Pictorial Space throughout Art History: Cézanne and ... - ARAS

ARAS Connections Issue 2, 2012
Introduction
Since the stone age humankind has created masterworks which possess a
mysterious quality of solidity and grandeur or monumentality. Such works now
sell for tens of millions of dollars. A paleolithic Venus and a still life by Cézanne
both share this monumentality. Michelangelo likened monumentality to
sculptural relief:
depth:
Painting should be considered excellent in proportion as it approaches
the effect of relief |1|.
Braque called monumentality space:
You see, the whole Renaissance tradition is antipathetic to me. The hard
and fast rules of perspective which it imposes on art were a ghastly
mistake which it has taken four centuries to redress: Cézanne and, after
him, Picasso and myself can take a lot of the credit for this. Scientific
perspective is nothing but eye-fooling illusionism; it is simply a trick - a
bad trick - which makes it impossible for an artist to convey a full
experience of space, since it forces the objects in a picture to disappear
away from the beholder instead of bringing them within his reach, as a
painting should. That's why I have such a liking for primitive art: for very
early Greek art, Etruscan art, Negro art. None of this has been deformed
by Renaissance science ... Cubism was essentially a reaction against the
impressionists ... we were out to attack space which they had neglected
|2|.
Hans Hoffman, himself one of the masters, called monumentality pictorial
Inner greatness, pictorially, is determined and limited by the degree to
which the pictorial effect of depth, in contrast to the illusion of depth,
serves the artist's purpose |3|.
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