About Cézanne

8. THE "WHITES" BY CEZANNE Here Is The Entirety Of His Work. Of The Cited Text In The Introduction To My Page For Those Who Want To Know More. In His Pictorial Quest, It Seems That Cézanne Joined The Approach Of The Chinese Painters And This, At The Same Time. Several Levels, More Particularly In His View Of The Landscapes He Had Before His Eyes And Of Course, The Sainte-Victoire Mountain. First Of All, We Must Say What Notion Of Emptiness We Are Going To Talk About Here. Since We Want To Draw A Parallel Between The Cezannian Landscape And The Void, It Goes Without Saying That We Have To Do So. To Do There, To Do There; A Notion Of The Void Which Is Not "the Void" In The Western Sense Of The Term Since In Principle, If We Said That "the Sainte-Victoire Is Representative Of The Void", Astonishment Would Certainly Follow Disbelief. We Must Therefore First Of All Begin By Saying What We Mean Here By Emptiness, If What We Want To See There Is Empty. Is Not "nothing" Or Even The Absence Of Matter, Of Presence. It’s Really About The Look. From A Cultural Look At A Phenomenon Which Has A Physical But Also Psychological Dimension.   Sainte Victoire In Summer Emptiness In The West When We Talk About Emptiness In The West, Culturally Our View Is Of A Physical Or Aesthetic Order. Gilles Sautter(1) Who From The Start Of His Presentation Wonders If "looking At A Landscape Is, Until" A Certain Point, On An Individual Level As On A Cultural Level, Look At Oneself" After A Detour Via Lacan (2) Which Offers The Interest Of Being Close To Our Concern Via China. À Regarding Cézanne, He Asks The Question Of "the Aesthetics Of Space" Which Is Often The Gaze That Is Posed On His Work. And It Seems Relevant To Us To Go Beyond. With Giono, He Addresses The Questioning Of The Physical Relationship With Nature. Space And Quoting It In A Passage From "Colline" -a Link Is Established Which Connects Me To Space, And Space Beyond; Myself. I Am Related To All The Things Of Which I Am A Part. Which Leads Him To See A Report "on Totally Open Space" Of Freedom. What Freedom? Is There In There, What Meaning Does It Give It? Unfortunately We Won't Know. And If It Is Psychological, Our View Of The Void In The West Speaks To Us Of Anguish, Of Loss. So We Are Going To Leave The Side. "earth" Earth" Physical And Take A Look At The Physical Side. Psychic To Through A Quote From J.P. Ferrier Who In "Leçons Du Territory" Speaks To Us About The Mediterranean People As A People Of The Land And Citing A Proverb “praise The Sea But Remain At Home” Earth » Speaks To Us Of The Sea Which - Offers, From The Nearby Heights, Its Dark Planes Bordered By The Lights Of The Houses And Towns Of Today's Civilization, We Sometimes Have The Impression Of Being On The Edge Of The World And To Dominate The "emptiness".- In This Land-based Country That Is Provence, The Sea Represents This Emptiness Which Anguishes, An Attitude Which Will Only Begin At The End Of The Year. Evolve With, Among Other Things, Romanticism Which In The 19th Century Would Encourage Look For The "affective" Bond; With Nature And In Fact Between Inviolable Summits And Rugged Oceans; These "empties" Sources Of Anxiety Go Little To Nothing Little Change In Nature Through The Gaze That Will Be Given To Them. In The Void In The Far East The Opposite, Due To Its History, China Has Through Taoist Philosophy And A Pragmatic Approach Has Long Since Thrown Its Way. A Look At The Void Which Is, In Its Cultural Dimension, That Which Modern Physics Carries, That Is To Say That The Void Is Full. He Is Wearing. It Structures The World. The Image That Is Given Is That Of The Breath Which Carries Into The Void Between Heaven And Earth, Capable Of Providing Breath To Will, Inexhaustible. (Chapter V And XI Of Lao-Tzu). The Vacuum Is Effective In The Same Way As The Wheel Hub, The Vase Or The House Because They Are Receptacles. It Is Invisible But It Carries The World Through Its Effectiveness, Like The Void Between Heaven And Earth. Symbolic Image But Also Reality Physical. And In Another Way, If We Say "emptying Oneself", This Is What We Are Looking For. à To Be Like The Void Of The Universe, To Be Filled With This Breath Which Carries Within Itself The Essence Of Life. It Is In This Sense That We Can Speak Of Fullness. Full Of The Vital Energy That Animates The World. This Means That This Emptiness Is A Source Of Life And We Are Far From The Idea Of Fear, Dread, Anguish. It Is Indeed An Approach That Is The Opposite Of That Of The West, Because It Is Not Built On A Construction Of The World Engendered By The Notion Of "Good In The Face Of Evil"; -Caïn And Abel-, But On The Contrary Towards An Origin Of "complementarityé And Balance. Good And Evil Are In Everything And Everything Is Good And Evil Together. "Fou-hi And Niu-koua", The Mythical Founding Couple Of The Chinese Is This Complementarity. Two Characters Linked By "mermaid Tails", Building The World By "square And Compass" Held In Each Of Their Hands And Emerging From The Water, Origin Of The Universe. A Strong Image If Ever There Was One. Our View Of The Void Has Therefore Been Two Thousand Years "late", Because From The Start, This View Was Established On A Vision Of The World With A Different Meaning. Through A Religious Prism Which Wanted To See Dualities Rather Than Complementarities. Rather Than Looking At Nature And Collecting Lessons From It, Which The “Age Of Enlightenment” Will Bring Us, The World Will Be Built On A Distorted Vision Of Nature And All The Reasoning That Results From It Will Obviously Be Tainted By This Distorted View. It Will Take Us A Long Time To Convince Ourselves Of This And Modify It. C&eac;zanne's Gaze & Agrave; In His Own Way, Cézanne Will Pose On The Landscape, This Other Look, This Look Which Wants To See Beyond Appearances, But Above All With Questions About Themselves; Levels Which Call Into Question Both Drawing Techniques And Notions Of Perspective. He Is Joined In This By Matisse Who “speaks Of The Eternal Conflict Of Drawing And Color. Furthermore, He Tells Us: "In Drawing, Even Formed; With A Single Stroke, We Can Give An Infinity Of Meaning. Of Nuances To Each Part That It Encloses (...) It Is Not Possible To Separate Drawing And Color (...) Drawing Is A Painting Made With Reduced Means. On A White Surface, With A Pen And Ink, We Can, By Creating Certain Contrasts, Create Volumes; We Can, By Changing The Quality Paper, Give Soft Surfaces, Light Surfaces, Hard Surfaces Without Putting Either Shadows Or Lights." (3) But Let's Return To; Cézanne And His View Of The Landscape. He Enters At That Moment, But Without Knowing It, In The Field Of Reflection Which Places Him Opposite Chinese Painters For Whom Painting Is A Sacred Act, It Is The Means Par Excellence " To Reveal The Mysteries Of The Universe. (4) But It Is Also, Apart From These Technical Problems, This Relationship To The Universe That He Glimpses With This Question Of "whites" In His Painting. What Some Have Called The "Cezannian Breathing" And Which For Him Is The Result Of His Approach. À Through What He Calls "the Module", He Wants To "translate To Both The Appearance And The Structure Of Things. But There Remains A Doubt In Him, A "helplessness" Express Certain Aspects Of Reality. It Was Then That He "adopted A Very Original Attitude: Since, While Painting, He Saw Himself Confronted With à This Questioning Without Answer, He Concludes That This Impossibility Even Is Part Of Its Subject. Out Of Respect For Reality. And To Preserve His Theory, He Must Integrate This Dimension Into His Painting. Thus Appears The White Of The Canvas, This “Cezannian Breathing”. We Find There; The "vital Breath" Such As The Void In Chinese Painting Is Defined. "Opposite The Full, The Void Constitutes An Entity Of Its Own. Alive. The Spring Of All Things, It Intervenes At All Times. The Very Interior Of The Plein, By Breathing Into It The Vital Breaths. Its Action Has The Consequence Of Breaking One-dimensional Development, Sparking Internal Transformation And Leading To Circular Movement. It's Good To See Starting From An Original Conception Of The Universe, Of The "organicist" Type, That We Can Apprehend Reality Of This Void." (5) Break With The 18th Century This Cézanne Breathing Is Inscribed In His Quest To Paint On The Motif, In The Relationships Between Tone And Light. In The Fight He Leads To Through His Work On The Motif, He Never Confuses This Search For "truth" And The Quest For "the Illusion Of Reality" Which Is More For Him A Question Of Skill, Than Of An Approach To The Harmony Of The Natural Order That Can Only Be Given To Us. See A Landscape. It Then Refers To The Landscape Tradition Which In The West And For France Has Its Roots In The 18th Century. There Were Two Categories Of Landscape According To "the Academy Of Fine Arts And The Rich Clients Of The Time", The Heroic Landscape And The Rural Landscape, Which At The Time 18th Century And Up To The First Half The 19th Century Saw The First Dominate As A Genre According To The Conceptions Of Claude Lorrain And Gaspard Dughet. 6 On The Other Hand In The Second Half From The 19th Century It Is The Second Which Takes A Preponderant Place. À At That Time, The Interest In Landscape Was The Legacy Of The Barbizon School. But For The Impressionists Who Were Inspired By The Painting Of Corot, It Was By Removing The "romantic And Moral Connotations".(6) It Was Also The Abandonment Of The Principles Of Perspective Which Until -severe; Had Founded The Construction Of Landscape Painting As Defined Since 1800 In The "Elements Of Practical Perspective" From Valenciennes. The Great Break That The Impressionists Will Introduce Will Not Be So Much Of The Order Of Aesthetics, Which Seems To Be Highlighted By Certain Critiques Of The Time On The Lack Of Finish Or Traditional Subjects, But Rather ;t, And It's There That Cézanne Really Marks A Profound Break, A Turning Point Through A View That Is "more Philosophical Than Topographical".(7) By Diminishing The Importance Of The Site, Cézanne Clearly Shows That, While Working A Lot Outdoors, He Is Especially Concerned With The Rhythms Of The Landscape. It's About Knowing How To Penetrate It, Understanding Its Reality And Understanding It. Deep. What He Sees In This Reflection About "one's Blanks", This Moment That Must Not Be Transgressed Under Penalty Of Seeing All One's Work Called Into Question. When He Explains To The Young Painter Émile Bernard That: "As Time Goes By, As One Paints, One Draws; The More The Color Harmonizes, The More Precise The Drawing Becomes. When The Color Is At Its Richness, The Form Is At Agrave; Its Fullness. Contrasts And Tonal Relationships, That’s It! The Secret Of Drawing And Modeling... Nature, For Us Men, Is More In Depth Than On The Surface, Hence; The Need For To Introduce Into Our Vibrations Of Light, Represented By Reds And Yellows, A Sufficient Amount Of Bluish Tones, To Make The Air Feel...(8) Parallel With China. We Find The Same Quest With Means Which Come Down To The Brush And To The Paint. Ink In Chinese Painting. What Does François Cheng Tell Us About This? This Subject: "black Ink, With Its Infinite Nuances, Seems Rich Enough In The Eyes Of The Painter To Embody All The Variations Of Colors That Nature Offers. The Ink-Brush Can Bring Life To Life. Their Intimate Union Is Often Symbolized By Sexual Union. À About The Line, He Tells Us "it Is At The Same Time. Both Form And Hue, Volume And Rhythm, Implying Density; Based On Economy Of Means And The Totality Of Which Encompasses The Very Impulses Of Man. Through Its Unity, It Resolves The Conflict That Every Painter Feels Between Drawing And Color, The Representation Of Volume And That Of Movement. (9) Referring To 18th Century Painting In France, We Pointed Out That Cézanne Was Part Of The Shift, To The About His View Of The Landscape, Between The Search For "the Truth" And The Quest For "the Illusion Of Reality". A Look More Philosophical Than Topographical. It Is Not Uninteresting To Put This Phenomenon Into Perspective, This Quest For The Gaze Which Will Shake Up Western Painting When It Appears To Us That China Has Seen A Rather Similar To; The T'ang Period, Around The 8th Century, With What Will Be Defined Later As The Opposition Between The School Of The North And That Of The South. Thus, A Renowned Author (10) Of The Time “deplored Among Most Artists Of His Time The Excessive And Predominant Concern For Accuracy And External Resemblance, Which Made Them Neglect The Essential, The Harmony Of The Breath. He Thus Defined The Northern School By The Detailed, The Careful, The Analytical, The Historical, By Continuous Drawing And Brilliant Color. And Speaking Of The Southern School, That Of The Abstract, The Synthetic, The Spare, The Spontaneous, And Expressing Through The Mastery Of The Brush And Ink Calligraphic The Vital Breath And The Movement Of Interior Life. He Then Referred To The Most Famous Representative Of This Trend, The Painter Wou Tao Tseu. (11) This Is To Say That Chinese Painting Has Not Had A Monolithic Journey And That, Like The West, The Far East Despite Its Influence An Apparent Uniqueness, Which Spatial Or Cultural Distance Can Induce, Has Experienced Upheavals, Just Like Europe. On The Other Hand, Even If The Song Period Remains "the Reference", The Line Of Conduct, The Common Thread Remains Thought, Taoist Philosophy. The Importance And Role Of The Principles Stated There Have Structured All Chinese Painting Since Its Origins. Cézanne's Approach Will Be One Of The Triggers For The Change In Our View Of The Landscape. We Will Therefore Have To Wait Until The Beginning Of The 20th Century To See Extreme Views Coming Together. Through A Medium Like Paint. On The Influence Of Painting On Town Planning This Painting Which With A Picasso, Among Others, Successor If Anything Of Cézanne, Will Profoundly Modify The Views Not Only On Painting, But Obviously , By Extension, On The Urban Landscape. Perception Will Destructure, Rise, Multiply Its Angles Of View. The Classic Perspective, Which Will Occasionally Persist In The Urban Composition, Will Explode With The New Means Of Transport, But Without The Support Of A Philosophy Which Would Give It Coherence, To A Greater Extent. The Image Of Chinese Painting Which Despite The Ups And Downs Of History, Will Allow Allows This Painting To Develop In A Coherence Which Has Not Been Denied. While The Challenges To Urban Space Will Only Be Of A Technicist Or Mercantilist Nature, Which Will Lead Us To Questions About The Merits‚ Approaches Developed Since The Post-war Period, Based On CIAM Concepts. The Relationship Of Man To Its Space, Theoretically Understood In Speeches, But Completely Denied In Reality, Will Appear In A Resounding Way As The Key To Its Existence. Roof Of The Urban Landscape. To Take Up Augustin Berque (12) We Will Say That The Earth Asks For More; Be Thought Of In Its Habitability And This Will Be Found, At Agrave; On The Scale Of The City, In The Way In Which We Will Approach The Shaping Of The Space, A Space Which Can Be Perceived As An "urban Landscape". And This Space Will Have To Be Built, Like Painting, By Successive Touches And By A Treatment Of Space Which Must Be Part Of The Reality Of The Painting. Not Only Economic But Also Social And Political. And If As It Is Practiced For Fifty Years, This Treatment Of Space Has Ignored Man, We Will Be Faced With A Painting Which Claims To Represent Reality, But Which In Fact Will Only Be A Reflection Of This Reality. We Will Be In This Illusion That Cézanne Denounced At About 18th Century Painting In France Or The Painters Of The South Compared To The Painters Of The North In 7th Century China. The Vital Breath Is Absent, That Is To Say Man In His Reality. Daily, In One's Relationship To The World, The Other. He Is No Longer A Subject But A Simple Object Among Other Objects. A Consumptive Consumer Product. Instead Of Living The Space, He Will Be A Consumer Of It And In Return, This Space Will Consume Him. In Other Words, Thinking About The Expression Of Living Space (which May Have A Negative Connotation For Some, But It Must Be Overcome) We Will Say: About Lived Space That: "The Concept Of Lived Space Goes Back To Husserl, Whose Lebensraum Inspired Until Existentialism. It Must Be Taken In The Strong Sense: The Lived Space Is Not Only The Living Space, The One That We Practice, But The Space As It Is Lived, Felt Much More Than Perceived. U, Haunted And Inhabited, With All Its Affects. It Is Made Up Of Places, Buildings And People And Also Of Signs And Landmarks, Impulses And Repulsions, Memories And Projects."(13) To Finish, We Will Say With A . Berque That “to Deny Places Is To Deny The Human Essence Of Those Who Inhabit Them. By Treating The Space Of The Home According To The Principles Of Simple Rationality, Physics, The Large Ensembles Resulting From The Modern Movement In Architecture Have Caused The Ecumene To Regress, Declining To The Next Level. Even Of The Biosphere, At The Ontological Level Of The Matter Of The Planet. When It Comes To Human Inhabitants, This Kind Of Architecture Is Ethically Unsustainable.(14) We Can Extend The Notion Of Habitation Architecture To Include: The Architecture Of The City To Take Up Alberti Saying That: The House Is The City And The City The House. Let Us Look At The Sainte-Victoire And Meditate On This Image That Cézanne Sends Back To Us With Its Whites Which Must Allow Breathing Of His Painting With Opposite A Shih-t'ao Whose Emptiness Animates And Structures His Own.