Pictorial Space throughout Art History: Cézanne and ... - ARAS

ARAS Connections Issue 2, 2012
In Matisse's still life (plate 12) the lamp, the vases, and the landscape beyond
serve only as suggestions for an arrangement of form and color on canvas. By
contrast, the painting by Canaletto (plate 5) creates the illusion of a window.
Hofmann said:
Dionysus and Apollo
The act of creation agitates the picture plane but, if the two-
dimensionality is lost, the picture reveals holes and is not pictorial but a
naturalistic imitation of nature |30|.
An area of color thrusts forwards or backwards, creating tensions with
other colors. These forces may be wild or Dionysian and would dismember the
composition unless they were controlled. Thus each area of color, like each form,
must be integrated by Apollonian balance and feeling (feeling is a rational
function which evaluates different pictorial effects).
In the portrait by El Greco (plate 9) the red of the Cardinal's cloak creates
a strong effect but is contained within the overall picture plane. The intense
yellow and red rectangles in Hans Hofmann's painting (plate 15) also create
strong effects but are contained.
Describing the portrait Mme. Cézanne Fry said:
It expresses, too, that characteristic feeling of Cézanne's ... the
monumental repose, the immense duration of the objects represented, a
feeling which is conveyed to us by the passionate conviction of each
affirmation. That passion, no doubt, was always present, but whereas in
the earlier works it was hasty and overbearing, its force [here] is all the
greater for being thus held in and constrained |31|.
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