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

ARAS Connections Issue 2, 2012
When he was 40 he become dissatisfied with his job. Then, for the first
time, he become conscious of his need to assert himself. Since he had never
negotiated his assertion, it emerged in its primitive form, “black-and-white” or
split into the two extremes of destructive rage and passivity. These are two sides
of the same coin, assertion and non-assertion. When he became aware of these
two extremes he felt worse. Neither worked. Each had injured him. The tension
between them was painful. He struggled and failed to reconcile them |53| |54|.
He tried to immerse himself in television and to believe that it was his boss's
problem, not his. But when he was honest he had to suffer his own tension. In
painting, likewise, when opposing planes are first introduced onto the canvas
they are not balanced, not related to each other. The painter has to struggle with
these planes; he or she has to tolerate the frustration of seeing that they do not
work together.
When Ted had suffered long enough solutions arose spontaneously. As a
child he had played the saxaphone and now he returned to studying it seriously.
In music he had to be sometimes receptive and sometimes penetrating. He began
also to be more consciously related to other people, sometimes receptive to them
and sometimes assertive. Both in his music and in his relating, the opposites were
integrated into new behavior. In painting, likewise, when opposite planes or
opposite movements are balanced they are integrated.
As Ted began to integrate these opposites, the tension between them made
him more vigorous |55| |10|. In painting the same is true: lively tension forms
between opposing planes when they are integrated. Balanced movements also
make the painting lively (see Vigor).
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