Thursday, January 12, 2017

Cezanne & the Fixed Gaze

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Journal Éveillé is an Informal Exploration of the Natural Mind in Literature and Painting

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“Cézanne often spent hours contemplating a brushstroke. Out in the open air, he would stare at his subject until it melted under his gaze, until the forms of the worlds had decayed into a formless mess. By making hbis vision disintegrate, Cézanne was trying to return to the start of sight, to become nothing but “a sensitive recording plate.” The slowness of this method forced Cézanne to focus on simple things, like a few red apples set on a trapezoid of table, or a single mountain seen from afar. But he knew that the subject itself was irrelevant. Stare hard enough, his paintings implore, and the laws of the known universe will emerge from just about anything. “With an apple,” Cézanne once said, “I will astonish Paris.”……Cézanne discovered that visual forms—the apple in a still life or the mountain in a landscape—are mental inventions that we unconsciously impose onto our sensations. “I tried to copy nature,” Cézanne confessed, “but I couldn’t. I searched, turned, looked at it from every direction, but in vain.” No matter how hard he tried, Cézanne couldn’t escape the sly interpretations of his brain. In his abstract paintings, Cézanne wanted to reveal this psychological process, to make us aware of the particular way the mind creates reality. His art shows us what we cannot see, which is how we see.”….Slow Muse by Deborah Barlow

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Cézanne's The Card Players, c. 1890-1892, has an almost sculptural quality…..They don't make eye contact but stare intently at their hands. They certainly don't speak much, if at all.

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“I was very pleased with myself when I discovered that sunlight could not be reproduced; it had to be represented by something else.. ..by colour…… In: Renoir – his life and work, Francois Fosca; Book Club Associates /Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1975, p. 79

“You wretch! [Cezanne is portraying the art dealer Vollard who changed his pose during the painter session] You've spoiled the pose. Do I have to tell you again you must sit like an apple? Does an apple move?”….In a conversation in Cézanne’s studio in Paris, ca. 1896-98, as quoted in Cezanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 74

“Everybody's going crazy over the Impressionists; what art needs is a w:Poussin made over according to nature. There you have it in a nutshell.”…. In: a conversation with Vollard, in the studio of Cézanne, in Aix, 1896, as quoted in Cezanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 67

“Painting certainly means more to me than everything else in the world. I think my mind becomes clearer when I am in the presence of nature. Unfortunately, the realization of my sensations is always a very painful process with me. I can't seem to express the intensity which beats in upon my senses. I haven't at my command the magnificent richness of color which enlivens Nature.. .Look at that cloud; I should like to be able to paint that! Monet could. He had muscle.”…In: a conversation with Vollard, along the river near Aix, 1896, as quoted in Cezanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 74

“This is what happens, unquestionably – I am positive: an optical sensation is produced in our visual organ, which leads us classify as light, half-tone or quarter-tone, the planes represented by sensations of color. [Thus the light does not exist for the painter]. As long as, inevitably, one proceeds from black to white, the former of these abstractions being a kind of point of rest both for eye and brain, we flounder about, we cannot achieve self-mastery, get possession of ourselves. During this period (I tend to repeat myself, inevitably) we turn to the admirable works [of the five great Venetian painters a. o. Titian and Tintoretto] handed down to us through the ages, in which we find comfort and support…”…..In: a letter to Émile Bernhard, 23 December 1904, as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 184

“The point to be made clear is that, whatever may be our temperament, or our power in the presence of nature, we have to render what we actually see, forgetting everything that appeared before our own time. “…..In: a letter to Émile Bernhard, 23 October 1905, as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 180

“As a painter I am beginning to see more clearly how to work from Nature.. .But I still can't do justice to the intensity unfolding before my eyes.”…. In a letter to his son Paul, a few months before his death; as quoted in The Private Lives of the Impressionists Sue Roe; Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2006, p. 268

“Art has a harmony which parallels that of nature. The people who tell you that the artist is always inferior to nature are idiots! He is parallel to it. Unless, of course, he deliberately intervenes. His whole aim must be silence. He must silence all the voices of prejudice within him, he must forget.. .And then the entire landscape will engrave itself on the sensitive plate of his being.”…. p. 150, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif'

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“Learning how to draw from life to represent what we see can be difficult….the artist is a living being and constantly moving in relation to the subject. Our body’s move as we breathe, our heads move from one point to another, forward and backward as we draw, while the subject is stationary. Another reason is binocular depth perception, the ability to sense the distance between objects. Most of us view the world with two eyes each with slightly different perspectives can also affect the drawing. By experimenting, we can fix our gaze on a scene in front of us. Looking ahead and observing with one eye closed, then closing that eye and opening the other. The scene has shifted and the size and angle of shapes altered. Looking with one eye we see in two dimensions. Two eyes open we see three dimensions enabling us to accurately judge depth in space. In a drawing, translating a three-dimensional scene into two-dimensions requires a kind of converging of two viewpoints……Cezanne was a French artist of the 19th Century known for his radical vision, constructed by his self-reflective, mental and physical actions. He thought about painting in abstract terms rejecting the Early Renaissance invention of perspective a system that realistically represents objects in space as seen by the observer. Cezanne consciously incorporated binocular vision into his art practice (self-reflective). He spent days, weeks and months on one painting, reworking over and over a single canvas from differing perspectives (mental and physical). Abstracting what he saw into simplified geometric shapes, slightly shifting viewpoints enhanced the composition while exaggerating the view. In the act of making art he makes meaning, apples have become symbols…”…..Don Prickel, The Influence of New and Emerging Theories on Teaching Practices

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Email....wijijiarts@gmail.com

John Hopkins.....Northern New Mexico

January 2017

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Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Index of Journal Éveillé Painting and Vision

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Journal Éveillé is an Informal Exploration of the Natural Mind in Literature and Painting

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Dzogchen, Cezanne and Human Perception... For Cezanne, the canvas itself takes on the role of a screen where an artist's visual sensations are registered as he gazes intensely, and often repeatedly, at a given subject....

Cezanne: The Pseudoscopic Content... It is the work of the 19th century painter Cezanne, where pseudoscopic qualities literally come to the fore..... referred to as 'binocular ambiguities'. ...

Painting & the Pseudoscope... A pseudoscope is a binocular optical instrument that reverses depth perception. It is used to study human stereoscopic perception. Objects viewed through it appear inside out, for example: a box on a floor would appear as a box shaped hole in the floor ...The view of the left eye is swapped with that of the right eye."

Cezanne & the Fixed Gaze... Cézanne often spent hours contemplating a brushstroke. Out in the open air, he would stare at his subject until it melted under his gaze, until the forms of the worlds had decayed into a formless mess. By making hbis vision disintegrate, Cézanne was trying to return to the start of sight, to become nothing but “a sensitive recording plate.” The slowness of this method forced Cézanne to focus on simple things, like a few red apples set on a trapezoid of table, or a single mountain seen from afar. But he knew that the subject itself was irrelevant. Stare hard enough, his paintings implore, and the laws of the known universe will emerge from just about anything."

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Dzogchen Explorations

Journal Éveillé Index

Okar Research.....August 2015 - May 2016

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Email....wijijiarts@gmail.com

John Hopkins.....Northern New Mexico

January 2017

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Dzogchen, Cezanne and Human Perception

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Journal Éveillé is an Informal Exploration of the Natural Mind in Literature and Painting

Index of Painting & Art Notes

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"The channel that goes from the heart to the eyes is called the "crystal kati channel".....The Golden Letters by John Myrdhin Reynolds....The Golden Letters by John Myrdhin Reynolds

“The Wisdom of the Crystal Kati Channel……An aspect of the fruition of the Path of Thogal is the opening of the Crystal Kati channel. This is an extremely subtle channel that links the heart directly to the eyes…….This fruition is often described as the resolution of all phenomena…….This means your heart is pouring out of your eyes as you connect with your nature as the essence of reality…….In this process you are learning to see with your heart……Dzogchen is about letting go of your conceptual mind and learning to see with your heart….”…..Excerpted from…………….https://www.reddit.com/r/Dzogchen/comments/38onb9/the_wisdom_of_the_crystal_kati_channel/

“Unsatisfied with the Impressionist dictum that painting is primarily a reflection of visual perception, Cézanne sought to make of his artistic practice a new kind of analytical discipline. In his hands, the canvas itself takes on the role of a screen where an artist's visual sensations are registered as he gazes intensely, and often repeatedly, at a given subject.”….http://www.theartstory.org/artist-cezanne-paul.htm

"Discovering drala is indeed to establish ties to your world, so that each perception becomes unique. It is to see with the heart, so that what is invisible to the eye becomes visible as the living magic of reality." (Trungpa: 1984..pg 105)

"The Nature of Mind is not only ... primordial purity (ka-dag), but it is equally characterized by a luminous clarity (gsal-ba) and intrinsic awareness (rig-pa)……the light of awareness that illuminates our world. ... This inner light (nang >od), the light of awareness, resides in the hollow space inside ... a maroon-colored carnelian stone decorated with white crystals ... . This inner light of awareness proceeds from the hollow space ..., moving upward through the kati channel, to the two ... lenses to focus this light. The two ... are the gateways for the emergence into outer space of this inner light of awareness…..Thus, this light and the images that appear in this light, are actually something internal ..., but here they manifest in the empty space in front of oneself. The light ... is projected ... out through the lenses of the two eyes into the space in front, much like one is watching a cinema show. This process may be compared to a magic latern or a projector. ...The objects that appear are not really outside oneself. ……http://texts.00.gs/Practice_of_Dzogchen_in_the_Zhang-Zhung_Tradition,_2.htm…..Practice of Dzogchen in the Zhang-Zhung Tradition of Tibet: Translations from the The Gyalwa Chaktri of Druchen Gyalwa Yungdrung, and The Seven-fold Cycle of the Clear Light By:John Myrdhin Reynolds (translator)

"Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung that describe his encounter with the Native American chief of the Taos pueblos in New Mexico in 1932….I was able to talk with him as I have rarely been able to talk with a European,’ Jung recalls…Chief Ochwiay Biano, which means Mountain Lake, must have sensed a kindred spirit in the Swiss doctor, because he was devastatingly candid with him….‘See how cruel the whites look, their lips are thin, their noses sharp, their faces furrowed and distorted by folds. Their eyes have a staring expression; they are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something. They are always uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think that they are all mad…..When Jung asks why he thinks they are all mad, Mountain Lake replies, ‘They say they think with their heads.’….’Why of course, says Jung, ‘What do you think with?’….’We think here,’ says Chief Mountain Lake, indicating his heart……".. https://jhaines6.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/jung-in-conversation-with-a-native-american-chief/ http://carljungdepthpsychology.blogspot.com/2012/07/conversation-with-native-american-chief.html

"Maya.....literally "illusion" or "magic"..... In Vedic literature...., Māyā connotes a "magic show, an illusion where things appear to be present but are not what they seem"....Māyā is also a spiritual concept connoting "that which exists, but is constantly changing and thus is spiritually unreal", and the "power or the principle that conceals the true character of spiritual reality".

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Dzogchen Explorations

Journal Éveillé Index

Okar Research.....August 2015 - May 2016

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Email....wijijiarts@gmail.com

John Hopkins.....Northern New Mexico

January 2017

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Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Cezanne: The Pseudoscopic Content

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Journal Éveillé is an Informal Exploration of the Natural Mind in Literature and Painting

Index of Painting & Art Notes

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A pseudoscope is a binocular optical instrument that reverses depth perception. It is used to study human stereoscopic perception. Objects viewed through it appear inside out, for example: a box on a floor would appear as a box shaped hole in the floor…….It typically uses sets of optical prisms, or periscopically arranged mirrors to swap the view of the left eye with that of the right eye……..In the 1800s Charles Wheatstone coined the name from the Greek ψευδίς σκοπειν -- "false view". The device was used to explore his theory of stereo vision.

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It is the work of the 19th century painter Cezanne, where pseudoscopic qualities literally come to the fore. His watercolours during the years 1885-1900 not only give background parity with foreground, but by his choice of the medium of watercolour, creates a remarkable overall pseudoscopic transparency, and in many instances an unmistakable X-Ray effect. The pseudoscopic content in his painting is however much more extensive and widespread than this, and may have escaped scholarly attention because of a general unfamiliarity with the properties of pseudoscopic vision. One distinguished essayist noticed these conflicts, but referred to them as 'binocular ambiguities'. The Cubists' indebtedness to Cezanne is obvious enough and well- documented. What is not obvious, is that the distinctly pseudoscopic handling of space in his paintings, destroyed and revised the classical role of virtual space within the picture plane'. This revision was one of the important pictorial innovations that helped to make Cubism possible, and paved the way for Modernism.

Art and Phenomenology……..edited by Joseph D. Parry…Routledge (2011)

“Art and Phenomenology is one of the first books to explore visual art as a mode of experiencing the world itself, showing how in the words of Merleau-Ponty ‘Painting does not imitate the world, but is a world of its own’. An outstanding series of chapters by an international group of contributors examine the following questions: Paul Klee and the body in art colour and background in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of art self-consciousness and seventeenth-century painting Vermeer and Heidegger philosophy and the painting of Rothko embodiment in Renaissance art sculpture, dance and phenomenology. Art and Phenomenology is essential reading for anyone interested in phenomenology, aesthetics, and visual culture.”

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Paul Cézanne (1839–1906)
Nature morte au crâne
Date 1895-1900
Dimensions: 54,3 x 65 cm

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Paul Cézanne, The Basket of Apples, c. 1893, oil on canvas, 65 x 80 cm (Art Institute of Chicago)

“…The image looks simple enough, a wine bottle, a basket tipped up to expose a bounty of fruit inside, a plate of what are perhaps stacked cookies or small rolls, and a tablecloth both gathered and draped. Nothing remarkable, at least not until one begins to notice the odd errors in drawing. Look, for instance, at the lines that represent the close and far edge of the table. I remember an old student of mine remarking to the class, "I would never hire him as a carpenter!" …..But that is not all that is wrong. The table seems to be too steeply tipped at the left, so much so that the fruit is in danger of rolling off it. The bottle looks tipsy and the cookies are very odd indeed. The cookies stacked below the top layer seem as if they are viewed from the side, but at the same moment, the two on top seem to pop upward as if we were looking down at them. This is an important key to understanding the questions that we've raised about Cézanne's pictures so far…..Like Edouard Manet, from whom he borrowed so much, Cézanne was prompted to rethink the value of the various illusionistic techniques that he had inherited from the masters of the Renaissance and Baroque eras. This was due in part to the growing impact of photography and its transformation of modern representation. While Degas and Monet borrowed from the camera the fragmenting of time, Cézanne saw this mechanized segmentation of time as artificial and at odds with the perception of the human eye….Cézanne pushed this distinction between the vision of the camera and of human vision. He reasoned that the same issues applied to the illusionism of the old masters, of Raphael, Leonardo, Caravaggio, etc…..

If a Renaissance painter set out to render Cézanne's still life objects (not that they would, mind you), that artist would have placed himself in a specific point before the table and taken great pains to render the collection of tabletop objects only from that original perspective. Every orthogonal line would remain consistent (and straight). But this is clearly not what Cézanne had in mind. His perspective seems jumbled. When we first look carefully, it may appear as if he was simply unable to draw, but if you spend more time, it may occur to you that Cézanne is, in fact, drawing carefully, although according to a new set of rules…..Seemingly simple, Cézanne's concern with representing the true experience of sight had enormous implications for 20th century visual culture. Cézanne realized that unlike the fairly simple and static Renaissance vision of space, people actually see in a fashion that is more complex, we see through both time and space. In other words, we move as we see…..So very tentatively, Cézanne began the purposeful destruction of the unified image….. these breaks that allow for more than a single perspective. Look, for instance, at the points where the table must break to express these multiple perspectives and you will notice that they are each hidden from view. Nevertheless, in doing this, Cézanne changed the direction of painting.”……Essay by Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker…..https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/becoming-modern/avant-garde-france/post-impressionism/a/czanne-the-basket-of-apples

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Dzogchen Explorations

Journal Éveillé Index

Okar Research.....August 2015 - May 2016

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Email....wijijiarts@gmail.com

John Hopkins.....Northern New Mexico

January 2017

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Painting & the Pseudoscope

**************************

Journal Éveillé is an Informal Exploration of the Natural Mind in Literature and Painting

Index of Painting & Art Notes

**************************

A pseudoscope is a binocular optical instrument that reverses depth perception. It is used to study human stereoscopic perception. Objects viewed through it appear inside out, for example: a box on a floor would appear as a box shaped hole in the floor…….It typically uses sets of optical prisms, or periscopically arranged mirrors to swap the view of the left eye with that of the right eye……..In the 1800s Charles Wheatstone coined the name from the Greek ψευδίς σκοπειν -- "false view". The device was used to explore his theory of stereo vision.

Basically, Pseudoscopic is 3D in reverse. That is, in aerial photography, swimming pools appear to look like buildings and buildings appear to look like swimming pools. In red and green plotters like the Kelsh and Multiplex this is achieved by reversing the lenses on the 3D glasses. The images will be reverse order. The right image will be viewed through the left eye, and the left image will be through the right eye………Switching the two pictures in a standard stereoscope changes all the elevated parts into depressions, and vice versa. The pseudoscope also changes convex into concave, and high-relief into low-relief.

In 1852, Charles Wheatstone, published his ideas in his paper "On Binocular Vision," in the Philosophical Transactions for 1852. Wheatstone's paper stimulated the investigation of binocular vision and many variations of pseudoscopes were created, chief types being the mirror or the prismatic.

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The Dutch artist Escher was given a prismatic pseudoscope….” a simple means of undergoing the same sort of inversion that I have tried to achieve in my print 'Convex and Concave'.

Pseudoscopic properties are visible in the work of many artists. This is not necessarily because the artists who produced them had that in mind, but in their efforts at different times in the history of art, to represent 3 dimensions on a 2 dimensional surface and to understand and manipulate the picture plane, they selected visual elements which most readily adapted to pictorial representation. They believed that the requirements of 'making a picture' took priority over the mere need to be accurate in the literal sense. The flattening of space is obvious enough in some of the work of Piero della Francesca (see his unfinished Nativity) and Francesco Guardi, both showing the unmistakable flattening of telephoto lens effects. Monet and Canaletto did exactly the opposite; their works show wide-angle characteristics.

It is the work of the 19th century painter Cezanne, however, where pseudoscopic qualities literally come to the fore. His watercolours during the years 1885-1900 not only give background parity with foreground, but by his choice of the medium of watercolour, creates a remarkable overall pseudoscopic transparency, and in many instances an unmistakable X-Ray effect. The pseudoscopic content in his painting is however much more extensive and widespread than this, and may have escaped scholarly attention because of a general unfamiliarity with the properties of pseudoscopic vision. One distinguished essayist noticed these conflicts, but referred to them as 'binocular ambiguities'. The Cubists' indebtedness to Cezanne is obvious enough and well- documented. What is not obvious, is that the distinctly pseudoscopic handling of space in his paintings, destroyed and revised the classical role of virtual space within the picture plane'. This revision was one of the important pictorial innovations that helped to make Cubism possible, and paved the way for Modernism.

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Piero della Francesca (1420–1492)
Nativity
Date between 1470 and 1475
Medium oil on poplar wood
Dimensions Height: 124 cm (48.8 in). Width: 123 cm (48.4 in).

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Dzogchen Explorations

Journal Éveillé Index

Okar Research.....August 2015 - May 2016

**************************

Email....wijijiarts@gmail.com

John Hopkins.....Northern New Mexico

January 2017

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