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

ARAS Connections Issue 2, 2012
After an hour or two your eye will tire and you will become insensitive to
the plastic effect. You may get lost in decorative effects. Set the canvas aside and
come back to it later. Be prepared to struggle for hours. In order to satisfy new
proportional demands you must repeatedly sacrifice already hard-won
proportions. Your aim is to control the spatial tension between the two rectangles
so that both seem integrated with the flat canvas and with each other. If you
succeed the canvas will be alive: the flat surface will be activated by the spatial
effect.
Then try to add a third rectangle. Again you must remain fluid, repeatedly
sacrificing some of what you have already achieved. The third rectangle must add
further to the spatial effect. Any addition which weakens the plasticity is a
mistake and must be removed: there can be no detours through disproportionate
or spatially confused intermediate forms. This criterion may enable you to find a
way forward. Without it you will get lost in a tangle of distractions.
If you succeed in adding a third rectangle then you have a plastic
composition. Start again with a new, equally small canvas and try to achieve a
second composition. If you wrestle with it long enough it too may become its own
original universe, different from the first. To get to this point is an unusual
accomplishment. Then you can try to add another rectangle, remembering always
that nothing can be added unless it increases the plastic strength of the
composition.
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