a
result. At the artistic level it meant that he local hues similar to that of drawing. It aims separator of the tinted objects. But Cezanne's
never painted what we call 'objects', though his towards ultimate equivalents for them in colours are used to transform patches of the
whole aim was to capture a kind of 'higher the balance of elements from the palette, in white paper, down the tonal scale, from its pure
object'. His foregrounds are designed to prevent varied saturation. Fully evolved colour in the white into something else. What he was aiming
us feeling that we can walk into the world of the oil paintings attains the effect of local hue, for in colour, too, was a system of relationship
picture and treat its components as we would without stating it as tint. In these watercolours which would bond the entire field. He sought
`things'. So if we try (following our everyday the basis of the method is exposed. this by reconciling the two functions of drawn
habits) to pick out from his field of attention Cezanne treated every mark he made on his structure and colour so as to transcend the old
separate objects, and talk about their identity, white ground as a degree of shadow-tone. A `outline — hue' duality: not equating shadow-
structure, inter-relationships, we are missing pencil mark on paper represents a place where scale with spectrum-scale, as the impressionists
his point. To talk of 'distortions' implies that light is modified. Contour has no place in did, but by awarding a special independence
he acknowledged object-norms — which he did his method. For the chief role of contour in art, and symbolic value to the colours out of which
not. The field that lay before him he grasped, ignoring light as it does, is to separate and his hues emerged, just as presences emerged
first visually then in paint, as a unique, distinguish things. Certainly in his early from his drawing. He wrote that reds and
individualized, but single substance, to which drawings Cezanne clearly had great difficulty in yellows represent the vibrations in light; blue
trees, rocks, pots and people gave only varied breaking down the conventional contour- gives the impression of air. In the late, greatest

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