currently in the library at Michelet, l'institut d'art et d'archaeologie de la Sorbonne, doing research for a paper due tomorrow in my Impressionism class. Of course i started way late and am behind as usual, but i work well under pressure. i love doing research, especially when i read through my notes and realize how amazing some theorists and scholars out there are. notes from my research today in an exposition catalogue from the museum of modern art in Bologna on the nature of still life painting. (my essay is comparing two still lives, one by cezanne and one by monet, as a means of analysing both how the still life painting changed during impressionism and how both monet and cezanne left permanent footprints on painting that immensely changed art in the following generations leading up to modern art.)
staight from a purple spiral notebook in France:
* becoming > being re: reality
-- objects exist thanks to a process concieved in the picture and accomplished by perception and objects cannot be separated from this process
-- incessant seeing bound up w/ picture
-- content? --> banal vessels of supporting surfaces tell us/offer us an appearance that is constantly renewed, rejuvenated at every glance
-- objects become iconic physiognomies which attract us by the perpetual pleasure of looking
* Cezanne- nature not to be found at the surface
-- painter strives to discover nature through his work, to decipher nature through artisic means
** work of a still life painter = making the visible legible**
* Cezanne repeatedly stressed that the making of such a structure, the formation of a syntax = most difficult task in his painting
-- only when correct equivalent is found, when parallels btwn things have become evident, does the pure "motif", the pretext of the visible objects become the enduring texture/text of the picture
-- structure of the meaning of things, then appears in an intensified way in the artificial order of the still life
* Cezanne's still life painting = attempt to rescue phenomena
-- historical and cultural contexts
-- Cezanne's emphasis on the role of perception was accompagnied by an equally powerful skepticism as regards the reliability of perception
-- look closely "sur le motif", critically examine that perception, interpret it not as something self-evident but as an explicit act of translation, precisely b/c material reality seemed to Cezanne so intangible
-- process of differentiation necessary before material reality can be captured
-- absorb in objects in order to explore the equivalents that could lend them duration, presence, and clarified visibility
-- Cezanne's rescue = an aesthetic rescue, definition of painting = aesthetic rescue
that is the most perfect definition of painting i have ever encountered. i love the way the author got to that point, nothing has ever made more sense to me ever. if you're not a huge dork like me, and this didn't interest you at all, then sorry for wasting your time, but come on! that's fascinating! goodness only knows how much i love art history for moments like that. aesthetic rescue!!!
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