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Cezanne and the End of Impressionism
A Study of the Theory, Technique, and Critical Evaluation of Modern Art
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eBook - ePub
Cezanne and the End of Impressionism
A Study of the Theory, Technique, and Critical Evaluation of Modern Art
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About This Book
Drawing on a broad foundation in the history of nineteenth-century French art, Richard Shiff offers an innovative interpretation of CĂ©zanne's painting. He shows how CĂ©zanne's style met the emerging criteria of a "technique of originality" and how it satisfied critics sympathetic to symbolism as well as to impressionism. Expanding his study of the interaction of CĂ©zanne and his critics, Shiff considers the problem of modern art in general. He locates the core of modernism in a dialectic of making (technique) and finding (originality). Ultimately, Shiff provides not only clarifying accounts of impressionism and symbolism but of a modern classicism as well.
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Art GeneralPart One
The End of Impressionism
1
Introduction: The Subjectivity of Impressionism
They are impressionists in the sense that they render not the landscape, but the sensation produced by the landscape.
JULES ANTOINE CASTAGNARY, 18741
THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER, the critic Jules Antoine Castagnary brought the issues of a ânaturalistâ art before the French public. In the course of reviewing the Salon of 1863, he defined the âĂ©cole naturalisteâ as an expression of contemporary life; subsequently he repeatedly called for an honest and direct manner of painting that would reflect modern man in his modern society.2 When Castagnary viewed the works of a diverse group who assembled in 1874 under the rubric âindependents,â he focused his attention on a number of the younger artistsâPissarro, Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Degas, and Morisot. These painters, as well as a few others, he wrote, should be characterized by âthe new term impressionists. They are impressionists in the sense that they render not the landscape, but the sensation produced by the landscape.â Castagnaryâs statement seems to have been the first serious attempt to define âimpressionismâ by a critic both favorably disposed to it and familiar with its technical, philosophical, and psychological dimensions.3 His remark, however, is anything but clear, since he alludes to a distinction between a natural world, the âlandscapeâ that exists independently of oneâs perception or experience of it, and the âsensation producedâ by this landscape. Is this sensation available for all to have? Or is the landscape necessarily seen differently by different artists? Does the new âimpressionismâ depart from ânaturalismâ?
John Rewald, whose History of Impressionism remains the most comprehensive source of information on the movement, quotes Castagnaryâs remark in conjunction with his own account of the first impressionist exhibition and the significance of the new style.4 But Rewaldâs interpretation does not resolve the ambiguity of Castagnaryâs definition. He writes that the impressionists ârenounced even the pretense of recreating reality. Rejecting the objectivity of realism, they had selected one element from realityâlightâto interpret all of nature . . . the impressionists . . . knew that they had accomplished a great step forward in the representation of nature.â5 Following the earlier analysis of Lionello Venturi, Rewald argues in effect that the impressionists represent a light seen directly or immediately, rather than objects in space seen indirectly by means of the interpretation of patterns of light.6 Their success depends on âthe careful observation of colored light appearing in a scene at a particular moment.â7 Many questions remain unanswered. Does the light that is observed exist objectively for all to see? Is the light seen differently by different observers? If light is part of âobjective reality,â why is impressionism unrelated to a conventional ârealismâ? And if sensations are subjective, in what sense can observation be âcarefulââby what standard might it be judged accurate?
The cumulative force of Rewaldâs commentary pushes impressionism in the direction of an art of objective or âaccurateâ observation, if not of nature (the âlandscapeâ), at least of oneâs own sensation of light; and this light is described as if existing for all to see. Such an assessment of impressionism is representative of recent scholarship; but it is not in fact the position which was taken by Castagnary, one of the major sources on the ideological concerns of the time. His cryptic definition of impressionism is considerably qualified by a remark he adds almost immediately (which most scholars do not quote): â[the impressionists] leave reality and enter into full idealism.â For Castagnary, âidealismâ did not signify a world of universals lying behind a world of appearances or âreality,â but rather a world of individual ideals, sensations, and imagination, a world he associated with the aims of earlier romantic artists. The critic claimed that the impressionists differed from their predecessors only in their exaggeration of a sketchlike technique, âle non fini.â Castagnary regarded the rendering of a tentative, sketchlike âimpressionâ as a mode of expression suitable for some artistic subjects but not for others. As for those who âpursue the impression to excess,â he warned (pointing to CĂ©zanne as his example):
From idealization to idealization, they will arrive at that degree of romanticism without bounds, where nature is no more than a pretext for dreams, and the imagination becomes incapable of formulating anything other than personal subjective fantasies, without any echo in general knowledge, because they are without regulation and without any possible verification in reality.8
Here Castagnary seems to make a distinction central to the psychology of his contemporary, Hippolyte Taine; implicitly he contrasts sensation generated in contact with the external worldâthat is, sensation subject to verification by others, which Taine ironically called âhallucination vraieââwith the completely private, idiosyncratic sensation of dreams and fantasies.9 For Castagnary, a concentration on the impression, the personal âidealizedâ sensation, can lead only to extreme subjectivity, not, as Rewald and others have argued, to the ârepresentation of nature.â Castagnary feared that impressionism might result in a departure from naturalism and its reflection of human values and social conditions; it might, in effect, constitute a return to the fantastical romanticism the critic had himself forcefully rejected.10
Was Castagnaryâs response to impressionism itself anomalous and idiosyncratic or did it have some foundation or potential verification in the intentions of the artists or in the beliefs of the age? Certainly, many artists and critics of the late nineteenth century spoke of impressionism as an art of depicting nature and modern life, but they also repeatedly spoke of it as an intensely personal art that could not be judged by the familiar standards which ranged from accomplished academic paintings to seemingly automatic and objective photographs. For many artists and critics, impressionist painting seemed both objective and subjective. How this could be so is not adequately understood today, nor, consequently, is the relationship between impressionist and symbolist art. For many, symbolism embodied an extreme of subjectivity; it was an art of âidealizationâ and âfantasy,â one Castagnary could not have approved. But (as Castagnary indicated) impressionism, too, could be an art of subjectivity. When the sense of the impressionistsâ subjectivity and idealization becomes clear, so does the meaning that their art held for the symbolists.
. . .
The âsymbolismâ of which critics around 1890 spoke was the product first of a number of young poets and writers who were seeking to establish their own place in the history of literary schools; in general, they sought relief from the dominant thematic motifs of many of their immediate predecessors (such as Zola) who, in the eyes of these younger writers, had depicted only the material aspects of culture and society. The younger generation sought a new style as well as new subject matter, a style of purified language in which the play of words might run as free as the play of the most liberated artistic imagination. The poet Jean MorĂ©as introduced the term âsymbolisteâ to designate the new school of literature in an article of August 1885; his âsymbolistsâ included MallarmĂ©, Verlaine, and MorĂ©as himself.11 About a year later, MorĂ©as published his symbolist manifesto, stressing that the new poetry would evoke immaterial âIdeasâ by means of a departure from (or distortion of) the âobjectiveâ view of the naturalists.12 MorĂ©as and the other young symbolists were highly polemicized, oriented toward the public display that their many ephemeral journals provided; and they were often in disagreement among themselves as each group or individual vied for prominence. Frequently, it seems, their disputes were quite artificial, as they held more ideas in common than they were willing to admit.13 From this circle of poets and critics emerged two figures of special importance for the history of art. The first was FĂ©lix FĂ©nĂ©on, who was responsible for defining publicly the break that Seurat made between his own form of idealized art and that of the earlier impressionists.14 The second, Albert Aurier, the early champion of both Van Gogh and Gauguin, developed in 1891 a basic definition of âsymbolism in paintingâ; this precocious intellect drew on his experience of both literature and the visual arts, as well as his study of aesthetics and the theory of criticism.15
Aurierâs attention had been directed to Gauguin by Ămile Bernard, a young artist who had campaigned to publicize what he and Gauguin had begun to call âsyntheticâ or âsynthetistâ painting. Bernard looked upon the more mature Gauguin as a spiritual leader. Unusually inventive and possessing a facility for theoretical construction, the younger man may have suggested as much to Gauguin as Gauguin did to him. Eventually, especially after Aurier pronounced Gauguin the creator and guiding force of the new âsymbolism in painting,â a slighted Bernard came to dispute Gauguinâs prominence, claiming to have been an essential influence in the formation of the style; and Gauguin himself bitterly denounced Bernard as an unoriginal imitator.16 Although Gauguin was the more accomplished artist, the degree to which he may indeed have learned from Bernard remains unclear.17 The two painters worked especially closely during 1888 (and also maintained close contact with Van Gogh), and their style of that year has since been considered characteristic of the âsynthetisier or symbolist-oriented art developed by members of the generation following the impressionists. Gauguinâs Lutte de Jacob avec lâange (1888; fig. 1) is the best-known example: it displays the simplified rendering of volumes, the broad outlining, and the flat, unmodeled passages of brilliant color that signified, for Aurier and others, the motivating force of an âIdeaâ or mystical vision; this painting seemed to turn from the observation of an external, mundane reality to reveal, by way of a purified language of visual forms, the world of symbolic correspondences.18
In 1889 Gauguin exhibited the Lutte de Jacob and other works at the CafĂ© Volpini, just outside the grounds of the Exposition universelle. Bernard and several others associated with Gauguin hung their paintings in the same large room in an attempt to provoke major critical comment. The artists called themselves the âgroupe impressionniste et synthĂ©tiste.â In his account of the event, Rewald notes that Aurier may have suggested this title; the result was that many viewers, disassociating the two terms, wondered who in the Volpini exhibition was an âimpressionistâ and who was a âsynthetist.â19 Yet around this time and even later, Gauguin often referred to his own manner and to avant-garde art in general as âimpressionniste,â while simultaneously professing his concern for âsynthĂšse.â20 It was left to Aurier to make a formal distinction; in 1891 he argued in his essay on Gauguin that the artistâs quality of synthesis, the expression of an immaterial âideaâ in material, visible form, definitively linked his work to the aims of literary symbolism (as opposed to naturalism or impressionism). Subsequently, Maurice Denis and other symbolist artists and critics commonly spoke of âsynthĂ©tismeâ and âsymbolismeâ as synonymous terms; in his own statement on Gauguin, Denis wrote that âsynthĂ©tisme [in painting] became, through contact with the literary figures, symbolisme.â21 Such âliterary figuresâ included StĂ©phane MallarmĂ©, Gustave Kahn, Jean MorĂ©as, Charles Morice, FĂ©lix FĂ©nĂ©on, and, of course, Albert Aurier.22
1. PAUL GAUGUIN, Lutte de Jacob avec lâange, 1888. The National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.
A year before publishing his comments on Gauguin, Aurier had written a penetrating essay on Van Gogh that defined this artist, too, as a symbolist. According to the critic, Van Gogh considered his material means of color and line as âexpressive,â not imitative, and as âtechniques [procĂ©dĂ©s] of symbolization,â âa kind of marvelous language destined to translate the Idea.â23 This was the essence of âsymbolism in paintingâ: to direct pictorial means toward the expression of âIdeasâ rather than the representation of objects. Aurier wrote in his essay on Gauguin that the artistâs technical devices, through simplification and reduction to elements of line and color, should become âsigns . . . the letters of an immense alphabet with which the man of genius alone can spell.â The criticâs sense of the âIdeaâ was Neoplatonic and mysticalâan essence, a universal and eternal truth that might be known through the contemplation of its sign or symbol. For Aurier, artists became seers or visionaries; they did not limit themselves to immediate appearances as did impressionists and realists, nor did they create idealized images of the conventional sort. For this reason, the critic chose to call Gauguinâs art idĂ©iste, not idĂ©aliste: âidealisticâ art was the province of the academy, an art of a âconventional objectivityâ as much tied to the rendering of objects (as opposed to âsignsâ) as was realism.24 In a summary statement, Aurier wrote that Gauguinâs art could be described with five related terms: it was idĂ©iste, symboliste, synthĂ©tique, subjective, and dĂ©corative.25
Gauguinâs symbolist art was thus âsubjectiveâ in several senses; above all, for Aurier, it revealed the âidea perceived by the subject.â The critic insisted that Gauguin should not be viewed as an impressionist. Nevertheless, he made it clear, when he defined the character of impressionism, that that art, too, was subjective.26 I shall come to investigate the position of Aurier and others on this issue in more detail; and the accumulation of documentary evidence will indicate that symbolism and impressionism, as understood around 1890, were not antithetical, especially if the term âimpressionismâ is to signify the art of Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, and those closely related to them. Desp...
Table of contents
- Cover
- Copyright
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- Part One. The End of Impressionism
- Part Two. The Technique of Originality
- Part Three. Seeing CĂ©zanne
- Part Four. Conclusion: Making a Find
- Notes
- Index