eternalism and absolutism of his light. But it was the other qualities
which entered into his art which brought about the interdependence of
the parts and evoked the sensation of unity we feel before them. One of
these qualities was a perfect rapport of lines. Cezanne, better than any
other painter up to his day, understood how one slanting line modifies
its direction when coming in contact with another line moving from a
different direction. When colour was first investigated realistically,
artists saw that two pure complementary tints, when juxtaposed, tended
to draw away from each other and to differentiate themselves. Therefore
they set about to study the influence that one colour has upon another,
assuming that lines were more static and absolute and consequently did
not change at contact with other lines. Cezanne recognised the fallacy
of this assumption, and wrote: "I see the planes criss-crossing and
overlapping, and sometimes the lines seem to fall." He realised that the
laws governing the opposition of line are most important in the
production of the emotion of movement. In all the old painters this
emotion was engendered by just such devices, but with them the laws were
only dimly suspected--instincts rather than applied science. In
contemplating their work we seem torn by some physical impulse to follow
one line, but cannot, because the lure of the other line is equally
great.
To the man of sensitive and trained eyesight this physical emotion is
incited also by nature, only nature is more complex than art and is
without aesthetic finality. Thus in regarding the rapports of two lines
in nature, one leaning to the right and one to the left, the highly
sensitive person feels unrest and strife, and subconsciously produces
order and calm by imagining a third line which harmonises the original
two. Cezanne looked upon nature with perhaps the most delicate and
perceptive eye a painter has ever possessed, and his vision became a
theatre for the violent struggles of some one line against terrible
odds, for the warring clashes of inharmonious colours. He saw in
objective nature a chaos of disorganised movement, and he set himself
the task of putting it in order. In studying the variations and
qualifications of linear directions in his model, he discovered another
method of accentuating the feeling of dynamism in his canvases. He
stated lines, not in their static character, but in their average of
fluctuation. We know that all straight lines are influenced by their
surroundings, that they appear bent or curved when related to other
lines. The extent to which a line is thus optically bent is its extreme
of fluctuability. Cezanne determined this extreme in all of his lines,
and by transcribing them midway between their actual and optical states,
achieved at once their normality and their extreme abnormality. The
character, direction and curve of all lines in a canvas change with
every shifting of the point of visual contact. Since the unity of a
picture is different from every focus, all the lines consequently assume
a slightly different direction every time our eye shifts from one spot
to another. Cezanne, by recording the mean of linear changeability,
facilitated and hastened this vicissitude of mutation.
Another contribution he made to painting was his application of the
stereoscopic function of the eye to all models by means of colour. From
the earliest art to Cezanne, objects have been portrayed as if conceived
_in vacuo_, with absolute and delimited contours. Such portrayals are
directly opposed to our normal vision, for whenever we focus our sight
on any natural object whatever, each eye records a different perspective
representation of that object; there is a distinct binocular parallax.
Certain parts are seen by one eye which are invisible to the other. But
these two visual impressions are perceived simultaneously, combined in
one image; that is to say: the optic axes converge at such an angle that
both the right and left monocular impressions are superimposed. The
single impression thus produced is one of perspective and relief. This
is a rudimentary law of optics, but on it our accuracy of vision has
always depended. In the lenticular stereoscope the eye-glasses are
marginal portions of the same convex lens, which, when set edge to edge,
deflect the rays from the picture so as to strike the eyes as if coming
from an intermediate point. By this bending of the rays the two pictures
become one impression, and present the appearance of solid forms as in
nature. The problem of how to transcribe on a flat surface in a single
picture the effect later produced by a stereoscope with two pictures,
has confronted painters for hundreds of years. Leonardo da Vinci in his
Trattato della Pittura recorded the fact that our vision encompasses to
a slight degree everything that passes before it; that we see around all
objects; and that this encircling sight gives us the sensation of
rotundity. But neither he, nor any artist up to Cezanne, was able to
make aesthetic use of the fact. The vision of all older painting
(although by the use of line and composition it became plastic because
used as a detail) was the vision of the man with one eye, for a one-eyed
man sees nature as a flat plane: only by association of the relative
size of objects is he capable of judging depth. Cezanne saw the
impossibility of producing a double vision by geometric rules, and
approached the problem from another direction. By understanding the
functioning elements of colour in their relation to texture and space,
he was able to paint forms in such a way that each colour he applied
took its relative position in space and held each part of an object
stationary at any required distance from the eye. As a result of his
method we can judge the depth and sense the solidity of his pictures the
same as we do in nature.
Cezanne was ever attempting to solve the problem of the dynamics of
vision. An analysis of his pictures often reveals a uniform leaning of
lines--a tendency of all the objects to precipitate themselves upon a
certain spot, like the minute flotsam on a surface of water being sucked
through a drain-hole. We find an explanation for this convergence in one
of his letters. He says: "In studying nature closely, you will observe
that it becomes concentric. I mean that on an orange, an apple, a ball
or a head there is a culminating point; and this point, despite the
strong effects of light and shadow which are colour sensations, is
always the nearest to our eye. The edges of objects retreat toward a
centre which is situated on our horizon." It is small wonder that
Cezanne, obsessed with the idea of form and depth, should have had
little admiration for his contemporaries, Van Gogh and Gauguin, both of
whom were workmen in the flat. He let pass no opportunity of expressing
himself on these artists who of late years have become so popular. Van
Gogh was to him only another Pointillist; and he called Gauguin's work
"_des images Chinoises_," adding, "I will never accept his entire lack
of modelling and gradation." Does not this explain his aversion to the
primitives in whom he saw but the rudiments of art? How could Cezanne,
preoccupied with the most momentous problems of aesthetics, take an
interest in enlarged book illuminations, when the most superficial
corner of his slightest canvas had more organisation and incited a
greater aesthetic emotion than all the mosaics in S. Vitale at Ravenna?
Cezanne was never attracted by the facial expressions, the manual
attitudes, or the graceful poses of his models. The characteristics of
materiality meant nothing to him. He was perpetually searching for
something more profound, and began his art where the average painter
leaves off. Realistic attributes are interesting only as decoration;
they are indicative of the simplicity of man's mind; they are unable to
conduce to an extended aesthetic experience. Van Gogh and Gauguin said
well what they had to say, but it was so slight that it is of little
interest to us today. We demand a greater stimulus than an art of two
dimensions can give; our minds instinctively extend themselves into
space. So it was with Cezanne. He left no device untried which would
give his work a greater depth, a more veritable solidity. He
experimented in colour from this standpoint, then in line, then in
optics. With the results of this research he became possessed of all the
necessary factors of colossal organisation. He knew that, were these
factors rightly applied, they would produce a greater sensation of
weight, of force and of movement than any artist before him had
succeeded in attaining.
Their application presented to Cezanne his most difficult problem. He
must use his discoveries in these three fields in such a way that the
very disposition of weights would produce that perfect balance of stress
and repose, out of which emanates all aesthetic movement. The simplest
manifestation of this balance is found in the opposition of line; but in
order to complete this linear adjustment there must be an opposition of
colours which, while they must function as volumes, must also accord
with the character of the natural object portrayed. In short, there must
be an opposition of countering weights, not perfectly balanced so as to
create a dead equality, but rhythmically related so that the effect is
one of swaying poise. Obviously this could not be accomplished on a flat
surface, for the emotion of depth is a necessity to the recognition of
equilibrium. Cezanne finally achieved this poise by a plastic
distribution of volumes over and beside spacial vacancies. He mastered
this basic principle of the hollow and the bump only after long and
trying struggles and tedious experimentations. He translated it into
terms of his own intellection: to the extent that there was order within
him so was he able to put order into his pictures. This vision of his
was intellectual rather than optical; and M. Bernard unnecessarily tells
us that, so sure was Cezanne of his justification, he placed his colours
on canvas with the same absolutism he used in expressing himself
verbally. His art was his thought given concrete form through the medium
of nature. His painting was the result of a mental process--an
intellectual conclusion after it had been weighed, added to, substracted
from, modified by exterior considerations, and at last brought forth
purged and clarified and as nearly complete as was his development at
the time.
For this reason Cezanne resented the presence of people while he worked.
To attain his ends his mind had to be concentrated on its ultimate
ambition. It could support no disturbing factors. Even though he had no
trick which might be copied, he once said to a friend: "I have never
permitted anyone to watch me while I work. I refuse to do anything
before anyone." Had he allowed spectators to stand over him he probably
would have fatigued them, for his work progressed by single strokes
interspersed by long periods of reflection and analysis. M. Bernard
would hear him descend to the garden a score of times during the day's
work, sit a moment and rush back to the studio as if some solution had
presented itself to him suddenly. At other times he would walk back and
forth before his picture awaiting the answer to a problem before him. It
is such deliberateness in great artists that has, curiously enough,
acquired for them a reputation for esotericism. Their moments of deep
contemplation and their sudden plunges into labour have been interpreted
as periods of intellectual coma shot through occasionally by "divine
flashes of inspiration" coming from an outside agent. The reverse is
true, however. An artist retains his sentiency at all times. He
necessarily works consciously, with the same intellectual labours as a
scientist. A painter can no more produce a great picture unwittingly
than an inventor can construct an intricate machine unwittingly. They
are both labourers in the most plebeian sense.
Cezanne's hatred for facile and thoughtless workmen who continually
entertain amateurs, was monumental. To him they were pupils who, by
learning a few rules, were able to paint conventional pieces after the
manner of thousands who had preceded him. They represented the
academicians with whom every country is overrun--the suave and
satisfied craftsmen who epitomise mediocrity, whose appeal is to minds
steeped in pedantry and conservatism. In France they come out of the
government-run Beaux-Arts school to which the incompetents of both
America and England flock. Cezanne harboured a particular enmity for
that school; anyone who had passed through it aroused his scorn. "With a
little temperament anyone can be an academic painter," he said. "One can
make pictures without being a harmonist or a colourist. It is enough to
have an art sense--and even this art sense is without doubt the horror of
the bourgeois. Thus the institutes, the pensions and the honours are
only made for cretins, farceurs and drolls."
In writing of Cezanne one is led to make a comparison between him and
his great compatriot, Renoir, for it is almost unbelievable that one
century could have produced two such radically different geniuses.
Renoir, first of all, was not an innovator: he was the consummation of
Impressionistic means. In Cezanne, to the contrary, we see a man
dissatisfied with the greatest results of others, ever tortured by the
search for something more final, more potent. "Let us not be satisfied
with the formulas of our wonderful antecedents," he said many times, and
he might have added, "and of our wonderful contemporaries." Renoir was
the apex of an art era, while Cezanne was the first segment of a greater
and vaster cycle. Renoir, by mastering his means at an early date,
acquired a technical facility to which Cezanne, ever on the hunt for
deeper conceptions, never attained. Renoir's genius was for linear
rhythm. In the acquisition of this there entered, in varying degree,
form, colour and light; but the line itself was his preoccupation.
Cezanne's genius was for plastic volume out of which the rhythmic line
resulted. That is: the one constructed his creations out of colour and
made colour appear like form; while in the other's creations, which are
the result of colour, the colour is _felt to be form_. In Renoir is
_recognised_ the solidity and depth of form, while in Cezanne the colour
is a functional element whose dynamism gives birth to form which is
_felt subjectively_. Renoir synthesises nature's forms, by grouping them
in such a way that the lines move and are harmonious. Cezanne looks for
the synthesis in each subject he sits before, and instead of grouping
his forms arbitrarily, he penetrates to their _inherent_ synthesis. This
is why almost every one of his pictures is built on a different
synthetic form. His penetration gave him at each essay a different
vision of the organisms of a particular subject, a vision which varied
as the subject varied. In Renoir movement is attained by _relating the
lines_: Cezanne has produced harmony by _accentuating their
differences_. In the former the lines lead smoothly and fluently into
others, until they all culminate in a line which carries the movement to
a finality; while in the latter we feel little of that suavity of
sequence: the lines are formed by the spaces between his volumes rather
than by linear continuation. Cezanne, if less pleasing, is the more
powerful; and with all his lack of suavity he is the more complex and
less monotonous. The extraordinary _imprevu_ of his formal developments
and his unique manner of stating parallels recall the symphonic works of
Beethoven. The ensembles of both are made up of an infinitude of smaller
forms, and both display a colossal power of absoluteness in setting
forth each smallest form. Renoir's work is more on the lines of Haydn.
After Michelangelo there was no longer any new inspiration for
sculpture. After Cezanne there was no longer any excuse for it. He has
made us see that painting can present a more solid vision than that of
any stone image. Against modern statues we can only bump our heads: in
the contemplation of modern painting we can exhaust our intelligences.
Cezanne is as much a reproach to sculptors as Renoir is to those who
continue to use Impressionist methods. He is the great prophet of future
art, as well as the consummator of the realistic vision of his time.
Both men deformed nature's objects--Renoir slightly to meet the demands
of consistency in his preconceived compositions; Cezanne to a greater
extent in order to make form voluminous. Some of his deformations
resulted from extraneous line forces which, when coming in contact with
an object's contour, made it lean to the right or left, or in some other
way take on an abnormal appearance as of convexity or concavity.
M. Bernard thinks these irregularities in Cezanne the result of
defective eyesight. But such an explanation is untenable. There is
abundant evidence to show that, to the contrary, they are the result of
a highly sensitised sight--a sight which simultaneously calls up the
complementary of the thing viewed, whether it be a line, a colour or a
tone. This double vision is only a dependency of the plastic mind which,
instead of approaching a problem from the nearest side, throws itself
automatically to the opposite side, and, by thus obtaining a double
approach, arrives at a fuller comprehension. While slanting his line and
distorting his volumes Cezanne was unconsciously moulding the parts to
echo the organisation of the whole. In turning his pictures into
block-manifestations, he strove for a result which would conduce to a
profounder aesthetic pleasure than did the linear movements of Renoir.
After we have enjoyed Renoir's rhythms we can lay them aside for the
time as we can a very beautiful but simple melody. The force of Cezanne
strikes us like that of a vast bulk or a mountain. Contemplating his
work is like coming suddenly face to face with an ordered elemental
force. At first we are conscious only of a shock, but when our wonder
has abated, we find ourselves studying the smaller forms which go into
the picture's making. In the 1902 Baigneuses of Renoir each separate
figure is a beautiful and complete form which fits into and becomes part
of the general rhythm. In Cezanne the importance of parts is entirely
submerged in the effect of the whole. Here is the main difference
between these two great men: we enjoy each part of Renoir and are
conducted by line to a completion; in Cezanne we are struck
simultaneously by each interrelated part. Viewing a canvas of the latter
is like going out into the blazing sunlight from the cool sombreness of
a house. At first we are aware only of the force of the light, but as we
gradually become accustomed to the glare, we begin to perceive
separately objects which before had been only a part of the general
impression. The fact that Cezanne invariably spoke of the "motif" should
have given his friends a clue to his conception of composition. Before
him composition had been to a great extent the formation of a simple
melody of line in three dimensions, constructed by the forms of objects.
It corresponded to the purely melodious in music, the opening of the
theme, its sequence of phrasing and the finale. Cezanne chose a motif,
and in each movement of his picture it is to be found, varied,
elaborated, reversed and developed. Each part of his canvas is a
beginning, yet each part, though distinct as a form, is perfectly united
both with the opening motif and with every variation of it.
[Illustration: POMMES SUR UNE TABLE by CEZANNE]
In this little-understood side of Cezanne's genius lies an infinitude of
possibilities. Without an ability to organise, all his knowledge is
worthless to the painter. He himself could apply it, and his
understanding of the exact adaptability of a form to a hollow permitted
him to express his knowledge with a force his followers lack. His
sensitiveness to spaces and the characters of his forms recall at times
the works of Mokkei who used protuberances and hollows (namely:
accidents of portraiture and landscape) to enrich and diversify form.
Nature to Cezanne was not simple, and he never depicted it thus. Even in
his bathing pieces, whose disproportions are deplored by many, the
composition is minutely conceived, not on a simple harmonic figure, but
on complicated oppositional planes. Not only are the surface forms
perfectly adapted to a given space, but the directions taken by these
forms are as solidly indicated and the vacancies made by them are as
solidly filled in, as in a Rubens. Indeed these canvases, as
block-manifestations, are nearly as perfect as the pictures of El Greco
who was the greatest master of this kind of composition.
Cezanne should be numbered among the experimenters in art. With him, as
with the Impressionists, the desire was to learn rather than to utilise
discoveries. The painters from Courbet to Cezanne were the first to
usher in an authentically realistic art mode, and they were also the
first who sensed the possibilities of inanimate reality for aesthetic
organisation. Others before them had regarded nature strictly _en
amateur_, using only the human body for abstract purposes. Even
Michelangelo said that aside from it there was nothing worth while.
These modern innovators refuted his assertion by proving the contrary,
namely: by introducing order into chaotic nature. Their simple
arrangements, however, would not have satisfied Michelangelo who, like
all men who come at a florescence when the lessons have been learned and
it remains only to apply them, demanded an arbitrary organisation which
should be not only ordered but composed. Cezanne did little composing in
the melodic sense of the word. He stopped at the gate of great
composition which, after pointing the future way, he left for his
successors to enter. His synthetic interest was limited to the eternal
fugue qualities of nature. He undoubtedly saw the futility of creating
polyphonic composition from lemons and napkins, but he had not found a
menstruum in which the qualities of his materials would disappear. The
old masters had done all that was possible with the recognisable human
body; Cezanne's desires for the purification of painting kept him from
attempting to improve on their medium.
Among a great scope of oil subjects one cannot say through which of them
Cezanne has exerted the strongest influence. His landscapes have made as
many disciples as his portraits, and his figure pieces and still-lives
are universally copied. But his greatest work, his water-colours, has
almost no following. In these he found his most facile and fluent
expression. His method of working in oil had always been the posing of
small, slightly oblong touches of colour which gave, his canvases the
appearance of perfect mosaics. In his water-colour pictures these
touches are placed side by side with little or no thought of their
ultimate objective importance, and they become larger planes of unmixed
tints juxtaposed in such a way that voluminous form results. His work in
this most difficult medium has an abstract significance, for in it even
the objective colouring of natural objects is unnoticeable. The colours
stand by themselves; and while the aspect of Cezanne's pictures in this
medium is flat and almost transparent, the subjective emotion we feel
before them is greater than in his oil work. In these pictures there was
no going back to retouch. They had to be visualised as a whole before
they could be commenced. Each brush stroke had to be a definite and
irretrievable step toward the completion of the ensemble. As we study
them a slow shifting of the planes is felt: an emotional reconstruction
takes place, and at length the volumes begin their turning, advancing
and retreating as in his oil paintings, only here the purely aesthetic
quality is unadulterated by objective reality. In these water-colours,
more than in any of his other work, has he posed the question of
aesthetic beauty itself. When we contemplate them, we are more than ever
convinced that Cezanne was the first painter, that is, the first man to
express himself entirely in the medium of his art, colour. Unfortunately
these pictures are difficult of access. Only occasionally are they
exposed in a group. Bernheim-Jeune has a magnificent collection of them,
and it is to be hoped they will soon find their way into public museums.
Eventually, when a true comprehension of this great man comes, they will
supplant his other efforts. His desires for a pure art are here
expressed most intensely.