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

ARAS Connections Issue 2, 2012
painting as a new individual with its own integrity. Only then can the artist
respond to each painting's unique structural problems. Thus pictorial space is the
antithesis of a formula.
Does a preoccupation with pictorial space make art too studied and
prevent the artist from being playful in his or her creative work? In fact, when a
painter focuses on the spatial problem, there are endless possibilities for play,
that is, for trial-and-error, change, and evolution. No other aspect of painting,
neither drawing, nor composition, nor perspective, nor color effects, nor subject
matter, can be pursued for so long with so many incremental developments.
When an artist bases a painting upon these other aspects, then he or she can only
develop it to a limited extent. It becomes “finished” and the artist is forced to go
on to a new painting. The problem of pictorial space, however, is inexhaustible,
like a child's play. Cézanne would spend several years on a single canvas.
To use the word in another sense, movements play continuously against
each other throughout a plastic painting. The surface ripples. The canvas
recreates itself as it is observed, as though it were a three-dimensional mobile
(Plate 12).
Contemporary art often disregards pictorial space. Perhaps pictorial space
is out of date and no longer important? It is hard to compare new art with art that
has endured for hundreds of years and each of us must decide for ourselves what
we value. It remains objectively true that, if a painting has four sides and a flat
surface, then it cannot be fully unified unless it relates to those limits.
Pictorial space is subjective in the sense that it must be experienced and
cannot be measured, but objective in the sense that it is independent of
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