Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
SITE FOR POSTING CLASS READING RESPONSES AS COMMENTS. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT ON OTHER POSTS. History of Art, U.C. Berkeley. Instructor Sarah Hamill
FUR-LINED CUP, MERET OPPENHEIM, 1936
Students
Blog Archive
-
▼
2009
(17)
-
▼
January
(17)
- No title
- Minimalism: For Class 3/31
- Warhol and Pop: For Class 3/19
- Johns, Rauschenberg, Frank: For Class 3/17
- Abstract Expressionism: For Class 3/12
- Modernist Sculpture: For Class 3/5
- Surrealism and Gender: For Class 2/19
- Modernism and Mass Culture: For Class 3/3
- Modern Objects and Things: For Class 2/10
- Primitivism: For class 2/5
- Cezanne and after: For Class 2/3
- Impressionism and Science: For class 1/29
- Response #3
- Kathryn A. Tuma
- What is Analysis? For class 1/27
- Octave Tassaert’s ‘Ne fais pas la cruelle!’ (Don’t...
- Defining the Modern: for class January 22
-
▼
January
(17)
Jenny Zhang
ReplyDeleteHA R1B Section 6
Reading Response #4
In the past reading and class discussions about Cezanne, I always found myself confused but also intrigued by his art, mainly because the images he recreated on the canvas were unreal and imaginary. Furthermore, I got the impression that his topic of interest in paintings was nudist, since so many examples of his work in the reader were of nude women. But what I found interesting was that unlike other painting of nudist from the Renaissance and academic paintings, he avoided the “mixing of the sexes” (169). Also according to Schapiro, when Cezanne did paint male and women together, sometimes the male subject would be fully clothed and watches the nude women around him. Instances of this are Cezanne’s Pastoral, and The Modern Olympia. Although, there were also paintings of his containing nude man and woman (The Amorous Shepherd and Le Grog au Vin) I think these paintings was a way for Cezanne to express his fascination of women and it is possible that he painted the male subjects as a representation of himself; and the entire image shows his sexual or erotic daydreams or fantasies of women.
According to Schapiro, many critics also connected these paintings of clothed men and unclothed women to paintings by other artists like Manet, Hervey de St. Denys , Giorgione and Marcantonio Raimondi. When I compared Cezanne’s painting to those of the other artists, I saw that there was stark contrast between the paintings from the 19th century and those from the 16th century. The 16th century paintings created a more romantic environment because the men and women in them were engaged with the opposite sex in activities such as conversation. Although the Giorgione painting had clothed men and nude women, compared to Raimondi’s painting which featured both sexes nude, there was unity between the two sexes. However, if we compare those 16th century paintings with the 19th century ones, we feel that the artist tried to show the distinction between man and woman. In all three painting by Manet, Denys and Cezanne, the men are clothed and the women are nude. Furthermore, the women, in Manet and Denys paintings, are not shown engaging in activities with men nor are the men paying attention to the women (even though they are nude); instead, they seem isolated and simply added next to the men as accessories. I felt that these painting might have been created by the artist to show the reality of the women being a lower counterpart of men in modern society. But despite the clothing differences between man and women in all of the three 19th century paintings, Cezanne’s version had a more romantic and softer mood; because at least the men are looking at the women, enjoying her presence.
Going back to when Schapiro spoke about the Cezanne’s anxiety and fear about women, I think these earlier paintings show Cezanne’s fascination with women and it was probably later in his life when this fascination turned into anxiety because the images in his paintings, of the same subject, became more violent. Honestly, I understand that there have always been tensions between men and women since the dawn of time, but I wish I knew the source of Cezanne’s anxieties because it obviously caused him so much trouble that he switched to still-life painting. And what was more surprising to me was that despite these anxieties toward women, he still had a wife and children. I wonder how he managed to have a good relationship with his wife much less a stable family life. It could that the reason he switched to still-life painting was a way for him to calm his nerves or as a way for him to express his desires to have a good family since ultimately, the subjects of still-life paintings are related to domestic life.
The reading about Cubism was quite interesting because I never knew that there was such a category much less that Picasso’s painting were related to it. I had always thought that Picasso’s genre of painting was simply called modern art. Like other genres of art that we have talked about in class, Cubism was derived from previous artists and in this case, a quote by Cezanne (about using geometric shapes as a reference for painting) that artists like Braque took literally. I believe the concept of Cubism is for the artist to search for geometric shapes in the subject of their painting and to translate these shapes into an image on canvas. This is in turn created an almost puzzle-like painting because of the great deal of lines used to create the picture. In the end, the picture created doesn’t look anything like the subject and make me wonder what it is that I am staring at.
Response Essay 4
ReplyDeleteCezanne and after
Mike Dreibelbis
Prior to reading this piece, I had very little knowledge of Cezanne’s works other than the few still lifes that I had seen. This piece not only showed me more of his work, but also went well into the state of mind of Cezanne during the periods in which certain paintings were produced. One thing I found to be particularly interesting was his apparent obsession with sex and how painting gave him a canvas if you will to release his “desires” in a manner of decency.
Apparently Cezanne got over his obsession with nudes and sexual themed paintings, as they began to appear less frequently after the 1870s. His paintings containing nudes are interesting though, and Schapiro notes this, because Cezanne’s images with nudes (especially women) always seemed to have some sort of violence associated with them. Rape scenes, or even his Battle of Love or Bacchanal show that it was difficult for Cezanne to depict the female nude in a normal setting, one in which the viewer could simply enjoy the composition of the nude. Instead these scenes that have struggle barrage the viewer, this could be a depiction of Cezanne’s own sexual frustrations, as women did not frequent him.
Schapiro makes a good point when he says that the impressionists in painting nudes were less concerned with the respectable display of them than artists of the past. He talks about the Giorgione Concert where the men in the painting are almost one with the background of the city and the trees as the geometry of their heads seem to display. He also notes how the women, though nude, are shown in a manner that is soft and not indecent. He notes how the flesh tones are complimentary to the landscape and though not one with the landscape, as the men, they are not the dominant feature of the scene. He contrasts this with Manet’s Olympia where the prostitute, instead of being a soft complimentary scene, is shown as being stark white, standing out as if being the main focus of the piece is not the scene, but of her nude body. He notes that it is her defiant look on the prostitute’s face that is the most shocking and I agree. In the Giorgione piece, the scene depicts the nudes as unaware of the viewer’s presence and perhaps even of their own nudity. In the Manet piece however, the woman is fully aware of the viewer’s presence an of her own nudity as she covers herself whilst staring into the viewer’s eyes. There is a lot of shock value to be had from this effect, as it is one of the first paintings (that I know of) to depict a nude in such a manner. Previously, as in the Giorgione, nudes were either nymph-like, or shown with some religious significance. Now Manet is challenging that norm by asking why this should be any different? She is no less nor more nude than other nudes, but she is for some reason a shameful display whereas the others are not. Manet hoped to change the obsession of the nude being sacred and proves it with his prostitute’s gaze into our eyes.
Now in reading further I came to note that Cezanne did not abandon the sexual themes when he moved from nudes to still-lifes. Apples apparently held significant sexual symbolism stemming probably form the judgment of Paris. Schapiro notes that many Latin poems, of which Cezanne was an avid reader, contain excerpts that allude to the fact that men would choose a sexual mate using apples. Cezanne took this to heart and we see that he painted sexually themed pieces, though not containing nudes; they contained symbols that to him were of equal erotic nature.
Julia Herron
ReplyDeleteResponse Essay #4
“The Apples of Cezanne” made me think about all the complex components that go into a single painting. There are many layers of personal stories, history, and outside influences that combine to make a single composition. Cezanne’s interactions with Zola determined his personal feelings about that evolved and changed throughout his lifetime. His interest in Latin poetry also affected his choice of subjects. Perhaps the most influential aspect of Cezanne’s life was his relationship with women. As a somewhat frustrated and lonely adolescent, Cezanne has a unique view of women and romance that is never quite reconciled in his works.
I had never given much thought to still-life paintings before reading this article. I had assumed they were somewhat perfunctory, a way for artists to refine their skills before painting something more interesting. But this essay showed that still-life paintings could evoke just as much as paintings about humans. The choice of objects, their lighting, their placement, their size, and their color reveal a great deal about the artist. Different groups of objects convey different settings, such as “the private, the domestic, the gustatory, the convivial, the artistic… the ephemeral and death” (Reader 179). A single object can present to different artists a range of qualities, and in choosing to paint this object, it presents a range of qualities to the viewer as well. A line that resonated with me was: “still-life, as much as landscape and sometimes more, calls out a response to an implied human presence” (Reader, 181).
“The Wild Men of Paris” brought to my attention that you look at a painting differently when you know more about its creation. Knowing Picasso sketched a drastically different scene before removing the two male figures and the still-life objects, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon becomes a much more focused work. What started out as a scene with more still-life objects and subjects besides the females became a scene just about the form of the women. It’s also interesting to learn that Picasso had a sense of humor about the piece, naming the figures after past girlfriends or even his own grandmother. And when he was asked if he uses models, his witty reply was “Where would I get them?”
We hail Picasso as one of the greatest artists of all time, and he is a household name, but there is a lot more depth and meaning to his work than you might imagine for how popular he is. There are Picasso posters all over the place and “Far Side” cartoons about how he might have failed art in Kindergarten for drawing in the Cubist style, but just because his art is popular does not detract from how powerful it is.
I enjoyed the Shapiro essay because it reflected many views on Cezanne's still life artwork of apples. The conclusion is perhaps the most interesting part of the essay since it really ties together the ideas behind Cezanne's motive through still-life.
ReplyDeleteA very modernist perspective is thrown on the still life: "[through the apples] the painter could project typical relations of human beings as well as qualities of the larger visible world - solitude, contact, accord, conflict, serenity, abundance and luxury - and even states of elation and enjoyment."(31)
A major question I had was the idea of Shapiro's interpretation in relation to our interpretation. He seemed to make many references to both literature and other painters as well as many of Cezanne's paintings. Certainly he picked a theme to follow, but his treatment of research and reference completely legitimized his argument. Most importantly, compared to single source analysis as our first papers most likely will be, he defeats and outshines subjectivity with many objective pieces of evidence. In literature, one is supposed to be able to treat a novel as a novel alone - a work in itself, apart from epistemological context. Shapiro leads me to believe that with art, the analysis is different despite that within his argument, he affirms that analysis can be done in the same manner - and that painting hasn't been given enough of this kind of attention. Is this true? How should we treat a single source analysis in comparison to an analysis involving historical perspective and a broader range of sources?
Bing Lin
ReplyDeleteSection 6
During the course of my childhood, I took art classes and no matter what mediums the classes taught, I was always drawing or painting still-life. Back then, and even now, I thought little of still-life, other than that it was a way for me to improve my observation and technical skills with a certain art medium. As I read “The Apples of Cezanne” by Meyer Schapiro, however, still-life suddenly came to life for me, as Schapiro spent a hefty time on describing Cezanne’s reasons behind his choice of still-life in his pieces.
Approaching the essay titled “The Apple of Cezanne: An Essay on the Meaning of Still-life,” I thought that Schapiro would dive straight into the meaning of still-life in Cezanne’s works. However, I am glad that he began with background information on Cezanne, as it provided a basis for more understanding of Cezanne as an artist. I found it interesting that Cezanne had such an intense obsession of sex in his earlier life, finding inspiration in the sexual themes of Manet’s paintings and releasing his desires in his paintings, often painting himself, or males with likeliness of himself in his paintings, as if to fantasize about what sexual adventures he could have. What picked my interest in the Schapiro’s description of Cezanne’s variations of Modern Olympia, an imitation of Manet’s Olympia, is, as he mentions, “the regular presence of still-life in these scenes of debauch” (10). As Cezanne seems to be anxious and almost shy about his own sexual fantasies in real life, he utilizes the still-life to symbolize aspects of sex, bringing about the beginning of still-life as symbols and concepts that go beyond just their physical characteristics. Schapiro affirms this by describing another painting, in which Cezanne replaces the swan in Leda and the Swan with tablecloth and large pears, which seems to suggest his intention to take the viewer’s mind off the sexual themes of the painting and allude to his repressed sexual urges.
Moving past the sexual themes of his artworks and delving into his fascination with still-life, Schapiro finally approaches the subject of still-art in Cezanne’s works. Through analyzing Cezanne’s works, Schapiro summarizes that still-life is meant to be subordinate to man, to serve as objects to convey man’s power over things and can be analogous to events that happen in the life of the artist. Having never thought about still-life in such a manner, I am fascinated by Schapiro’s interpretation of Cezanne’s still-life works, and definitely interested in what Cezanne meant by placing still-life objects in scenes of sexual content, as the two may seem like conflicting subjects resolved through Cezanne’s genius.
Danielle Beeve
ReplyDeleteHistory of Art R1B
Section 6
Cezanne’s painting of a scene of three women, one man and an offering of apples seems to point directly to the story of The Judgment of Paris, while it is actually entitled The Amorous Shepherd. Schapiro points to the details in the scene which direct it away from Paris’s Judgment, in the posturing of the subjects, the fact that there is more than one apple that the man is offering, and a fourth woman standing away from the rest of the group. Why would Cezanne paint a familiar story in such a way? Schapiro seems to think that it is merely a charming pastoral scene. I wonder, however, why the apples then? And why is the man depicted only offering them to one girl? I think that Cezanne meant us as the observer to immediately think of Paris, but then brought it to a different, more innocent level with the various details that make it diverge from the classic myth. In Cezanne’s youth, “a gift of apples had indeed been a sign of love” (169). This then makes the apples the male is offering to the girl have an entirely different meaning, he is offering her a token of his love, rather than a token saying that he thinks her most beautiful of all. However, an alternate definition of fruit holds that “Through its attractive body, beautiful in color, texture and form, by its appeal to all the senses and promise of physical pleasure, the fruit is a natural analogue of ripe human beauty” (170). This definition is much more analogous to a Judgment of Paris representation than that of an innocent pastoral scene. As often is the case, the painter has left his subject open to individual interpretation.
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon shocked many of its viewers with its boldness and distinctively disturbing qualities. A fellow contemporary of Picasso’s, Braque, upon first viewing the piece said “it’s as though you wanted to make us eat tow or drink kerosene” (198). A journalist proclaimed “[Picasso’s] canvases fairly reek with the insolence of youth; they outrage nature, tradition, decency. They are abominable” (199). Apparently, this work was met with some controversy. The way Picasso portrayed the women in this painting is quite unique. The two women on the right have what appear to be inhuman faces: the woman on the far right has green tints and shading that look grotesque, while the woman next to her has distorted apelike features and blue shading. These and other features, such as the harsh angular lines of the bodies, contribute to the intensity and oddity of the piece. However the most shocking element, in my opinion, is the intense stares of the women directed at the viewer. Cox explains that the original sketch of the piece had two men in the picture and the women were directing their gazes at him, but he then changed his mind: “Picasso effected a major transformation by eliminating the male characters and turning the whole focus of the image outwards” (194). The overall effect of all of these elements definitely captures the attention, in a rather disturbing and controversial way: “The jarring heterodoxy of the painting…appears as if a deliberate attempt to heighten the shock effect of the work – to attain an appropriate sense of discord…Such malformation was a way of marking out resistance to even the most advanced canons of beauty, and at the same time was made a powerful sign of the artist’s creative will” (196). From this, it seems to me that Picasso himself wanted to convey this effect of ‘discord’, and if that was the case, he certainly pulled it off with flair.
I was intrigued by “The Apples of Cézanne”. I never realized how much knowing the history of an artist could contribute to one’s analysis of a painting. Had I first viewed Cézanne’s paintings, without reading and learning a little bit about his history with apples, my perception of the true meanings of his artwork would have very well been distorted. I never would have made the connection of apples and love, apples and friendships, nor apples and erotic lust. I found the discovery of Cézanne’s symbolism of apples quite thrilling, as his painting served as something like a code for his hidden/built-up emotions. Furthermore, I enjoyed the way in which apples served as a continuous motif throughout his path as an artist.
ReplyDeleteI loved how apples firmly stood as symbolism and metaphors within his paintings in order to radiated his lustful temptations. I believe Cézanne’s portrayal of nude woman and clothed men was a perfectly healthy method of expressing his erotic desires. I came to understand that he originally drew a line between genders (not portraying them in the same image), yet grew to emerge them farther down his artistic path. I also came to understand that Cézanne was shy and fearful of women. From my understanding, there are two types of love—idealism and realism. Idealism was that of platonic love, love with no physical desire. On the other hand, there was realism, where physical desire thrived. I find it ironic that Cezanne was moved to Paris with a career of freedom and uninhibited sex, yet remained shy, continued to have an obsessed sexual imagination, and soon changed his method of painting.
When people change things about themselves, they tend to take a little bit of the past with them. I found it interesting how as Cezanne changed his ways of painting, there was no middle ground. Once e stopped painting portraits of naked woman that portrayed his feelings and fancies, he began to paint violent and/or constrained images of females. I was surprised when Schapiro declared that Cezanne sexual themes had completely disappeared.
I appreciated how as Cezanne’s sexual theme disappeared, still-life images of apples continued to exist (though there may have be a shift in the meaning). I was amazed by the shift in Cézanne’s artwork from direct expression to symbolic expression, with the devoted obsession to his apples.
As I stated at the beginning of this history of art course, I have no immediate background to art. In this way, I found it impressive that I was able to identify aspects used in literature, such as the THEME of erotic desire and the MOTIF of apples, in art.
In reading the beginning of “The Wild Men of Paris”, I was able to make a direct connection between Cubism/Picasso and Cézanne. I found that each form of art originated as a base of sexual desire; in addition, naked women and fruit was a common thread.
I enjoyed looking at the Cubism artwork (from “The Wild Men of Paris” section) because it appeared to me exactly as describe in the text: playful, sexual (because of the nude women), distorted, and unsettling. Furthermore, much of it was abstract, which allows the viewer (me) to create my own judgments and observations in relation to the work.
Brendan Cronshaw
ReplyDeleteResponse 4
2.2.09
Cézanne’s still-life paintings, the meaning behind them, and his motives are really brought to light in Schapiro’s section on modern art in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. After seeing a few of Cézanne’s previous paintings including the Woman in Blue, his paintings struck me as slightly more obscure and abstract in both subject and motive, however Schapiro clarifies much of this and again allows us to see and understand the concepts behind modern art.
What struck me as very fascinating in Cézanne’s still-lifes is the amount of fruit, more specifically apples, which he paints. And looking more closely at some of them we can see that they are in fact not exact, perfect mirror images of apples, but rather his own version of the fruit, will differing strokes, colors, and tones. What also got my attention was the continual technique of making the painting look flat, although not completely so, but somewhere between flat and three-dimensional. Building off of the idea that fruit is sensuous, it is interesting to witness Cézanne’s shift from painting nudes, to painting fruit.
According to Schapiro, “Cézanne’s pictures of the nudes show that he could not convey his feeling for women without anxiety” (p173), which details quite a bit about he felt not only about the subject, but also about himself and his own personality. But what is even more striking is his realization that painting nudes and using them as “objective field[s] of colors and shapes” (p176) was not working because he could not be fully detached from them. This was apparent in that many of his paintings of nudes “he is most often constrained or violent. There is for him no middle ground of simple enjoyment” (p173). Cézanne realizes that he can use apples to represent sensuality and sometimes-sexual themes and ideas, and not feel emotionally attached to his subjects. As Schapiro points out clearly, “The painting of apples may also be regarded as a deliberately chosen means of emotional detachment and self-control; the fruit provided at the same time an objective field of colors and shapes with an apparent sensuous richness” (p176).
To me it was interesting to see that women seemed to outright scare Cézanne and make him nervous and uncomfortable and thus had to find another subject, another way, to get his point across and accomplish his goals, without having to paint nudes. And to find such a solution in apples and fruit is fascinating, as it never really occurred to me that these things could be sensuous. The apples basically provide him with a blank canvas so to speak, allowing him to try out all kinds of tones, colors, mixing, and other techniques, and concurrently depict still-lifes as well as allusions and representations.
However, at the same time, it seems that many of his still-lifes lack such allusions as were apparent in previous works of nudes, and nudes with apples and fruit. Looking at some of his paintings it is hard to make out allusions and themes, and rather all I really see is him trying new things out and using the apples as ways to refine technique and other ideas. Although apples may have been stand-ins for nudes originally, they don’t seem to hold that position any more.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteFelby Chen
ReplyDeleteHA R1B
Section 6
Sigmund Freud’s excerpt from “On Dreams” discusses the process through which dreams are processed, as well as the relationship between dreams and its sexual origins.
According to Freud, dreams are processed through four steps: condensation, displacement, pictorial arrangement of the psychical material, and interpretative revision. While people are first “unable to discover or recognize the dream-thoughts in the dream-context” due to the “disconnected fragments of visual images, speeches and even bits of unmodified thoughts”, people’s minds slowly adapt to these scattered bits and pieces and bring it together through a series of transformations. A logical connection is eventually created by “combining the whole material into a single situation”, since the mind would automatically try to make sense of the dream right away. Dreams are often interpreted symbolically as references to impacting experiences in one’s life, but sometimes, one’s dreams’ is “accompanied by its contradictory counterpart”, which confuses the individual when trying to interpret a dream. After all, one becomes confused as to which part of the dream is conveying a message and which part of the dream is there in opposition. Interpretative revision then comes into play. The mind calculates every aspect of the dream and comes to the conclusion that the other versions of the dream may be “modified versions of scenes” that “directly reveal the dream’s actual nucleus, distorted by an admixture of other material”. Every part of a dream is important, in any case.
Freud furthermore discusses how these dreams originate from humankind’s need for sex. He believes that “there is a causal connection between the obscurity of the dream-content and the state of repression of certain dream-thoughts”, as if the dreams had some sort of motives behind them. Dreams may not always directly portray what an individual is thinking about/worried about/fantasizing about, but “from the results of dream-interpretation most of the dreams of adults are traced back by analysis to erotic wishes”. After all, many symbols in dreams can be interpreted sexually, as Freud points out that “dream-symbols serve to represent persons, parts of the body and activities invested with erotic interest”. Such examples include the genitals being represented by sharp, long, or stiff objects such as a stick or long weapon, and the uterus being represented by carriages or boxes. Freud’s analysis does make sense, though, since humans cannot live without sex, and therefore may subconsciously be thinking about sexual interactions constantly, which the dreams subtly portray through “hints, allusions, and similar forms of indirect representation” as mentioned previously.
Freud ultimately suggests that sex is incorporated in dreams, even if the mind may need to go through a series of processes to fully interpret dreams.
As we look at Cox’s article and the development of Cubism through Picasso and Braque, there is an almost overwhelming feeling that what they were trying to achieve through art was exactly what Manet and Monet were trying to achieve in their art: the ability to look at the world around us and not draw what we think we see, but draw what we really see.
ReplyDeleteAs we look at the paintings by Picasso and Braque, everything is broken down into a system of surfaces whose system of ordering is not apparent. It’s a matter of observation of people, of objects and rather than accepting it as a three dimensional person or object, looking at all the dimensions that encapsulate that person or object. Looking at it, it is only our minds that perceive and object as three-dimensional. There is nothing in the world that tells us that looking at a box is a three-dimensional object. We piece together than one surface is connected to another resembling a box, which from our physical world experience we know it is 3D. Yet, by simply looking at the surfaces of the box and not letting our minds take over, we can see the shadows within the surface, the transparency, the reflectivity, all delicate features that can only exist when we truly see a surface as just a surface and nothing else.
Going back to what I said earlier, I find it peculiar as to trying to decipher the decisions that they make while painting. Looking at Woman in an Armchair, the depth of the woman’s face and her body are exemplified in the observations of surfaces, of folds that fold upon themselves and create rigid dimensions. However, there does not seem to be a rigid system that Picasso applies to creating the Cubistic painting. The folds themselves have no pattern among them, combing in random places and ending in random places, with no rulebook applied. Shadows are drawn going in opposite directions, going left or right, going upwards or downwards. However, this almost completely goes with an ideology of painting what one sees, not what one perceives. Shadows don’t need to make sense; planes don’t need to match because we believe they have to. The planes exist in and of themselves and we can either accept Picasso’s painting for illustrating what he saw, or reject it and refuse that a woman in an armchair could ever look like that.
Cézanne
ReplyDeleteMeyer Schapiro, through his essay “The Apples of Cézanne, An Essay on the Meaning of Still-life”, explores Cezanne's choice of use of still life, and delves into the painters history for possible answers to motives. An aspect of the essay that I thought was fairly irritating was the fact that the author includes many quotes by artists and Emile Zola, who was a novelist and art critic as well as a friend to Cezanne, in the native language without the english translation. I would probably find this a positive aspect, if only I spoke the language; instead it is frustrating to see the analysis without the translated text. The main question of his essay, expressed in the title, is why paint still life? He provides several answers to this question using Cezanne as his literary model. He lays the essay out starting with Cezanne as a young painter, and finishes with a mature artist.
Emile Zola had been a friend of Cezanne since the painter's early days. “His letters, especially of his youth, contain many classical allusions,”(2) and “[spent] days on the mountain-tops reading Virgil and gazing at the sky.” One of the most well known classical works is that of Genesis in the Bible. In the beginning, God created the garden of Eden, in which lived Adam and Eve. After eating the apple from the tree of knowledge, Adam and Eve were cast out of paradise. It is no surprise to me that Cezanne's most painted inanimate object is an apple. Also, Zola began their friendship by offering a basket of apples. These are only superficial reasons for his determination in painting still life.
Cezanne's The Amorous Shepard features a man holding an armful of apples. He is offering the apples to three nude women, with one behind him, totaling four women in total. Schapiro makes the claim that “Through its attractive body, beautiful in color, texture and form, by its appeal to all the sense and promise of physical pleasure, the fruit is a natural analogue of ripe human beauty.”(6) I can make the connection that as a fruit can look beautiful and ripe, so, in a crude sense, can a person. The fact that in his earlier works, the men were clothed while the woman were nude is indicative of the sexual frustration that Schapiro mentions. “From the obsessed imagination of the unwilling chaste artist came paintings of a crude sensuality, even of rape, orgy and murder.”(6) Because of his introverted nature, his focuses aimed at nature rather than humanity. Not to say he was not interested in man, but he had a higher than most focus on still life.
To continue talking about apples, Schapiro says “... the explanation of the still-life as a displaced sexual interest is to miss the significance of still-life in general as well as important meanings of the objects of the manifest plane.” “the painting of apples may also be regarded as a deliberately chosen means of emotional detachment and self-control; the fruit provided at the same time an objective field of colors and shapes...”(13) I find it interesting that Cezanne includes his frustrated sexual tensions in his choice of subject. His self-control is but one aspect in his subject choice, as are his inclination to the varied gradients. The apples have so many different possible meanings through Cezanne's past that claiming any one was more responsible than the other would be negligence.
Schapiro also talks about how “still-life... calls out a response to an implied human presence.”(23) Meaning that the pictures point to musicians, dinners or banquets, writers, or scholars. However Cezanne's apples are untouched. They are de-vined, but not more than that. “They are never set as for a meal; the fruit is rarely if ever cut or peeled”(25). What is he trying to say? Maybe he is alluding to the previous meanings the apple holds for Cezanne, as defined by his childhood and past. In Self-portrait and Apple Cezanne places himself as just as much a focus as the apple. Who knows why.
Danielle Lee
ReplyDelete2/2/09
Throughout my years of taking art classes, I always thought of still life as a tedious lesson designed to shape our technical skills. I thought that the sphere, apple or blanket placed on the table in front of us only served the purpose of helping us students understand how to capture light, texture and dimensions. I found Meyer Schapiro’s, “The Apples of Cezanne” extremely interesting because he says that still life offers much more than a means of practicing composition. Schapiro begins by focusing on Cezanne’s use of apples in “The Amorous Shepherd,” but as he begins to question the meaning behind these apples he explores the depth that still life can offer to an artist and his artwork.
Schapiro raises the questions, “what was the purpose of the apples?” Or “what do they mean?” He proceeds to answer this through a series of different and all possible answers. He mentions that Cezanne could have used apples to balance the moodiness, passion, and sexual urges in his paintings with an “objective field of colors and shapes (13).” I found this to be very interesting because I believe that with a still life object such as an apple, it is hard to convey it into something sexual, dark or moody. Schapiro writes that still life is a calming and redemptive element of a painting because it requires “a means of self-discipline and concentration (20).” I wondered how an object could calm or negate the desires or impulsive urges of a painting and Schapiro answered my question. He writes that still-life engages the painter in a way that will require a patient, focused and steady observation that “discloses new and elusive aspects of the stable object (20).” By exploring why Cezanne chose to focus on apples or what they mean to him, Schapiro brought light to broad reasons as why artists instill still life into their artwork. Sometimes it is to lessen the passions or impulsivities of their artwork.
Schapiro writes that still life is another genre, similar to landscape, that is in a realm outside of art. Still life, as explained by Schapiro “are subordinate to man as elements of use, manipulation and enjoyment these objects…owe their presence and place to a human action, a purpose (19).” I found this observation to be interesting because it’s true. The items placed out as models are not set out to be consumed, played with or used by the humans. They are set out so that artists can manipulate them through art. Artists utilize still life objects as a way of conveying their sense of power over them.
I really enjoyed this reading because it offered a completely different outlook on a subject matter I’ve almost entirely ignored. I always thought still life only existed to help students learn how to shade a sphere or draw the folds of a blanket, but now I know that still life objects exist for so many different reasons. Cezanne, employed apples in his painting either as a recollection of a childhood memory or a way of balancing out his passions and desires. Schapiro informs readers that still-life objects serve artists as methods of manipulation. The artist holds authority and control over the objects he employs in his artwork. I’ve obtained an entirely different outlook on still-life and now understand that it can be placed in paintings without appearing to be only technical.
Response 4
ReplyDeleteFebruary 1, 2009
Kelly Sun
Before reading this article, all I knew about Cezanne was that he did a lot of paintings with apples. With this knowledge, I was not surprised when I saw that the title of the article was “The Apples of Cezanne.” What surprised me while reading Schapiro’s article was that there is in fact a meaning behind the apple in Cezanne’s paintings. Furthermore, Schapiro addresses the meaning of still life and I quickly found that Cezanne’s paintings contradict the preconceived notions I had about still life.
Originally, I thought artists who painted still life simply wanted the easy way out. After all, I considered objects like fruits and vegetables to be the easiest things to paint since they do not move and they all relatively look the same. An apple is an apple; an orange is an orange. To me, fruits lacked the diversity and uniqueness I found in the human figure and face. Therefore, I was eager to find out more about whether there is more depth to scenes of carefully arranged fruits and inanimate objects. It turns out that my notion towards still life is one that many others hold. Schapiro brings up how still life painters have always had to fight the “prejudice that their art is of a lower order because of the intrinsic inferiority of its objects” (21).
While the apple itself may be an inferior object because it is inanimate and is very static compared to the human form, it still has potential for importance. In still life works, the apple, combined with an assortment of over objects like bottles or other fruits, can exhibit a “complex of qualities” (22). For instance, a still life painting of a grand dining table filled with baskets of fruits, mounds of meat on plates, and heaps of vegetables and bread tells of the scene of a magnificent feast. Or, a messy desk covered with books, pens, and papers strewn all about could tell of the life of a dedicated student. The still life scene can tell just as much, if not more, than the average portrait would about the life of an individual.
Schapiro brings up in particular the importance of the apple in Cezanne’s works. Cezanne highly valued the apple; he adored the asymmetry of it and thought the apple symbolized love or affection. This appreciation for the apple caused him to make them the highlights of many of his paintings. Apples became his main instrument for release. Cezanne’s specific dedication to still life and apples were a result of his introvert personality. He found still life to be the perfect release for tensions, frustrations, and emotions in his life. Still life became the sufficient means by which he made statements about society and the world.
After reading “The Apples of Cezanne,” I began to develop an appreciation for still life paintings. Instead of seeing them as means for painters to develop their skills and understanding of painting before moving on to more “challenging” subjects, I am beginning to see that the still life is not at all inferior to the human figure. Cezanne proves how the arrangement of fruits can in fact exhibit qualities of the real world and of human beings and how they can be dynamic representations of himself.
Christine Chou
ReplyDeleteCox’s article on Cubism helped me to better understand an art movement that otherwise always left me feeling confused. The article traced the development of Cubism through the years and its various stages. The figure of Braque was a sort of revelation. Picasso is of course a well-known artist, but in the formation of the Cubist style, Braque also played a foundational role – there are some art historians who even argue that Braque is the one who should get most of the credit. Anyway, the nature of the collaboration between the two artists was interesting to read about, and then especially to see how aligned they were in their artistic theories. For example, looking at Picasso’s “Cottage and Trees” and Braque’s “Houses at L’Estaque,” they have many similarities. Cox states that these two paintings reveal “an uncanny sense of common purpose between two artists working in different parts of France” (105). Both painted in 1908, these works were done before the start of their artistic collaboration; they had a similar subject matter (houses and trees), a surface constructed of geometric planes, and odd spatial relationships – comparing these two paintings, it’s easy to see why Braque and Picasso were drawn toward working together.
Cubism, for me, is still difficult to look at – maybe because some of it looks so agitated, or some of it looks like an assortment of jagged shapes? But it strikes me as a relentlessly modern art in the way it attempts to completely reject the past and all its ideals. Braque stated his thoughts against the Renaissance tradition: “The hard-and-fast rules of perspective which it succeeded in imposing on art were a ghastly mistake which it has taken four centuries to redress...Scientific perspective is nothing but eye-fooling illusionism; it is simply a trick – a bad trick.” Reading Braque’s quote actually made me a little sad, because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Renaissance art or that it’s trying to trick you into believing something appallingly false, but I guess the rejection of this tradition is the natural progression of things after 400 years of proper perspectival art, where people will begin to want to try something new. Young artists like Braque and Picasso and the members of the avant-garde didn’t want to be beholden to the past, but wanted to create something that was uniquely theirs. Braque, in creating his lost painting, “Woman,” infused his work with transcendent ideals about the “absolute world” and “absolute form.” Though Plato believed that this perfect, true realm was unreachable through artistic depictions (which would always fall short), Braque in his Cubist method found a way to represent a woman “where no gap could exist between seeing and knowing.” Cubism’s aim was to paint a truer vision of the world, one where optical illusions didn’t figure into artistic representation. It seemed like a youthful and ambitious project, characteristic of a lot of modern art movements.
The readings this week show an evolution in art from Cezanne to Picasso and Braque. I really appreciated the article on Freud because it both tied the previous two articles together, as well as brought new meaning to the symbols and representation discussed.
ReplyDeleteIn Schapiro’s “The Apples of Cezanne”, we see Cezanne as a very sexually deprived and frustrated artist. This is especially seen in his “Pastoral”, because a clothed man is seen picnicking with a nude woman in such a way that he “de-sacralized the female nude.”(8) Schapiro argues that there is greater evidence for Cezanne’s sexual repression in his still lifes, as well as in his repeated use of the apple image. I don’t believe Schapiro adequately resolved the opposing views of the reoccurrence of the apple. Lionello Venturi bluntly counter’s Schapiro’s argument by claiming there is no underlying significance to Cezanne’s apples. (16) This explanation is not entirely refuted by Schapiro, but at the same time the opposing views are not mutually exclusive. In other words, there can be a number of motivations for Cezanne’s utilization of the apple, but I believe Schapiro neglects this middle ground. Really, this is all speculation and only Cezanne knows the answer. But at the same time, the subject is relevant, because it offers insight into psyche of the creator and can deepen our understanding of his works. This also applies to Schapiro’s view of Cezanne’s “prolonged dwelling with still-life.”(27) After reading Freud’s passage it becomes very clear that Schapiro has adopted a Freudian perspective towards Cezanne. Of course, I think Freud would be much more extreme in his interpretations of sexual representations. I say this because he advocates a completely arbitrary method of assigning sexual symbolism in dream analysis.
Modern art taken out of context may seem to lack certain artistic qualities. Schapiro’s article contains a quote that can partially reconcile this. Here Baudelaire speaks negatively of, “an artisan temperament of indifference to the great themes of poetry and history while concerned with painting as purely an art of the skilled hand and the eye.”(22) This thought merges nicely with Cox’s article and it adds justification for the works of Picasso and Braque. Here Cox sheds insight into the Cubist view of art. I’ve gathered that this movement contrasts with impressionism in that it stresses the a priori as the basis for truth. The goal was to represent life free from visual perspective, and instead depict images as they are mentally pictured. Olivier Hourcade states: “When he draws an ellipse, therefore, he is not sincere, he is making a concession to the lies of optics and perspective, he is telling a deliberate lie. [The Cubist] on the contrary will try to show things in their sensible truth.” (116) On the other hand, Cubism seems to share the two-dimensionality of impressionism. This is seen in Braque’s argument for the technique of fully exposing all aspects of a painting, as opposed to the concealing and illusory affects of realism. (111) Freud’s thoughts on dreams also apply to cubist art as Cox depicts it. Cubism seeks to represent image as seen by the artist’s conscious and unconscious mind, as opposed to images on retinas. This is also the subject of Freud’s research.
This week’s readings have emphasized the symbol in representation and the complexity with which it can be interpreted. Although it seems farfetched I enjoyed the introduction of the sexual and unconscious allusions made by Cezanne, Picasso, Braque, and Freud.
I have always enjoyed the art of Pablo Picasso, but that is not to say that I have understood it. The incredibly abstract forms and jagged geometry gained new meaning upon reading Cox’s “The Wild Men of Paris?” This essay clarified the ideology behind the cubist movement to me, and allowed to finally view Picasso’s paintings from a perspective of understanding rather than confusion.
ReplyDeleteIn viewing one of my favorite works by Picasso, Houses on the Hill, the essay especially helped my analysis. I was easily able to pick up on the obvious difference between this work and that of Braque—the stark contrast between foreground and background that Cox mentions. In addition, I instantly observed how Picasso has effectively used his common simple geometry to portray a scene of clarity that remains quite stirring.
I also found it intriguing how Cox approached the infamous Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, especially in stating that it is not really cubist, but rather a precursor. I have always thought of this piece as being the ideal example of cubism. After reading this, I realized that I was starkly mistaken. I found it very interesting considering how this artwork is in fact different from other Picasso works, and as I read on and saw other examples of his work, the discrepancies became vividly clear. As Cox mentions, “almost nothing of the subject, scale, colour, form, or mood of this painting…survives into Picasso’s cubism proper. (193)”
As a whole, the Cox essay clarified many aspects of cubism for me and helped me further understand this incredibly complex art form. With that said, I still concluded the reading feeling as though I had a framework for understanding cubism, but not a complete definition. This left me wondering just what separates cubism from other modern movements that appear quite similar, namely forms of abstract art. It would be interesting to see Cox directly compare and contrast Picasso and Braque to a non-cubist piece of work that appears similar, much in the way that he analyzes Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.