David Peat

The End of Representation 109order in painting. He spent the rest of his life searching for this order.Again and again he remained unsatisfied with what he had paintedand only a few of his works are “achieved” in the sense that he waswilling to add his signature to them. As he painted, Cézanne wouldmove his head, interrogating the scene and seeking to resolve ambiguitiesin what he was seeing. In many cases a visual doubt remained,and, being an honest man, Cézanne allowed these visual doubts to remainon the canvas rather than “correcting” them or attempting toresolve his perceptual uncertainties and ambiguities.Cézanne wished to remain true to his “little sensations,” so ratherthan painting over what could be taken as a “mistake,” or a trial attemptat depiction, he let the mark stand and added another nearby.And so we notice the tentative nature whereby he paints the branch ofa tree, recording the various sensations of where that branch could belocated. He doubted the nature of a piece of foliage and told us thatthis visual sensation could mean a group of leaves in the immediateforeground or a bush in the background. The ambiguity remains onthe canvas—two possible interpretations, complementary visions,doubt as to the nature of visual reality.And so Cézanne returns us directly to the act of seeing within theeye and mind, to the constant process of doubting, making hypotheses,again doubting their validity, rejecting some and provisionallyaccepting others. Picasso and Braque, who came after Cézanne, experimentedfor a time with versions of cubism whereby the different possibleimpressions we receive as we walk around an object are recordedand integrated into a flat, two-dimensional whole. It is probably nocoincidence that Monet’s wish to return to direct visual experience,Cézanne’s doubt as to what his sensations were telling him, andCubism’s attempt to integrate different possible viewpoints in timeshould coincide with a general change of Western consciousnesswhereby, as we have seen, doubt, relativism, and a lack of certaintyentered in many different ways.I have referred before to the idea of a change of consciousnessduring the twentieth century. I have also drawn attention to the manydifferent ways in which doubt entered physics, mathematics, philosophyof language, and now art. There are many other examples of move-