Pictorial Space throughout Art History: Cézanne and ... - ARAS
Pictorial Space throughout Art History: Cézanne and ... - ARAS
Pictorial Space throughout Art History: Cézanne and ... - ARAS
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<strong>ARAS</strong> Connections Issue 2, 2012<br />
Vigor<br />
where only the key phrases are written down they are felt as setting up<br />
rhythms in every part of the surface. But this perfect continuity of plastic<br />
sequences did not of course imply any want of organization. This<br />
continuity only contributes to the perfectly lucid organization <strong>and</strong> the<br />
clear articulation of volumes. Their exact relief or recession has to be<br />
given to each plane. Nothing could be more explicit, more legible than<br />
the plasticity of this design where everything keeps its exact position, <strong>and</strong><br />
where the volumes have the exact space in which to evolve |33|.<br />
Plastic paintings are never insipid. In Veronese's Mars <strong>and</strong> Venus (plate 7)<br />
planes push vigorously against each other <strong>and</strong> are at the same time held in<br />
balance. Soulages said of the great Renaissance paintings that they were like<br />
machines he would fear to put his finger into lest it be hurt by the gears |34|.<br />
When I come suddenly upon such a painting in a museum I feel a shock of<br />
surprise like the shock of meeting a deer in the woods. Each st<strong>and</strong>s poised <strong>and</strong><br />
breathing in its own universe. A plastic painting evolves as a living organism<br />
evolves, from its initial simple form through a series of intermediate forms to its<br />
final complex form (see Plate 2 <strong>and</strong> Creating a plastic painting). At each stage the<br />
painting is alive because it is unified <strong>and</strong> vigorous. The vigor of the initial<br />
structure is not lost but is translated into new forms.<br />
The play of movement<br />
Opposing movements play against each other <strong>throughout</strong> the canvas.<br />
Nothing is static. The surface ripples like a stream running over a bed of stones.<br />
The still lives by <strong>Cézanne</strong> <strong>and</strong> Matisse (plate 12) each show this live rippling<br />
surface. Fry described <strong>Cézanne</strong>'s l<strong>and</strong>scape Provencal Mas:<br />
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