Análisis de Vibraciones

In order to understand how the classical linkage between Cézanne and Poussin obtained a footing in the first place, we cannot arrive at our conclusions ex post facto by appealing either directly or tacitly to Wölfflin. Instead, we need to trace this idea back to its original context and in particular, we must consider what Classicism would have meant in the late nineteenth century. In this sense, it is instructive to begin by reflecting on our own use of the word „classic‟ for this still possesses a residue of its earlier meaning and will thus help us to understand the significance of Cézanne‟s enigmatic phrase.60

59

Maurice Denis, „Cézanne‟, trans. Roger Fry, Burlington Magazine, XVI, London, Jan – Feb 1910; reprinted in Art in Theory 1900 – 2000, ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), p. 42. Denis‟s article was originally published in L’Occident in September 1907.

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The ideas in this section are largely indebted to Richard Shiff‟s discussion of Cézanne‟s Classicism in Cézanne and the End of Impressionism.

Let us start with two examples – as culturally distinct as they may be – and analyse what unites them in terms of our use of this word: the first „Pac-man is a classic computer game‟ and the second „Ulysses is a classic work of modern literature‟. Now, we might initially think that this simply means that Pac-Man and Ulysses are both representative of a much wider genre. However, the very fact that they can function as bywords for a whole category implies that they possess some extra quality that makes them not just related to, but also distinct from, the other members of their class. What makes them able to carry this burden of meaning is the idea that they did not simply perpetuate a way of doing things that already existed. Rather, they are also the progenitors of a new method – Pac-man was the first example of a particular format of computer gaming, while Joyce‟s experimental use of language sets Ulysses apart from previous works of fiction. Consequently, they are „classics‟ in the sense that they are at once the originators and the paradigmatic examples of a new style.61

Bearing this in mind, it is now possible to understand why nineteenth- century designations of the Renaissance and Antiquity as classical had an evaluative dimension. What writers at this time would have meant is not that artists of these periods had adopted a particular mode of expression (although Classicism undoubtedly acquired this extra sense from a consensus about the nature of the style deemed exemplary). Rather, they would have conceived their works – and more particularly, the works of specific individuals – as standing as

paragons. Lesser artists would therefore be bound to fall under the influence of

61

For example, Maurice Beebe refers to Ulysses as „a demonstration and summation of [an] entire movement‟ in „Ulysses and the Age of Modernism‟, James Joyce Quarterly (University of Tulsa) 10, no. 2 (Fall 1972), p. 176. While, according to the Wikipedia entry on Pac-Man, it is „universally considered as one of the classics of the medium, virtually synonymous with video games…‟ See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man, accessed 8 July 2010.

such potent examples (and accordingly their style would be derivative) while ones of greater distinction would seek to recreate these conditions again (meaning that their style would be original and yet equally valid). In short, there was no requirement for two Classical styles to look the same.

Nevertheless, there is – as Kant reminds us – such a thing as „original nonsense‟62

and therefore not everything is destined to be emulated just because it is new. A classical style must consequently have a quality that makes it worthy of imitation – it must speak in voice that others will heed. Accordingly, the two ideas that are yoked by this earlier understanding of Classicism are originality

and universal expression, that is, something that is at once new and capable of being grasped by all.63

This takes us part of the way to understanding the nature of Cézanne‟s and Poussin‟s classical affiliation, for what can be seen now is that there is no demand for a linkage that devolves on a particular style. 64 Cézanne could be classical without imitating Poussin, although he may have looked to his art when he was struggling to express the originality of his „sensations‟.65

This would therefore account for the fragmentary nature of his later copies after Poussin, since these seem to demonstrate that he was seeking to identify the formal struts that gave his predecessor‟s art its coherence rather than attempting to emulate its

62

Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement, trans. James Creed Meredith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952) p. 168.

63

See Shiff, Cézanne and the End of Impressionism, p, 125. The author refers to the combination of these two qualities as a „reasoned originality‟.

64

Shiff notes that „the analogy drawn between Cézanne and Poussin…was never to any great extent a matter of imitable visual qualities‟. See Ibid, p. 184.

65

There would be no paradox here, as Classicism exists in the end result and not in the means by which it is obtained, although slavish copying is obviously not going to be conductive to originality. See the second quote of my epigraph and also Shiff, Cézanne and the End of Impressionism, pp. 183 – 84.

general appearance.66 Nevertheless, since Cézanne did not devote much time to copying the work of Poussin this would still not seem sufficient justification for conjoining their names. If there is accordingly an overlap in terms of their art – as there would have to be for this analogy to take off – where are we to find it? Is it in their procedures, their independently gained styles, or is it somehow engendered by both?

As Richard Shiff‟s work has astutely shown, this conjunction was largely based on the idea of an intersection between Cézanne‟s and Poussin‟s practice

and the „general principles‟ that I mentioned earlier – those of originality, stoicism and the direct confrontation of nature. In short, it depended on the notion that they avoided convention and put themselves in direct contact with an original source in the world. The integrity of this source was therefore understood to be the guarantor of an art that was at once innovative and universally expressive, which is to say that it guaranteed the idea of Cézanne‟s and Poussin‟s mutual Classicism. In this respect, our opening quotation would have been understood to shed light on the difference between the sources of their art and the verities that this supposedly led them to uncover. For while Poussin was said to rediscover the truth of the Ancients by studying their art in conjunction with nature, Cézanne was said to „redo‟ – in the sense of repeating

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I owe this observation to Richard Verdi who claims that „Cézanne explores the formal principles which unite the figures with their surroundings…as though seeking to lay bare the underlying order and armature of Poussin‟s monumental design.‟ See Cézanne and Poussin, p. 45. Cézanne himself wrote to Bernard that „I believe in the logical development of what we see through the study of nature, even if this means concerning myself with technical questions afterwards; for us, technical questions are merely the means of making the public experience what we ourselves experience.‟ Letter to Bernard, 21 September 1906, reprinted in The

Courtauld Cézannes, p. 165. What this therefore suggests is that Cézanne consulted the work of others when his own means were not adequate to the novelty of the experience he wanted to express. He would consequently be seeking devices that were congenial to his own idea of originality – that perhaps plugged a gap in his art – rather than deriving his style wholesale from others.

and maybe even amplifying – the Classicism of Poussin by drawing the tenets of his art almost exclusively from his personal communion with nature.67

However, there is one further point to be made here which Shiff does not acknowledge. This is that while the word „Classicism‟ may not necessarily have implied a connection based on visual similarities, some of Cézanne‟s critics nevertheless did seem to suggest that his style was in some way comparable to that of his forebear or, more broadly, to that of other illustrious artists from the past. And what is interesting about the formula of this style is that it is thought to be obtained precisely through Cézanne‟s strategy of returning to origins – of finding his means of expression in the privacy of a gaze directed out towards the world, or of remaining true to „nature and self‟ as Shiff himself puts it.68

Denis states, for example, that:

What others have sought and sometimes found in imitating the ancients, the discipline that [Cézanne] himself in his first works asked of the great artists of his time or of the past, he discovers finally in himself…He is so naturally a painter and so spontaneously classical!69

If we assume, therefore, that the discipline Cézanne „asked of the great artists‟ was related to their method of pictorial construction – in short, that it was a

67

See Ibid, esp. pp. 180 – 84.

68

See note 26.

69

Denis, „Cézanne‟, L’Occident 12 (Sept. 1907), p. 123. Cited in Shiff, Cézanne and the End of Impressionism, p. 136. This echoes Cézanne‟s own remark to Bernard that, „Your need to find a moral and intellectual reference point in works of art which will surely never be surpassed…will surely lead you to experience your means of expression in front of nature; and rest assured that, the day that you find them, you will effortlessly rediscover in front of nature the methods that were used by the four or five great artists of Venice.‟ Letter, 23 December 1904, reprinted in The Courtauld Cézannes, p. 159.

matter of technique rather than a matter of procedure – then shouldn‟t we suppose what „he finally discovers in himself‟ is precisely a non-derivative source for their style? Or if this seems tenuous, let us consider the expanded statement in which our dictum is originally found. Bernard‟s pronunciation that:

Classical means here: that which is in agreement with tradition. Thus Cézanne used to say: “Imagine Poussin redone entirely after nature, there‟s the classical that I intend.” It is not a matter, in effect, of casting out the romantics, but of rediscovering what the romantics themselves had: the solid rules of the great masters. Still the contribution to make is a more ample observation of nature and in some way to draw one’s

classicism from it more than from studio recipes. Because if the laws of art are fecund, the recipes of the studio are deadly, and it is only in contact with nature, and with its constant observation, that the artist is a creator.70

Unlike Denis, Bernard does not say the Cézanne discover a Classicism in himself; instead he claims that he finds it outwardly in the world. But nevertheless, this source also seems to guarantee his art‟s stylistic relation to „the solid rules of the great masters‟. Indeed, if – as Bernard implies – Classicism can be drawn authentically from nature or learned second hand in the studio, then the very fact that both routes can ensure its production must mean that it entails a set of visually identifiable features. What this therefore suggests is that Classicism is not only being understood as a procedure, but also as a procedure that yields

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particular results – a style perhaps, or maybe something more basic (the romantics, Bernard says, possessed these laws too). But either way, this must exhibit some consistent quality which, for some to copy, others must first have wrested directly from the world.

Therefore, to be „in agreement with tradition‟ one may either look back upon the history of art, or one may look outwards towards nature herself. And yet, it is only by doing the latter that the „artist is a creator‟. Or, to put it another way, while Classicism may have a typical, imitable appearance, a true Classicist

reveals this in a new but objectively verifiable form. Indeed, this interpretation would seem to fit better with a slightly earlier characterisation of Cézanne‟s dictum as „vivifier Poussin sur nature‟.71 For, insofar as the word „vivifier‟ implies a „quickening‟ or „enlivening‟, this seems to suggest that Cézanne animated qualities that were already present in his forebear‟s art but which were only disclosed through his close attention to the natural world.

So it seems that although we have seen a way around the reductive interpretations of twentieth-century critics, there is still something faintly paradoxical about this use of the word „Classical‟. For how can Cézanne draw his classicism from nature in a way that ensures the continuity of tradition (the passing down of a style from one generation to the next) whist also guarding against „the recipes of the studio‟ (the transmission of a style through cultural institutions)? Can a direct communion between self and nature actually leak the secrets of a Classical art and does this thereby connect the work of Cézanne and

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Poussin stylistically? And finally, would this not suggest that the „universal

expressiveness‟ of Classicism somehow consists in an Ur-language of representation? In the following section I shall investigate this idea by referring to Cézanne‟s own understanding of sight.