Journal Éveillé is an Informal Exploration of the Natural Mind in Literature and Painting
“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
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.
“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'
“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
Email....wijijiarts@gmail.com
John Hopkins.....Northern New Mexico
January 2017
