Czanne: Words and Deeds

Author(s): Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss

Source: October, Vol. 84 (Spring, 1998), pp. 31-43
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/779207
Accessed: 31-03-2015 17:57 UTC
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C6zanne: Wordsand Deeds*

YVE-ALAIN BOIS
TranslatedbyRosalindKrauss
Whatwe knowaboutwhatis called C6zanne's theorywe knowthroughsnippets
(reported conversationsor maxims,a fewsentenceson paintingin lettersto his
son or to youngadmirers),almostthe whole of it datingfromthe lastyearsof his
life. Even further,Cezanne had a rather ambivalentrelation to theoryitselfof ready-madetheories,
neverceasingto speak of itsnecessityand yetof his mistrust
whichhe called doctrines:"I don't have a doctrinelike Bernard,but theoriesare
necessary,the sensationand theories."I
For him,theorywas trulyindissociablefrompractice;based on accumulated
experience, it is the logicpermitting"the organization of one's sensations"and
thus the "realization,"thatis, the propositionin paintingnot of a "servilecopy,"
but of a "harmonyparallel to nature,"an equivalence of relations. Cezanne's
remarkson the necessary connection between eye and brain, which must be
developed in tandem so as "to arrive at the 'realization,"' are numerous, but
perhaps nowheredoes he indicate more clearlythan in one of his last lettersto
Aurenche how much what he calls "reflection"concerns the whole gamut of his
pictorialmeans:
In yourletteryou speak of myrealization in art. I believe thatI attain
it more everyday, although a bit laboriously.Because if the strong
sensationfornature-and certainlyI have thatvividly-is the necessary
basis for all artisticconception and that on which the grandeur and
our
beautyof all futureworkrests,theknowledge
ofthemeansofexpressing
emotion
is no less essential and is only to be acquired througha very
long experience.2
*
This essaywas firstdeliveredat the symposiaheld in conjunctionwiththe Cezanne retrospective,
organized by the Mus6e d'Orsay (Paris, November 1995) and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (May
1996). For the acts of the Paris symposium,see Cizanne aujourd'hui,ed. FranCoise Cachin, Henri
Loyrette,and St6phaneGu6gan (Paris: Editionsde la R6union des Musees Nationaux,1997).
1.
Cited by Maurice Denis in hisjournal (1906); reprintedin Conversations
avecCzanne, ed. P. M.
Doran (Paris: EditionsMacula, 1978), p. 94.
2.
ed. John Rewald (New York: Hacker
C6zanne to Louis Aurenche,January25, 1904, in Letters,
ArtBooks, 1976), p. 299 (translationmodified,myemphasis).
OCTOBER84, Spring1998,pp. 31-43. C 1998 Yve-Alain
Bois.

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32

OCTOBER

Hence the difficulty

posed by havingto put togethera theorycomposed of
those snatches of C6zanne's conversation that we possess. Cezanne's famous
doubt about his capacityto "realize"is a worryabout the validityof his theoryas
well,namelyabout the knowledgehe himselfcould have of his means.

I will begin withthe verywell known.Immediatelyfollowinghis injunction

to Bernard according to which one must"treatnatureby means of the cylinder,
the sphere,the cone, all of it put in perspective,"Cezanne adds:
Lines parallel to the horizon give breadth,thatis, a section of nature
aeterneDeus
or, ifyou prefer,of the spectacle thatthe Pateromnipotens,
out
before
our
Lines
to
this
horizon
eyes.
spreads
give
perpendicular
depth. But nature for us humans is more in depth than in surface,
whence the necessityto introduceinto our lightvibrations,represented
amountof bluish tones,to give the
by the reds and yellows,a sufficient
of
air.3
feeling
We are used to explainingthese remarksbyattributingthem to the classical
tenets about monocular perspectiveand aerial perspectivethat Cezanne could
have read about in a manual of the period. All right.But how do we explain the
linkageof the ideas? If the "perpendicularsto thishorizon"giveus depth,whynot
be entirelysatisfiedwithrecourse to that?Whyadd "But natureforus humans is
more in depth than in surface,whence the necessityto introduce.. . a sufficient
amount of bluish tones"?Whythis but,and whythis supplementof bluish tones?
All the more in thatCezanne, ifhe does make excessiveuse of blue, rarelyseems
to adhere to the principleof aerial perspectiveitself.In termsof theirlocal tone
and contours,distant objects are seldom more blue and less well defined than
near ones. In fact,whatis oftenverystrikingin his work,and not onlyin the late
paintings,is the way an object or a colored plane surgesforthfromthe distance
like an unexpectedarrowto interpellatethe spectatorbycomingtowardhim.The
with its prismatic
most arrestingexample is perhaps in the 1896 Lac d'Annecy,
center
of
the
chateau as both "culminatingpoint"of the pictureand
compositionbut this type of violent denial of aerial perspectiveis frequentfromthe 1880s
onward,notablyin the firstof the Sainte-Victoires.
Commentingon the passage fromthe letterto Bernardjust cited,Theodore
Reffhas broughtto bear a less well knownstatementby Cezanne toJean Royere,
wantto
but has cut somethingfromits opening on whichI would,to the contrary,
insist:
You see it .. . It [Sainte-Victoire] is distant from us by a good way, in

itselfit is rathermassive.At the Beaux-Artsyou learn, of course, the

3.

Cezanne to Emile Bernard,April 15, 1904, in ibid.,p. 301 (translationmodified).

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Cezanne: Wordsand Deeds

33

Ir:

IN-i:
limit
All;
z.5:-:

K,?
wi

: : :~_:-:~

5oo.
pill
:qi?
:--i:-:-:
:: ::::-::_,i;-OR

is:
-M-l~i-iiii
........

Cezanne.The Lac d'Annecy.1896.

laws of perspective,but one has neverseen thatdepth resultsfromthe

conjunctionofverticaland horizontalsurfacesand it is thatverything
thatis perspective.4
A peculiar formulationwhichI willput in directrelationto the Lac d'Annecy
(the
remarkis almostcontemporarywiththe picture),where the meetingof verticals
and horizontalsis particularlynoticeable. Indeed, whatdo we in factsee there if
not a veritable reversal?The surface of the water-the veryquintessence of
onlybecomes a perfectlyflatwall as in certainlandscapesfrom
horizontality--not
the one belongingto Picasso,but a wall striatedwithvertical
L'Estaque, particularly
lines,those "perpendicularsto the horizon"meant "to givedepth" to us. Yet they
don't deliverit to us, this depth; theyhave ratherthe tendencyto deny it and to
4.
Kunstund Kiinstler
(1912), in Conversations,
Jean Royere,"Paul CUzanne,Erinnerungen,"
p. 189
n. 1; discussed by Theodore Reff,"Paintingand Theory in the Final Decade," in Cizanne: TheLate
ed. WilliamRubin (NewYork:Museumof Modern Art,1977), p. 46.
Work,

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34

OCTOBER

thatpropels the chaiteau'sleading edge towardus: like

act like a reverserepoussoir
it is perhaps "distantfromus bya good way,"but it is "in itself
the Sainte-Victoire,
rathermassive."
This matterof distance seems to have obsessed Cezanne during his last
years. Francis Jourdain expressed surprise at hearing him say "that one of his
most constantpreoccupationswas to render the real distance between eye and
object sensible."5This surprise,thatwe perhaps share,is littleabated by the linkage of ideas in these remarksto Karl ErnstOsthaus: "The main thing,in a picture,
is to find the correct distance. The color had to express all the ruptures in
depth."6 That is: it is up to color to supplement the insufficienciesof linear
perspective(in the same wayas the "bluishtones"of the atmospherein the letter
of Bernard).We should note in passingthathere it is no longera questionof aerial
perspective (which presupposes a continuous and homogenous space), but of
ruptures,whichstrikesme as being closer to Cezanne's painting.
I nonetheless leave to one side this practice of "depth throughcolor,"so
admired by Matisse and so studied by Lawrence Gowing,to linger brieflyonce
more over thisanxietyabout distance,whichI wish to connect to anotherremark
to Bernard, speaking "of planes which fall on top of one another,"a problem
"the contourswitha
triesto resolvebycircumscribing
which"neo-impressionism"
black line, a faultwhichmustbe foughtat all costs."7Puttingthese "planes which
fall on top of one another" in relation in turn with the collapse of horizontal
thatis so pronounced in manyof Cezanne's paintings(for
surfacesintoverticality
PlasterCupid[circa 1895]), I can onlyagree withRosalind
the
Courtauld's
example
Krauss's analysisin seeing this typeof pictureas markingthe emergence,forthe
firsttime in the historyof Western art since the Renaissance, of a hiatus-or
ratherthe recognitionof a hiatus-between the purelyvisual space of projection
(on the verticalplane of the painting) and the tactileand carnal space in which
our bodies participate.As Krauss has shown in relation to the paintingsPicasso
made in 1909 at Horta de Ebro, paintings which she connects directlyto the
C zanne of the PlasterCupid,thisdisjunctionbetweentheverticalcut of the visual
where "depth is whatoccurs when the
fieldand the lateral extensionof tactility,
ground giveswaybelow one's feet,"resultsin a crisis,a doubt about vision's own
capacityto give us access to depth.8Kahnweilerreportsthis paradoxical remark
byPicasso: "In a Raphael paintingit is not possible to establishthe distance from
the tip of the nose to the mouth. I should like to paint picturesin which that
would be possible."9Of course,we need to recognizethe ironyin thisremark,and
5.
p. 84 n. 1.
FrancisJourdain,Cizanne(1950), in Conversations,
Karl ErnstOsthaus,"Cezanne,"Das Feuer(1920-21), in Conversations,
6.
p. 97 n. 1.
Cezanne to Emile Bernard,October 23, 1905, in Letters,
7.
p. 317.
ed. William
Rosalind Krauss, "The Motivationof the Sign,"in Picassoand Braque:A Symposium,
8.
Rubin and LynnZelevansky(NewYork:Museumof Modern Art,1992), pp. 267-70.
9.
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, The Rise of Cubism (1920), trans. Henry Aronson (New York:
Wittenborn,1949), p. 8. On thispoint,see the remarksbyLeo Steinbergreportedin my"Kahnweiler's
Lesson,"in Paintingas Model(Cambridge:MIT Press,1990), p. 282 n. 18.

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Cizanne: Wordsand Deeds

35

above all it is myhope thatwe don't returnto the typesof "geometrical"reading

of Cezanne that have dominated interpretationfor so long and that now seem
finallyto have been put out to pasture. But Picasso's fundamentaldoubt about
illusionisticdepth and the idea according to which it is no longer possible in
paintingif,as Cezanne said, one owes the truth,seems to me to have the same
source as thatwhich leads Cezanne to fold the ground plane verticallyover the
elevation in the lower part of some of his paintings,as if,as the space between
himselfand the representedobject narrowed,he were forcedto lowerhis eyes to
take in his feet.

Let us return to the letterto Bernard with which I opened. The famous
phrase about "the cylinder,the sphere,and the cone" has givenrise, as we know,
to many,manycommentaries,most frequentlywhollyerroneous (we know how
the "cube" has been added in an apocryphalmannerto thisformulaand whatuse
has been made of thisnew mintingbythosewho have wanted to read Cubism as a
geometrical exercise for which C6zanne was the precursor). We know today,
thanksto Reffand Gowing,who have both paid more attentionthan have their
predecessors to the remarksreportedby Riviere and Schnerb, that the famous
formulaconcerns more the general rotundityof volumes and surfacessuch as
theyappear to perception than any geometricalstylizationof bodies. (To recall:
Riviere and Schnerb note that when Cezanne spoke of the spherical qualityof
bodies he was not onlythinkingof all those balls,apples or otherwise,thatfillhis
paintings,like those readyto tumbledown the slope of the PlasterCupid,but also
ofperfectly
planarsurfaces,suchas a wall;in thistherewouldperhapsbe an element
to add to the file set up by Reffconcerning the relationsbetween Cezanne and
Chardin,whosewallsare alwaysestablishedas curvingbehind his stilllifes,even if
theyare mostoftenconcave.)10
Gowinghas verycarefullystudiedthe implicationof thisprincipleof general
sphericnesson whatC6zanne called his "modulation"of color. Here I would like
to returnto an aspect of thisquestion thathas not been sufficiently
noticed,one
that concerns the organic character of C6zanne's volumes, particularlyin the
landscape paintingsand watercolors.The late views of the Bib6mus quarryand
the rocksand grottosof the Chateau Noir are certainlythe mostspectacularfrom
thispointofview,11
but everywhere
in differing
degreeswe can detectthistendento
make
form
into an organ (for example in the Rocksat L'Estaqueof
cy
every
1879-82). It has oftenbeen noted thatthe solids thatCezanne listsin his letterto
Bernard have no arris (as he said to Riviereand Schnerb,"I am applyingmyselfto
10.
See Theodore Reff,"C6zanne and Chardin,"in Cezanneaujourd'hui,
pp. 11-28.
11.
See Cizanne,exhibitioncatalogue (Paris: R6union des Mus6es Nationaux, 1995), nos. 149-51,
p. 175.

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Sea at L'Estaque. 1878-79.

::if!

~i~~
-i!

ii~

'ii

i:
-::
iiiii
?i
iiiii
i+i~i
i-i-ii~iiiiiiii~iiiiZiiiii~iii~i~i~i~i~i
ii_-ii~~i:ii~ii:iiiii~i -:ii-i'ii~i~iriiii
,iiii

.................

i ! iii
.......................

':,!
iiii
i
.................

ili

.........

jq:
Onx

Rocksat L'Estaque. 1879-82.

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Cezanne:Wordsand Deeds

37

portrayingthe cylindricalside of objects").12But this interestin curvaturehas

been connected to considerations of perspective,whereas the simple fact that
Cezanne adds"all of it put in perspective,"afterhavinglistedcylinder,sphere,and
cone, would indicate that it is not a question of the same thing. I would thus
rathertie this absence of arris to the idea not of a geometricbody (and of visual
projection),but to the idea of touch,of "contact,"as Cezanne would say (and, if
you want, of caress). We know that Cezanne was panicked by the idea of being
withwhat
touched,and I wonderifthisphobia mightnot be directlysymmetrical
he wanted to realize in painting and thus also with the doubt about vision I
evokedabove.
CUzannewroteto Bernard thatone must"penetratewhatis beforeoneself,"
which can easilybe taken in a banal manner as relatingto the traditionaloptics
fromwhichperspective'svisualprojectionissues.13But ifwe relatethissaying(with
all the erotic connotationsit implies) to the sense of touch,we change registers,
and perhapswe approach more preciselywhatCezanne wantedto attempt,namely,
to splicevisionand touch togetherat the verymomentwhen the twosensoryfields
werein the processof splittingapart:in some wayto inventa tactilevision.
We know how constitutivethe sense of touch was in Cezanne's practice
(Richard Shiffhas alreadyinsistedon this)14and all that he owed to Courbet in
thisdomain. But ifwe pass fromthe minimalunityof the strokeor "touch"to the
ensemble of the painting,it seems to me thatthe debt to Courbetis no less great:
the veryanthropomorphicizing
landscapes of the latter-for example, the famous
series of the SourceoftheLoue (1863-64)-are markedby an impossibledesire to
penetrateinto the body of the motif.15
Perhaps because of how much he learned
fromPissarro,Cezanne knew-more than did Courbet-that thiswas impossible
(and he would doubtless have considered literal anthropomorphism,such as
Degas had mobilized it in certain of his landscapes,vulgar). But Brice Marden's
as a "gianttit"is not the simpleschoolboy
quip treatingthe MontagneSaint-Victoire
R. P. Riviire and J. F. Schnerb,"C6zanne's Atelier"(1907), in Cizannein Perspective,
12.
ed. Judith
Wechsler(Englewood Cliffs,N.J.:Prentice-Hall,1975), p. 60.
13.
C6zanne to Emile Bernard,May26, 1904,in Letters,
p. 304 (translationmodified).
14.
Richard Shiff,"La touche de C6zanne: entre vision impressionnisteet vision symboliste,"in
Cezanneaujourd'hui,
pp. 117-24.
15.
On the anthropomorphiccharacterof Courbet's landscapes and still lifes,see Michael Fried,
Courbet
's Realism(Chicago and London: The Universityof Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 238-54. See also
Fried's remarkson C6zanne in Manet'sModernism,
or,TheFace ofPaintingin the1860s (Chicago and
London: The University
of Chicago Press,1996), p. 607 n. 31, whichwas published afterthispaper was
delivered.
Anotherimportantessay appeared shortlyafterthe C6zanne symposium:T. J. Clark's "Freud's
52 (Fall 1995), pp. 94-122. Although Clark is chieflyconcerned with
C6zanne," Representations
C6zanne's Barnes and Philadelphia Bathers, in which there is little "air" indeed (and which thus
contradictwhat I am proposinghere), he demonstratesas well the exceptional statusof these works,
notingthe paucityand general embarrassmentof the literatureabout them.But I viewwhathe has to
about C6zanne's desireto "materializetheplayofphantasy,"
sayin generalabout C6zanne's "materialism,"
and the connectionhe makesbetweenthisand the pre-psychoanalyic,
positivist(but one could almost
also say"atomist")Freud,as a directconfirmationof myown ruminations.

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38

OCTOBER

.
..

:'::':pumps

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Sainte-Victoire
seenfromLes Lauves.1902-4.
joke thatit mightat firstseem.16In any eventI like Vollard'smemory,no matter
howunreliable,accordingto whichone of the firstbuyersof Cezanne was a person
blind frombirth.17

The name of Marden,who said thatCezanne was one of his heroes,allows

me to returnto the matterof thefeelingofair mentionedin the letterto Bernard,
and to raise a pointthatmightseem to contradictthisidea of organictactility
that
I have been sketching.I have alreadyexpressedmyskepticismabout Cezanne's use
of a trueaerial perspectiveand thusmydoubt over the statushe accorded to his
16.
Cited in Robert Mahoney,interviewwith Brice Marden, "This Is What Things Are About,"
FlashArt(November1990), p. 120.
17.
AmbroiseVollard,"Souvenirssur Cezanne," Minotaure
2, no. 6 (1935), p. 14.

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Cizanne:Wordsand Deeds

39

"bluish tones."However,I am farfromadmittingthatthereis no air in C6zanne's

paintings.I would even go so faras to saythathis worksare themselveslungs,that
theybreathe.And ifthe C zannean strokepermitsthisrespiration,thisis above all
because it is discrete,discontinuous,and because it presupposesa void-as in the
classicalphysicsofLucretius,ofwhichCezanne was an avid reader.
C zanne's touch,bymeansofwhichhe transcribed
To saythistelegraphically,
his "littlesensation,"his "coloringsensations,"was the bridgebetweenhis pigment
and the substances,forms,and spatialityof the world:it was an abstraction,practicallya musical formof notation, but it was what allowed him to conceive his
paintingsas worldsunder construction,similar-in theirmode of existence for
our perception-to natureitself.As Merleau-Pontyhas so well noted, to look at a
is to see simultaneously
itsmolecularsurface
a latewatercolor,
C6zanne,particularly
and the depicted object in the act of germinatingunder our veryeyes. However,
we should make slightlyclearerhow this"germination"works.
I mentionwatercolorhere because thisis wherewe can bestgrasp Cezanne's
process: his late canvases-Gowing and many others have noted this-adopt a
typeof colored constructionfirstexplored in watercolor,but I would even saythat
the workof his "couillarde"period, above all his portraitsand several stilllifes,
alreadyseem to me a contradictoryanticipationof this method that he couldn't
yetenvision (contradictorybecause the heavyfactureof the "couillarde"period,
essentialto
and fluidity
atomic,could onlypreventthe transparency
althoughstrictly
thisverymethod).
What then is this method?It is a matterof a molecularprocess whichis not
His worksare geologicallyconstructedof layers,
simplyadditive,but multiplying.
or ratherof levels,of skeinsof moleculesmore or less loose, each skeinresponding
both to the one that precedes it and to the whitenessof the support. None of
these levels entirelyfuseswiththe others. Cezanne is verycarefulthathis colors
don't mix (we knowhe had a violentdislikeof mixtureand how his extremelyvaried palette astonished Bernard)18: the atoms must remain identifiableas such
(the transparencyof watercolor,its veryrapid dryingtime,were perfectfor this
end). Superimpositions(where the atoms partiallycover each other) engender
variouscolored modulationsbut are alwaysdiscernableas combinationsof primary
atoms. However,as I've said, this process wasn't additive;despite the temptation
thatone mighthave to retrace the artist'selaboration step by step, this is always
in vain: C zanne's workscancel the linearityof time;theybreathe.

I will allow myselfhere to quote a commentary at length, particularly

because it has been a bit forgotten.It's froma textby Max Raphael, posthumously
Seenfrom
published in 1968, the pretextforwhichwas above all the Sainte-Victoire
Les Lauves (1902-4) in the PhiladelphiaMuseum ofArt:
18.

Emile Bernard,"Souvenirssur Paul Cezanne" (1907), in Conversations,

p. 61 n. 1.

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40

OCTOBER

Let us considerthe nearestplane: a darkarea made up ofvariousviolets

and greens. One color (violet) is decomposed into a warm (reddish)
tone and a cold (bluish) tone; the firstcomes forward,the second
recedes. This createsa tensionwhichsets these tones apart yetrelates
them to each other, so that they seem to belong to distinct layers
althoughthere is no perceptiblespace between them.The numberof
layersemployingthesame colorvaries,butwhetherthe contrastinvolves
twoor more layers,our actualperceptionis one not of movementbut of
tension.In consequence,perceptionof timeis eliminatedfromour peror,to be more exact,we do not perceive
ceptionof three-dimensionality;
oflayers.19
we
become
awareofa multiplicity
timeas elapsingwhile
This passage is complex but it seems to me thatin it Raphael gets to somethingthatis unique to C6zanne, at leastbeforePollock,somethingthatspecifically
fascinatedMarden,namely,thisabolitionof perceptualtime,correspondingto an
infinitecopenetration of levels that neverthelessremain discrete. Here's what
Marden said of Pollock,but he couldjust as well be speakingof C6zanne, since for
a long timeMarden has read the one in termsof the other:
You look at the colors and the marks,and you tryto redrawthem.You
look at the blacksand you followthe waytheywenton the canvas,then
you followthe whites,say,then the browns.... But there'salwayssome
point where you lose the trail;you just can't read it because it never
reads as layering.It's nice to think,well,he did the black all at the same
time and we can followthose marks,but when you reallystartlooking
at the painting,thereare places where the black is over the white,and
then there are places where the whiteis over the black. I don't really
knowhow he was workingthose colors,how he could go back and forth
between colors and layers.The colors may look layered,but I think
there was a more organic flowbetween what looks like the bottom
layerand whatlooks like the top layer.... and all thosemarksand colors
become the real space of the painting.20
This is also perhaps-and here I am referringto a hobbyhorseof myownwhat relates not only Pollock and Cezanne but both of them to the interlacing
Mondrian effectedin his last pictures,weavingsthatput a space into play thatis
not purelyvisual and thusillusionisticbut tactileas well.
Afterthis excursion into twentieth-century
art, I would like to raise a last
19.
Max Raphael, "The WorldofArtand the Model in Nature,"TheDemandsofArt(London: 1968),
pp. 21-22.
Brice Marden, lectureat the Museum of Modern Art,New York,November 16, 1989, cited in
20.
Brenda Richardson,BriceMarden:ColdMountains(Houston: Fine ArtsPress,1991), p. 43.

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Portrait
oftheGardener

Vallier.1906.

ii

NOW

point that touches on the famous "unfinished" condition of a large part of

Cezanne's works.This stateof "unfinish"is of course not that,and the manycommentatorson this-from Riviereand Schnerbto Renoirand Matisse-have noted
that everycanvas, everywatercolor by Cezanne, whateverthe moment in the
is alwaysstructuredas a totality.It is
process at which it has been "interrupted,"
what,speakingelsewhereof Matisse'sdebt to Cezanne, I have called "theeconomy
of the session":Cezanne stopswhen the ensemble holds and each session,even if
it takes up a picture in process and already reworkeda hundred times, is an
absolute recommencement.21
Whence the famousremarkmade to Vollard about
the twotinypointsof emptycanvas,or reserve,in his portrait:"IfI put something
here byguesswork,I mighthave to paint the whole canvas over,startingfromthat
point."22The whitesof Cezanne are thus not open sores but the unavoidable
consequence of his wayof working:theyare void spaces thatare as constructiveas
the filled-inones; at leastthat'sthe wayMatisse read them.
21.
22.

See my"Matisseand 'Arche-Drawing',"

in Paintingas Model,pp. 48-51.
Vollard,Paul Cizanne(1914), in Cizannein Perspective,
p. 64.

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42

OCTOBER

However,Cezanne seems to have complained of these reservezones (he put

them down to his age and as "abstractions"that are engendered in him by the
"coloringsensations,whichgivethe light").23And in the lightof his mostworkedover canvases-the lumpyportraitsfromthe end, forexample those of Vallieror
the Pushkin Museum's Sainte-Victoire-and taking account of what he said to
as well,namely,
Riviereand Schnerbin frontof the Barnes Foundation GreatBathers
we mightwonderif
thathe wanted "to paintwitha loaded brush,like Courbet,"24
the destinyof all of Cezanne's works,even those whose aerated respirationwe
acclaim,was not to end bybeing dark and saturatedwithmatter,as had been the
worksof the "couillarde"period.
The contradictionon thispoint betweenCezanne's declared intentionsand
the omnipresenceof the whitesin his paintinghas been the focus of numerous
commentaries,but even so I would like to returnto the matterof the reserve.I
remarksabout the unityof color and
want to bringto bear on thisthe well-known
color
are
not
and
separate at all; in so far as you paint, you
drawing:"Drawing
Ratherthan wantingto read them,as has been rightlydone, as signsof a
draw."25
simplerefusalof linearismon Cezanne's part (and thusin termsof the line/color
alternativeas that has been debated in France since the seventeenthcentury),I
would here like to fold these remarksinto the generic issue of the relations
betweenpaintingand drawing.
Contraryto whatthe historyof artmakes us think,connoisseurshave never
judged paintingsand drawingsaccording to the same criteriaand have always
been consciousof the factthattheydon't belong to the same historicaltime:from
Pontormo to Poussin, fromGuercino to Tiepolo, the art of drawingevolvedin a
frameworkof conventions very differentfrom that of painting (many things
permittedin drawingwould never have been accepted in painting). Now, the
major differencebetweenthe space of drawingand thatof paintingconcerns the
natureof the support.Since the time of Alberti,the pictureplane is assumed as
transparentin painting,but the condition sine qua non of this transparencyis
as Walter
thatthe supportinggroundbe coveredoverwithoutreserve.Conversely,
Benjamin has remarked,"the graphicline can existonlyagainstthisbackground,
so thata drawingthatcompletelycovereditsbackgroundwould cease to be a drawing."26Benjamin made this remarkafterhaving seen a show of Picasso's Cubist
paintings,preciselybecause theyseemed to him to put this simple opposition
into question: he would verywell have been as troubledbya Cezanne exhibition,
withoutdoubt the firstpainterto have abolished thisconstitutivedifference.
And maybe it's just for that, for having canceled the differencebetween
Cezanne to Emile Bernard,October 23, 1905, in Letters,
23.
p. 316 (translationmodified).
Riviereand Schnerb,"Cezanne's Atelier,"p. 63 (translationmodified).
24.
25.
p. 42.
ReportedbyEmile Bernard;see "Opinion,"in Cezannein Perspective,
WalterBenjamin, "Painting,or Signs and Marks" (1917), in WalterBenjamin:SelectedWritings,
26.
Volume1: 1913-1926, ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael Jennings (Cambridge and London: Harvard
Press,1996), p. 83.
University

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Cizanne: Wordsand Deeds

43

thesetwohistorically
thatC6zanne is the fatherofmodern
heterogeneousregisters,
art. It remainsto be seen ifsuch was his intention.I personallybelieve thathe was
obliged to do this: if, as Merleau-Pontyhas stated,Cezanne's goal was to paint
perceptionitself,and if,as he himselfput it, he wanted "to see as a newborn,"27
that is to say,at the verymomentof an originarydiscrimination,he would have
had to activatethe oppositionbetweenfigureand groundthatis at the foundation
of our human perception;and the ascentof the support-namely,the contaminationof the pictorialfieldbythe graphicone-was thebestrouteto take,or perhaps,
even,theonlyone.

27.

avecCizanne,p. 22 n. 1.
ReportbyJulesBorely(1911); reprintedin Conversations

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