Bathers FWN 947 1890 60 cm x 81 Museum D’Orsay, Paris
“The task of genius ought to be to show the peaceful harmony of all things, striding forth into the open, all in step, their desires the same” Paul Cezanne
This quote of Cezanne reminds me of the first chapter of one of the earliest books on the Tao, entitled “Rambling without a destination”. It’s meaning: if you travel your journey with an open heart, then whatever you meet, can contribute to your journey creatively, as you go along. If you are in touch with your deepest self, and in harmony with your surroundings, then you will know which way to go: your destination will, at each point, emerge.
“Socialist Utopias”, writes Hajo Duchting, from Dusseldorf, (in his beautifully illustrated book on Cezanne: the very first one I ever bought!) “opened up new realms of expectation through the hopes of societal change which they held out.” No group of workers more than coal miners made better use of the 1884 Act legalizing the right to gather in ‘Associations’: more than 50% unionization was achieved very quickly, and higher in specific heavy mining areas like the Loire. The miners soon realized that the defense of their gains involved activity on a wider, national level. Their concerns were not just about wages, hours and conditions but supporting cooperative stores, developing lay schools, having civil affordable funerals, and electing radical municipalities. Yet, 60% of French workers still worked in units of under ten people; despite the Industrial Revolution, in France, engineering, building and furniture-making still required skilled men – only half of the furniture-makers in Paris worked in mechanized factories in the 1890’s (it was before IKEA!). But, unionized or not, everyone could sense the energy of change around them, directly affected or not, supportive or not – everybody felt it!
Cezanne’s mother – Elizabeth Aubert – was born in 1814 and was in her mid-seventies at this time. Her husband, Cezanne’s autocratic father, had passed away, and she lived in the family home with her two daughters, while Cezanne worked downstairs in his own room where he had all his paint stuff. He and his mother were kindred souls: he was her favourite child. As she grew more elderly, he it was who would arrange a carriage, and take her out for the day. One of their best summer day’s out was down by the river Arc, just a couple of kilometers directly south. It was a popular place, and there was lots to occupy her afternoon out, while Cezanne set up his easel. On this particular day, a bunch of young soldiers had come for an afternoon’s swim. It reminded Cezanne of the lazy hazy days in his youth, when he, Zola, Baille and the crew would ramble without a destination, wandering along the Arc riverbank, swimming, fishing, cooking, lying under a great pine…dreaming of changing the world!
Zola had indeed become a famous writer – a chronicler of this new era of change. His series of novels about the fortunes of a family facing both the opportunity and the threat of this new industrial age had been extremely successful far and wide, and in no small measure because he told it like it is: creative, challenging and energizing, but brutal, violent and degrading. By presenting stories of the real life of ordinary people, Zola developed his ‘naturalist’ philosophy: an attempt to examine the interplay of the squalid aspects of the human environment and the seamy side of human nature with the unshakable belief in the moral progress of humanity.
So, it was not just Marx and comrades who hoped for something new and had a new philosophy to go with it! There were lots around at the time: Zola’s naturalism, Marx’s Manifesto, Durkheim’s sociology of upheaval and normlessness, Freud’s unconscious urges, and Darwin’s Survival of the fittest, - not to mention the Pope’s Doctrine of Infallibility! The question, though, seemed pretty much the same from whatever angle: was humanity making progress or going backwards? The answer provided, from whatever angle, seemed to hinge on a choice between a deterministic view of history or one affirming individual freedom!
Duchting concludes his piece: “They” (the bathers) “are timeless archetypes of non-historical harmony with all-powerful Nature”; (I wonder what he makes of that statement now, made when he was in his forties, now that he’s in his seventies). Other commentators point out that the figure with the white towel draped over his arm is very similar to the antique marble statue in the Louvre “The Roman Orator”, which Cezanne copied ten times when younger! Yet others explore the number of bathers in all Cezanne’s bather-scenes in the hope of discovering a hidden meaning in the numbers, or in the stance of each bather, and so on. Even others find something about Cezanne’s sexuality in the fact that this appears to be one of his last paintings of male bathers. More interestingly is the overall shape within which Cezanne frames the figures of the painting: a ‘tympanum’ is a semi-circular indented decorative arch over a doorway. And yes, you could trace that shape, up and over the top of the front four guys.
For me, I like it – it’s carefree and busy, energetic and playful: a lazy Sunday afternoon – no time to worry, close your eyes and drift away. Maybe, Cezanne – just out for the day with his old mum, painted as many of the young soldiers into this composition as he could, and just let it emerge…
Rambling without a destination:
Cezanne:
The peaceful harmony of all things,
striding forth into the open
The Tao:
The intentional experience of
living in harmony with one’s own deepest inner feelings and
with one’s embodied existence
in human society and on our earth.
Let’s go a-rambling!
(Tao quote from Jeremy Dent’s The Patterning Instinct)