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

ARAS Connections Issue 2, 2012
After the School of Paris Cézanne's influence diminished. Hopper's
paintings have plastic qualities as do some of de Chirico's and Balthus' paintings.
Knowledge of pictorial space was brought to the United States by Hofmann who
had been in Paris from 1904 to 1914. Hofmann taught in Munich from 1914 and
then in New York from the 1930s until the 1950s |18|. Erle Loran acknowledged
Hofmann's influence and also learned from Cameron Booth who had studied
with Hofmann in Munich. Robert Casper studied in New York with Hofmann and
with Cameron Booth.
Pictorial space in the literature
To study pictorial space you must study plastic paintings but, to do this,
you must know beforehand which paintings are plastic. Because pictorial space is
extraordinarily difficult to achieve you should assume it only in the masters listed
above and, even in their work, not always. Cézanne did not always achieve it (he
sometimes threw unsuccessful paintings out the window of his studio; his dealer
retrieved several from the branches of a tree) and Picasso sometimes worked too
quickly to be plastic. It is hard to distinguish a plastic painting from one which is
not: the eye is seduced by subject matter, color, composition and expression.
Without training you may see pictorial space only as a mysterious authority. Most
critics and art historians discuss pictorial space not at all or in a cursory or
misleading fashion: for example neither Kenneth Clark nor Herbert Reed
discussed it. Pictorial space has to be understood by the eye: verbal logic or
metaphor won't do it. The few explanations are by artists. The sculptor Adolph
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