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

ARAS Connections Issue 2, 2012
Vigor
where only the key phrases are written down they are felt as setting up
rhythms in every part of the surface. But this perfect continuity of plastic
sequences did not of course imply any want of organization. This
continuity only contributes to the perfectly lucid organization and the
clear articulation of volumes. Their exact relief or recession has to be
given to each plane. Nothing could be more explicit, more legible than
the plasticity of this design where everything keeps its exact position, and
where the volumes have the exact space in which to evolve |33|.
Plastic paintings are never insipid. In Veronese's Mars and Venus (plate 7)
planes push vigorously against each other and are at the same time held in
balance. Soulages said of the great Renaissance paintings that they were like
machines he would fear to put his finger into lest it be hurt by the gears |34|.
When I come suddenly upon such a painting in a museum I feel a shock of
surprise like the shock of meeting a deer in the woods. Each stands poised and
breathing in its own universe. A plastic painting evolves as a living organism
evolves, from its initial simple form through a series of intermediate forms to its
final complex form (see Plate 2 and Creating a plastic painting). At each stage the
painting is alive because it is unified and vigorous. The vigor of the initial
structure is not lost but is translated into new forms.
The play of movement
Opposing movements play against each other throughout the canvas.
Nothing is static. The surface ripples like a stream running over a bed of stones.
The still lives by Cézanne and Matisse (plate 12) each show this live rippling
surface. Fry described Cézanne's landscape Provencal Mas:
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