A sugar bowl manifesto (FWN 706, 1865-6)

On my second visit to the Cezanne Exhibition at the Tate Modern, my heart danced with this ‘sculpture in paint’: it’s Cezanne’s manifesto, and he gave it to his soul mate Emile Zola, who kept it till he passed away.

Cezanne is not interested in the veneer of respectability where there is no sign of the paint itself, where there is no hint of a brushstroke, where the whole painting is delicately finished; where the quality of the painting derives purely from its likeness to an object;  where the less one sees and the more that is hidden of the creativity of the painter applying the paint, the nearer it comes to the perfect ideal;  where the finished effect is divorced from its causality. Cezanne paints avec couillarde!

The medium of a painting becomes an integral part of the painting, not hidden but acknowledged. Indeed, the modern artist enhances the intrinsic structure of the medium, so as to include it within the harmony that will develop. The artistic application of coloured pigment suspended in linseed oil onto the warp and weft of hemp stretched over a wooden frame is on view for all to engage with.

‘Painting’ for Cezanne is not the production of a representation of objects, but a dance of paint and painter, theme and viewer: it is an event!

‘Cezanne was perhaps the first person in history to realize the necessity for the manner in which the paint is handled…for the pictorial structure….1866 is the beginning of Modern Art’, Lawrence Gowling (1988)

Spirals of inspiration (FWN 83, 1873-4)

I like to imagine evolutionary development as lots of spirals of inspiration twisting through feed-back loops, around and on, more and more inclusively dynamic; the trick is to leap on one near-by – but you have to be ready, and just spontaneously jump into it! As I stand before this painting of ‘Auvers’ painted in 1873 with the buildings of the village arranged in a swirl, on my fifth visit to the Cezanne Exhibition at the Tate Modern in London, I’m going to enjoy a particular spiral of inspiration that still makes me smile: probably because I’m still in it!

This spiral starts with Camille Pissarro, born ten years before Cezanne, in the Caribbean Island of St Thomas; by the time the two met in Paris, Pissarro had been around the world, and he had lived! Cezanne had only just left Aix for the first time. “The Louvre will burn, museums and antiquities will disappear and…from the ashes of the old civilization a new art will arise.” Pissarro’s talk on their walks together was intoxicating.

It’s a good hour’s walk along the river Oise from Pontoise, where Pissarro lived with his wife Julie and family of seven children in a rambling house with a large vegetable plot, to Auvers-sur-Oise, where Dr Gachet lived. The printing press was at Dr Gachet’s house. They would walk there and print off Pissarro’s radical leaflets. The three would go into Paris – Pissarro to hand out the leaflets, Dr Gachet to tend to the poor of the slums of Paris, and Cezanne to go to the Louvre to examine a work suggested by Pissarro for discussion later. Often staying for the night, Cezanne felt like he was part of the Pissarro household.

In those few years of simplicity and activism, Cezanne found inspiration for art and life from “the humble and colossal Pissarro”: “he was a bit like God!” Cezanne would muse later in life. (cf Alex Danchev: Cezanne, A Life, a wonderful biography by one who has sadly passed away).

After Cezanne passed away, a young poet was fascinated by the works in the Cezanne retrospective of 1907: “I’m still going to the Cezanne Room” he wrote to his wife on the tenth day: “I sense this is somehow useful for me..I remember the puzzlement and insecurity of my first confrontation with (Cezanne’s) work...and suddenly, one has the right eyes”.  Rilke recorded his thoughts and feelings in letters and poems to his wife: “Paris, October 9th 1907. Today I wanted to tell you a little about Cezanne…” Rilke wrote that Paul Cezanne had now become his ‘supreme example’, and through-out Rilke’s life he would “follow Cezanne’s traces everywhere”. Of Cezanne’s paintings, Rilke would say: “It's as if every part were aware of all the others – it participates that much.” The spiral of inspiration continues.

“To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe – to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it – is a wonder beyond words.” So writes Joanna Macy, author and teacher, scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking and Deep Ecology. Joanna began her journey with inspiration from Rilke’s poems; and wrote three volumes of translations and commentary on Rilke’s poetry. As the root teacher of The Work That Reconnects, Joanna has created a ground-breaking framework for personal and social change, as well as a powerful workshop methodology for its application.

And so, this spiral of inspiration came my way, and I’m so glad to have jumped into it!

speaking the truth defiantly (FWN 436, 1875)

“I shall be able to appreciate much better the dangers now threatening painting after seeing your attempts on its life!” – such were the words of the letter of self-invitation to Cezanne’s studio that Monsieur Gilbert, the Director of the Museum of Aix-en-Provence, sent to his former student Paul Cezanne, intrigued by the press coverage of the First Impressionist Exhibition of 1874. After all, this was the young man, who had, fifteen years ago in 1860 at the age of twenty-one, so faithfully copied Felix Nicholas Frillie ‘Kiss of the Muse’ that it was hard to distinguish the Master’s work and the young man’s copy. Monsieur Gilbert had proffered advice not to go to Paris, but his young student had not taken heed. It is not always easy for young people from the edge of the civilized world to express their truth; for, in the words of a philosopher: ‘…truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident’.

I stand before this ‘self-portrait, with a pink background’ in the Cezanne Exhibition of the Tate Modern in London; and I acknowledge the stage out of which Cezanne set brush to canvass!

Out of that ridicule, Cezanne painted this self-portrait in 1875. It is a strong, defiant act, done without deference or compromise, as was Cezanne’s way; but, maybe more importantly, with anger but without violence. Cezanne uses the power of his brush, oils and canvass to create something blunt and rough, cranium encased and chaotically coloured. When Rilke saw this portrait, he said he thought Cezanne hammered his own skull from the inside out onto the canvass, and that Cezanne portrays himself as honestly as one dog looking at another.

Standing side by side with the self-portrait, that defiance makes me stand a little taller, for I too have in my younger days tried to express my own truth defiantly.

“We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.” Greta Thunberg.

It is not always easy for young people from the edge of the civilized world to speak of truth defiantly.

different view-points (FWN 860, 1893)

I didn’t get passed this, the first painting in the Cezanne Exhibition now open at the Tate Modern in London – it stopped me in my tracks! Full intensity colours, a vibrancy that’s in your face, and beckons you to stop and engage!

And I smiled, for I knew; as it all came flooding back: we have so much in common deep within.

The far side of the table is on three levels, three different viewpoints; the near side is on two – but it looks fine! For so many years, thousands, we have looked for truth in the Absolute; but in reality, Absolute Truth was only ever a justification for domination.

Since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s, right through, and still now to today, the Great Work of our era has been to try to create truth-fulness: where different viewpoints and perspectives can be integrated in harmony.

Cezanne’s art foreshadows the values of our own era; that’s why his paintings connect with us so…

little touch of magic (FWN 124, 1879)

A little touch of magic out of the blue: every now and again, a seemingly random little touch of magic suddenly appears out of the blue. It’s so unusual that we often dismiss it, in the belief that it will retreat back into the unconscious from whence it came, and leave us to get on with the same old life that we are familiar with! But what if it’s not from the unconscious, but from the heart!

In out of the way places of the heart
where your thoughts never think to wander
this beginning has been quietly forming
waiting until you were ready to emerge.

How many times have I been drawn to have a good look at the painting of ‘The Francois Zola Dam’ by Cezanne as I left it for a later day’s visit: to be honest, I’ve never known what to make of it – it’s so random amongst his impressionist paintings. It’s in the room before the magnificent Impressionist landscapes of L’Estaque coast and Provençale countryside, here, in the Cezanne Exhibition of the Tate Modern in London.

Cezanne painted it the year after the Third Impressionist Exhibition of 1877, in which he submitted a mighty twelve paintings. Cezanne had skipped the Second Impressionist Exhibition, so downhearted was he after the awful reviews and spiteful comments of the First Exhibition. It had been Monet who had persuaded Cezanne to return; Cezanne shared the large central exhibition room with Berthe Morisot, who faithfully exhibited in all but one of the Eight Impressionist Exhibitions. All three artists were slated by press and visitors: ‘dangerous revolutionaries!’ shouted one well-known wealthy banker, as he asked for his money back. No matter – Cezanne was recognized by his fellow artists, who dearly wanted him to remain one of the Impressionist Group. And he was happy with that.

But then after he had said his farewell to Emile Zola, his closest friend, and left Paris, he returned to paint in the familiar countryside around Aix-en-Provence. I like to think that he had gone for his usual early morning swim in the lake created by the dam that Emile Zola’s father had designed, with views across to the east of the mountain range that includes Mont Sainte-Victoire. Then he had set up easel and palette, and let brush and oil flow. And there, a little touch of magic came out of the blue.

The thing about little touches of magic is that they can be glimpses of a calling; the glimpse of a future way that is beckoning. It would take Cezanne a few years, and not a little turmoil, but he would leave his Impressionist oeuvre behind, and follow that one little touch of magic.

Nowadays, we know we can practice the art of magic. In the words of Otto Scharmer: we can ‘indeed have greatly enhanced direct access to the deeper sources of creativity and commitment, both as individuals and as communities…. It is one of our most hopeful sources of confidence that we can access a deeper presence, power, and purpose from within’.

‘Presencing’ (pre-sencing) is the developmental practice of making present where your future passion and inspiration beckons; it feels like a little touch of magic - and oh, what fullness awaits.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
and out you step onto new ground,
your eyes young again with energy and dream
a path of plenitude opening before you.

verses from John O’Donohue

Our Ancestors (FWN 292, 1892-4)

Millstone and Cistern in the undergrowth            FWN 292            1892-4        65.1 cm x 81           Barnes, Philadelphia

How magical to discover a secret place where our ancestors lived and worked, allowing us to wonder at the ingenuity of their craft: beholding how they integrated their survival with their environment in the circle of life; feeling the pull, the fanning, towards the light of a more complex existence; acknowledging the harmony of what is far away and what is near, in the exquisite tapestry of complementary hues.

Far from instilling terror, as Cezanne’s paintings did in his day, this painting delights!

This is the way that our ancestors had lived for many thousands of years: gathered around water and grain, millstone and well. Here in Provence, millstones were wrought from a rock called Pierre Meuliere, and were water-driven till the 1880’s. Within Cezanne’s depiction of this pre-industrial age, we feel no urge to return, no nostalgia; but rather, we do feel a certain connection and a certain curiosity.

“Grinding wheat is an art. One might think that extraction of flour consists simply of mashing cereals between two stones. It is in fact an activity that requires a great deal of ability on the part of the miller. The millstones must spin at a specific speed and they must maintain a specific distance of separation. They also require a regular dressing with a hammer to maintain their abrasiveness. Above all, not just any type of stone can be used. A stone that is too soft and supple will only tear the wheat to shreds and not extract the bran. On the other hand, a stone that is too hard turns the flour into a fine dust that is difficult to bake and contains oil that prevents its conservation.” La pierre à pain

Cezanne displays the scientific artistry of our ancestors, set out centrally for us to acknowledge and admire: the circle of the millstone, the rhomboid of the supporting stone, the ellipse of the well, and the triangle of the stone leaning on the well. These were their tools, abrasively fine-tuned and geometrically accurate – fit for purpose. This is the way humans had adapted their environment to enhance their existence – stone carved, water channeled, grain harvested, sun drenched within the circle of life. Their greater purpose, the great work of their era, was to teach us about the importance of belonging, as they gather around water and grain. We are the humans that owe our existence to these ancestors, to the harmony they created, and the treasure of belonging.

And this is the harmony within which Cezanne applies earth oxides and pigments onto canvass. The artistic compendiums and works gathered in the museums of Cezanne’s day are the cultural products of our ancestors’ ways. Cezanne has learned to understand them not as a prison but a liberation; something to include, but go beyond. Within the flow of this harmony, Cezanne transcends traditional artistic techniques. If we compare the photo below with Cezanne’s painting, we see how Cezanne has reversed the traditional technique for the expression of perspective: he makes the foreground smaller, and the background larger.

The same is true of Cezanne’s use of colour: he does not abide by the traditional method of fading a hue to signify depth – the traditional effect of modelling light by the gradation of colours, chiaroscuro, developed by the Renaissance Masters. This is how he was taught to paint at art-school: the inheritance from a by-gone age.  Below is the original of Felix Nicholas Frillie’s Kiss of the Muse in traditional artistic style and below that, Cezanne’s copy from 1860. At this time, Cezanne, aged 21, was copying the lesser well-known Masters, in the museum in Aix. He was studying law under orders from his father, but being taught to paint by Monsieur Gibert in the Ecole Gratuite de Dessin. Cezanne had won second prize for a portrait he painted the year before, but for some reason, Monsieur Gibert advised Cezanne’s father not to allow him to go to Paris. Zola was already in Paris and eager to “establish an artistic society to form a powerful union for the future, to provide mutual support, whatever positions might await us”. As we can see, Cezanne was already accomplished in traditional artistic methods.

Felix Nicholas Frillie         Kiss of the Muse               1857

Cezanne’s Kiss of the Muse, d’apres Frillie             FWN 572             1860                                                Museum Granet, Aix-en-Provence

It is one thing to acknowledge and include the heritage of a past era, but yet another to develop the creativity needed for the emergent future. It is this task that Cezanne sets about achieving in his mature phase. It is his belief in the value of this task that motivates Cezanne. It is one of the reasons why so much of his work seems unfinished. In the attunement of his sensations to the emergent spirit of the next era of human development lies the creativity of transcendence.

The central aspect of this creativity lies in Cezanne’s construction of a painting by means of brush strokes of different hues; and to this effect, Cezanne finds himself discovering different techniques that enable the realization of a painting. I’ll briefly mention a few: colour complimentaries; the use of tension; movement within the frame. Such techniques enable Cezanne to hold in harmony together, the parts and the whole of the painting: as he often said: “progressing all the parts all at once”.

Cezanne has developed a wonderful intuition for combining different coloured brushstrokes together in harmony. This intuition was confirmed when, in 1854, a chemist working in a weaving factory, sought to find an answer for his weavers who complained that when they put complementary coloured weave next to each other in the tapestry, the colours became extra bright; and, more annoyingly, when they put juxtaposed weave together, the colours seem to modify the hue. So it was that Chevreul eventually published his book: The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colours; and so was born “The Law of simultaneous contrast”.

Cezanne uses two pairs of complementary colours, grey-blue and orange, and reds and greens, working together in the exquisite tapestry of the foliage in the background. He places them not too close, but just close enough to heighten their brilliance. This has the effect of giving equal emphasis to each and every part (expressed as a hue) of the motif.

As we have mentioned, Cezanne reduces the size of the trees in the foreground, but this is not simply just to reverse traditional perspective, but also to create a controlled tension between the trees themselves. Cezanne makes all the trees virtually the same thickness through-out, but it is the spacing of the tree trunks and the treetops that creates the movement: like a fan, opening out towards the light source, which is to the right – at the verdant foliage of the leaning tree. This has the effect of suggesting a secret place – behind the fan of trees.

In the photo, there is a path leading towards the centre-right of the motif; Cezanne removes this path and replaces it with a frontal plane of bluish-grey, which cuts off the bottom-left hand corner of the painting. This encourages our eyes in a movement around from the bottom left corner, up the bluish-grey, in between the parallel trees and their gentle arch towards the centre, around the top of the foliage, and back down behind the fan of trees to the right. This brings what is far away and what is near together as parts of the whole.

To sum up: it is in replacing traditional painting techniques and using pure colour to construct form, that Cezanne can give equal emphasis to each and every part of the painting; the trick is to do this, while holding each and every part in harmony with the whole. Cezanne replaces the hierarchy of traditional painting with an active democracy of each and every part!

In his 1906 eulogy, Theodore Duret wrote of Cezanne: ‘This man whose art has seemed to resemble that of a Communard or an anarchist, whose work has instilled terror in directors of the (Ecole des) Beaux-Arts … never suspected he might be seen as an insurgent.’ Cezanne, I’m sure, did know that he painted in a new way. This new way was not simply because he followed his ‘sensations’, but also because those sensations were attuned to the spirit of the emergent future, the value-system of the next era in human development – our era.

Far from instilling terror, this painting, now, in our day, delights us!

It seems to me that some confusion lies

when we mix up ideas of occasion and causation;

at one second per second, time it flies

in a sequence, but not a consequence.

“What has been, has been; and we have had our hour:

not heaven itself upon the past has power!”

But the past does try to impose its ways:

“This is how we’ve done it from our ancestors’ days”!

If we listen to the yearning within

deep in our soul, we’ll know where to begin:

let our present be shaped by our longing

and not confined in our past’s belonging.

Mike B, with thanks to Horace

The Blue Vase (FWN 823, 1889-90)

The blue vase                    FWN 823             1889-90               62 cm x 51          MO

The Blue Vase is one of my favourites – and here’s why!

Please do spend a little time sitting with the Blue Vase before reading this blog.

Mapping the terms I will use

Traditionally, every colour has these characteristics - hue, value, chroma.

Hue distinguishes one colour from another and is described using common colour names such as green, blue, red, yellow, etc. More specifically, in terms of physics, a hue is the dominant wavelength of light that a person can see - yellow, red, blue, green, etc.

 Value refers to the lightness or darkness of the hue (colour). It defines a colour in terms of how close it is to white or black. The lighter the colour, the closer it is to white. The darker the colour, the closer it is to black. For example, navy blue emits less light and has a lower value than sky blue.

Chroma is the attribute that expresses the purity of a colour. Mixing a pure hue with black, white, grey, or any other colour reduces its purity and lowers the strength of the original hue.

Value Perception

It is the change in value that gives us the ability to see objects as three-dimensional. In the illustration above, the circle on the left is a solid colour and appears flat. The lighter and darker areas of the circle in the middle give it dimension, and we see it as a sphere.

Value also guides our perception of space. The middle circle looks like it is floating in space. By darkening the colour below the shape, the same sphere appears to be sitting on a surface.

These three circles are all flat. It is the change in value that gives an impression of dimension. It is also the change in value that indicates where the object is within its environment.

We may not consciously be thinking about value, but when our eyes are open, our mind is continually making value comparisons all of the time.

High key colour describes the set of colours that range from mid-tone hues to white, while low key colour spans the range from mid-tone to black. (cf Sensationcolor)

(Human) Values (sometimes called ‘memes’): values are what motivate people to act in the way that they do. We develop values in response to our environment.

Value system: the collection of values that adhere together, that different groups of people tend to hold together, with a set of unique characteristics, qualities and shadows. There have been eight Value systems so far in the evolution of humankind.

It was often said that genes are to genetics and biology, what memes are to memetics and culture; but you can find a fuller understanding of the philosophical (epistemological) framework of ‘value-systems, at Overview Value Systems ⋅ Spiral Dynamics Integral

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The Blue Vase

It is the blue hue of the paint applied on canvass that vibrates the expansive and cool mood within us within which the blue vase floats without.

It is the expansive and cool mood within us and without, that brings us into harmony with the clear blue of sea and sky that is our openness to depth and transcendence.

It is our openness to depth and transcendence that centres the integrity of our being.

blue is cool.

This was the era when humanity turned up the heat.

Cezanne lived at the time when the Extractive Industrial Revolution began seriously to burn the earth’s resources like never before. This was the era we mark as ‘zero’ to count the rise in global temperature.

We’re now well above 1⁰ degree higher than that era, and are very likely to reach 1.5⁰ degrees in the next decade or so. If we do nothing now, the speed of the warming will increase.

At 2.5⁰ degrees of warming, the increase will be nigh on irreversible.

It is the gradation of tones of the blue hue that elaborates the richness and diversity of different values.

The richness and diversity of different values allows us to behold the blue vase floating in the graciousness of spaciousness.

The modulation of the different values locates the blue vase within its dynamic environment.

It is the sensitive integration of deep and positive Value-systems that will co-create a space for the richness and diversity of different values.

Our future lies in the elaboration and refining of the richness and diversity of different values that will fulfil and fill full the gracious spaciousness necessary for a new era to thrive.

The modulations of different Values hold the potential for the rewilding of earth’s biodiverse environment.

It is the high-keyed hues and the chromatic intensity that exhales luminosity in refined harmony.

It is the vertical framing within framing that invites us to be still.

It is the horizontal diagonals that rock us back and forth into dynamic depth.

It is within the light of refined harmonies that spiritual activism will thrive.

It is within the vertical framing of connections with all beings below and above that our stillness will be receptive.

It is within the horizontal framing of our agency that we will hold our intention for goodness.

It is the shadow under the biscuit plate, connecting with the apple, that anchors the blue vase and pushes it towards us as a cool invitation to connect with us.

It is the shadows between the tall bottle of rum, the biscuit plate and the squat bottle of perfume that locate the depth of the table plane.

It is the two adjacent pieces of fruit that are sufficient but not complete: they are in the process of becoming.

It is in our shadows that there is an invitation to connect with our deepest selves.

It is in our shadows that we can locate the depth of our potential.

It is through our shadows that we will be able to become more fully human.

It is the expansive lyrical movement of the bouquet, with its shapeless spots, of red, green, white and blue, that reaches out to the limits of the frame within a frame.

It is the perpendicular scaffolding of the whole frame that maintains the presence of the blue vase.

It is the presence of the blue vase in its simplicity and complexity that speaks to us of reverence.

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‘A reverence of approach awakens depth and enables us to be truly present where we are.

When we approach with reverence great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty of things.

When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us.’

John O’Donohue

Reaching for simplicity (FWN 251, 1888)

Towpath by the Marne at Creteil          FWN 251         1888      63 cm x 79          NSW, Sydney

There’s an awesome mystery that lies between simplicity and complexity; indeed, sometimes there seems to be no space between complexity and simplicity – they are somehow, one and the same: maybe that’s where the mystery abides: be - holding that space. You behold a tree and wonder at its simple beauty; and at the same time, your holding embraces the complexity of the natural world and the web of life, of which you are a part.

The story goes that someone was about to buy this painting from Cezanne’s first art dealer at an exhibition Vollard had organized in the mid 1890’s and was about to hand over four hundred-franc notes when an unnamed man interrupted the deal with the comment that Cezanne had painted this painting in the style of Guillaumin. The buyer withdrew his four hundred-franc notes, put them back in his wallet, and said he was no longer interested.

Who the ‘unnamed man’ was, we do not know – maybe Guillaumin himself? When Cezanne travelled up to Paris at this time, he rented a place in quai d’Anjou…where in the 1870’s he had lived next door to Guillaumin, as they were both ‘tutored’ as young artists by the older Pissarro. Cezanne and Guillaumin had studied art together, painted together, and were close friends. Nowadays twenty years on, Cezanne painted landscapes of the Marne at Creteil, in the big ox-bow of land, then countryside, below the Bois de Boulogne. Guillaumin remained an Impressionist all his long life; Cezanne in his own words ‘was an Impressionist painter, then’.

It is the kind of painting that can be overlooked: ‘Nothing in the landscape of earlier art…would have authorized a painter to place himself thus before such an assemblance of forms…one looks across to the other bank, which is parallel to the picture frame. This grassy bank is almost uniform and featureless. Behind, a tree divides the composition in half with the rigid vertical of its trunk, above which foliage forms an almost symmetrical pyramid, which is completed and amplified by the group of houses behind.’ says Roger Fry, the famous British artist and art critic, in a seminar of the mid 1920’s. His point is this: no artist worth his salt would ever have chosen such a simple and elementary motif in the first place! The artist would simply have passed by and looked for greater things!

‘And yet, there is nothing in the least naïve or ‘simplist’ about this, for all its simplicity. It’s vigorously constructed with notes of orange, red, and intense green’, Fry adds. It is so delightful to examine the construction of what is beheld by the application of colours, with slight modifications and minute variations of tone through-out: a colourful space held into a harmony. (Le Chemin de halage sur les bords de la Marne à Créteil, c.1888 (FWN 251) | Catalogue entry | The Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings of Paul Cezanne: An Online Catalogue Raisonné (cezannecatalogue.com) You can enlarge the painting, and fill your screen, to see the rich bands of colours forming the grassy banks; the architectural symmetry of the rooftops; the pyramid-shapes scattered all around; the green and blue of foliage…Fry concludes: ‘The audacious simplicity and directness of Cezanne’s approach to the motif surprises us by its complete and unexpected success’.

Vollard delights in rounding off his story by saying that six months later (in 1896), he was able to achieve seven hundred francs from the sale of this painting to Auguste Pellerin.

And yet, complete though it is, there are quite a few spaces where the weave of the canvass shows through. On a closer look at the house to the left of the central tree trunk for instance, we see that the space above the door, and the larger window are thinly painted; the roof itself is somewhat skew-wiff, and it’s hard to sort out exactly what is garden wall and what is house. This is indeed one of Cezanne’s techniques, attuned to perfection in his ‘constructive phase’ and then used when the inspiration took hold, in this, his mature phase.  ‘It is a dynamic, not a static equilibrium’ comments our Roger Fry.

Fry finally hits the nail on the head: ‘the simplicity (of the painting) is the last term of a process of interpretation of the infinity of nature’. Fry is describing the process (of interpretation) which Cezanne goes through as he paints this painting. It is a process of drawing together the simple elements of the motif - the houses, the river, the riverbank, the tree, the boats – and presenting them as a whole: balanced and integrated. Both the process and the end result necessitate holding together, simplicity and complexity.

The new dynamic of creativity in Cezanne’s mature work lies in his ability and willingness to let the motif spontaneously arise in the act of painting: it is a union of beholding colour and holding space. In his mature phase, Cezanne has no pre-conceived idea of what he wants to achieve. Now when he paints, it is a participatory event which is self-organizing: it is emergent.

The last time someone tried to purchase this painting, it couldn’t be bought for 300,000 francs!

How happy is the little stone

that rambles in the road alone,

and doesn’t care about careers,

and exigencies never fears;

whose coat of elemental brown

a passing universe put on;

and independent as the sun,

associates or glows alone,

fulfilling absolute decree

in casual simplicity.

Emily Dickinson

Understanding the course of history (FWN 505, 1891)

The smoker leaning on his elbow      FWN 505        1891      92 cm x 73      Kunsthalle Mannheim

This is Paulin Paulet. It’s a solid representation of the guy, as he looks us straight in the eye, without deference or favour, without excesses but with sufficiency, without joy but with intention, without motion but prepared: earthy and weathered, strong and undramatic, plain and unromantic, determined and unsentimental. He wears his well-worn working shirt, waistcoat and jacket as he takes a rest, next to the woodburning stove, leaning on the table covered with a tablecloth relaxing with his favourite clay pipe. He's a farmworker having a rest at home in the promising new republic that is the Modern France of 1891.

Historians of the 1970’s would interpret the period during which Cezanne painted a set of three portraits, which we call ‘The Smoker’, as the era when “peasants became Frenchmen” (Eugen Weber 1976). I’m reminded of the occasion in a fashionable café in Montmartre when Cezanne, dressed in traditional earthy clothes, and speaking in a rough Provençal accent, refused to shake people’s hands because ‘he hadn’t washed for a week’! Weber’s analysis adds more poignancy to the story: Weber claimed, justifiably it seems, that at the beginning of the 1800’s, most people-who-lived-in-France communicated in their local dialect, not in (Parisian) French. Though French had been the official language for many generations, only half of the population spoke or understood standard French; the southern half of the country continued to speak Occitan languages (such as Provençal), and other inhabitants spoke Breton, Catalan, Basque, Dutch (West Flemish), and Franco-Provençal. In the north of France, regional dialects of the various so called ‘langues d'oïl’ continued to be spoken in rural communities.

Various things contributed to encourage a changing dynamic: the decline of rural society and corresponding growth in urbanization, national military service, and changes in social patterns – from shopping and entertainment, to working and the production of affordable bicycles, ‘universal’ suffrage (men not women!) and changing employment patterns (the growth of schooling, education and civil service). At the start of the century, the leaders of the French Revolution had established a National Property Register, and gradually the French State assumed the responsibility for recording and protecting property rights, supplanting the power of nobles and church. This marks the birth of the modern state, where the sacralization of wealth was the price paid by the working poor for gaining voting rights. The process is symbolically baptized by the adoption in 1891 of Unified Time through-out the whole of France - made necessary to produce accurate timetables for the expanding railway network. The centralized State had arrived, directly and quickly connected to all the ‘Departments’ of France.

Weber maintains that it was a period in which the peasants were ‘modernized’: recognizing themselves as ‘French’ (rather than ‘Provenćal’, or whatever), and politicized (able to vote). I suspect Cezanne, whether he considered himself Provençal Occitan or French, he certainly did not consider himself French Parisian! It was Paris he had wanted to conquer, albeit with an apple!

The year of 1891 was a strange year for Cezanne. He was back in Provence: very happy doing his own thing. The Impressionist movement had come and gone; and all kinds of ‘movements’ had replaced it – post-impressionism, neo-impressionism, symbolism – with lots of different artists with unique ‘temperaments’. Famous names we all know – Seurat, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and more…It didn’t bother Cezanne much these days; he was focused on his own work. He no longer sort recognition, nor did he need it now – financially nor spiritually! The days of wheeling paintings in a wheelbarrow for acceptance at the annual Academy de Beaux Arts were long gone; as also were attempts at displaying his paintings at exhibitions. He was no longer interested in reaching out to the art-world; he was no longer trying to change the world! But now, all of a sudden, the art-world were interested in reaching out to him!

Paul Alexis published his book, a fictional novel with a cast of three: the leading light of the previous generation of artists, the artist Manet; the jazz musician, who played his music by colouring the notes of the piano, Cabaner; and a character called ‘Poldex’ aka Paul d’Aix (Cezanne). The artist Signac was writing about four canvasses that Cezanne gave to Alexis. The political writer Felix Feneon claimed the ‘Cezanne tradition’ was being ‘diligently cultivated’ by the abstract artist Seruzier, the Danish Modernist artist Willumsen, the post-Impressionist painter and writer Emile Bernard, the post-Impressionist artist (friend of Gauguin) Schuffenecker, the artist Charles Laval, Henri-Gabriel Ibels, Charles Filliger, and Maurice Denis and others. The novelist and art-critic Huysmans re-published an article he had written ‘Paul Cezanne’; and Emile Bernard published his article of the same title, in the series ‘Men of Today’. This last publication also featured a drawing of Cezanne by Pissarro on its cover.

This was the context within which Cezanne was painting the three paintings of our Paulin Paulet, ‘The Smoker’. While France, or rather the modern French State, was growing in power and prestige in a period of peace and expansion (aka colonialism!) and all the art-world, or rather the Parisian modern art scene, was focused on ‘the Cezanne tradition’, Cezanne himself was more interested in the latest volume of ‘The Origins of Contemporary France’ by Hippolyte Taine published in 1891, entitled: ‘Modern France’. Here, Cezanne read: “Indeed, the Old Regime and the Revolution are, from now on, complete wholes, completed and closed periods; we have seen the end of it, and it helps us to understand the course.” wrote Taine in the intro. People-who-lived-in-France had become French, and were well aware that France and its people were undergoing a major transition in its history; as we undergo a transition today, but an even more critical one. And like Taine, and Cezanne, we also try to ‘understand its course’.

Cezanne’s response to the ‘course of history’ was to paint three portraits of a guy smoking a pipe. In this second painting, gone is the traditional genre painting of the rural peasant: Paulin Paulet is now in the midst of Cezanne’s studio, with a few of Cezanne’s paintings as the backdrop.

The smoker leaning on his elbow              FWN 506             1891      91 cm x 72          Hermitage

The artist’s studio now becomes the milieu, within which Cezanne places Paulin. Here, we’re not any longer sure what is meant to be ‘real’: the fruit and bottle appear at first glance to be on the table behind Paulin’s leaning elbow, but on closer inspection we see that they are part of a still-life canvass; the thick brown line above them is the edge of that still-life canvass! Here, we have the same guy, in the same clothes, in the same pose, but now painted with as much blue as brown, fuller warmer colours, and paintings within a painting. This painting is not simply the depiction of a rural worker, nor is it simply a painting of an acquaintance of Cezanne. It is Cezanne’s response to understanding the course of Modern France.

In his analysis of ‘Modern France’, Taine introduces a key analytical concept that he calls ‘milieu’, and that we might recognize as ‘context’; Taine wishes to contextualize his analysis within the socio-political framework that has developed in France – most notably, the emergence of the ‘State’, which has supplanted the power of the Nobles and Bishops. Cezanne was fascinated by Taine’s analysis, which he read while painting the three ‘smoker’ paintings. Zola’s analysis of France’s ‘modernity’, lays stress on the importance of the temperaments of the individuals involved; and this was how Cezanne had understood the ‘course of history’ up until now. Cezanne was fascinated by the idea that milieu or context could play an equally important role in the course of history. Within a couple of generations, these two different analytical approaches, Zola’s imaginative individual and Taine’s milieu, would have developed into different philosophical outlooks: existentialism and system’s analysis.

The Smoker                       FWN 507             1891                     91 cm x 72          Pushkin

In this last of the three Smoker paintings, the brown of the earth has nearly all disappeared, and with it, any connotation of the farmworker. The clenched fist is replaced by an open hand with slender fingers. And most strikingly, gone is the use of conventional perspective. This space, this milieu, is rather disorienting, in which the depth and structure of the space are difficult to comprehend. The certitudes and structures provided by the traditions of the past are gone; but the worker remains, in a very different milieu.

What are we to make of the three smoker paintings? I think they are the beginning of an unfolding narrative of Cezanne’s mature and final phase of development, within the context of a Modern France. What was Cezanne hoping to accomplish? A couple of years earlier Cezanne had written in a letter: “I have resolved to work in silence, until the day when I feel capable of defending theoretically the results of my endeavours”. I think at this point in 1891, Cezanne did not know what he was doing: he just knew he had to do it; but now, more than ever, he was centered enough to trust the dynamic energy of his creative spirit, trying to be in harmony with the course of history.

There is also a sense in which he did not know what he was doing because it did not yet exist: he was painting for an era, a milieu, that had not yet happened.  The Nigerian poet and novelist, Ben Okri, expresses this same dynamic energy in an article he wrote in 2021:

So a new existentialism is called for.

Not the existentialism of Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, negative and stoical in spirit,

 but a brave and visionary existentialism,

where, as artists, we dedicate our lives to nothing short of re-dreaming society.

We have to be strong dreamers.

We have to ask unthinkable questions.

We have to go right to the roots of what makes us such a devouring species,

overly competitive, conquest-driven, hierarchical.

Ben Okri

Post script. In case you wonder why Cezanne includes a portrait of his partner, Hortense, in this last version of ‘The smoker’ (top right, in blue dress): here’s my explanation: In February 1891 Cezanne’s school friend, Paul Alexis was down in Aix, and visited Cezanne to see how his friend was doing, and, probably more to the point, so that he could report back to Zola in Paris. Cezanne gave Alexis the first portrait of Paulin, and duly signed it, along with three other landscapes and still-lifes. Shortly after, another mutual friend visited Cezanne and reported to Zola how he also found Cezanne. Both letters to Zola portray Cezanne as being embroiled with his wife Hortense over money matters. The letters read rather like schoolboy banter: naming Hortense as ‘The Dumpling’ and the son, young Paul as ‘The brat’. The inner circle of Cezanne’s school friends, Zola, Alexis, Numa Coste had all given up on Cezanne – Coste writes to Zola: “one of the most moving things is to see the good chap (Cezanne) preserve the innocence of youth, forget the disappointments of the struggle and, resigned to suffering, throw himself into the pursuit of a work which he can’t deliver” (my underlining). Cezanne knew what they were up to, and what was their assessment of his work. And so, in the last portrait of Paulin, painted after Alexis had gone back to Paris, he includes one of his portraits of Hortense as the context of the painting – top right (Portrait of Madame Cezanne, 1886) - to make a point!

The playful oak (FWN 264, 1890)

Trees and road                 FWN 264             1890          71.7 cm x 59       Barnes, Philadelphia

I love the colours of this painting – they really do delight!

It’s so playful too! The way the bushes sneak up and try to hide behind the tree: the way all the branches reach out into the blue towards the sun, stretching and wriggling to embrace the warmth. I’m reliably informed that the oak is one of the last trees to leaf. Cezanne holds the pine tree as the living symbol of Provence; it’s so refreshing to find him discovering the strength and beauty of the oak.

I love the way Cezanne makes the tree stand out against the pathway and the background bushes; the tree trunk and branches immediately above sit close to us, sharp and focused and distinct; its central branches rising upwards like arms extended in a hymn to the universe.

And yet, its branches to the left stretch and intertwine with the smaller oak beyond the pathway - so closely that they are almost indistinguishable.

This causes our eyes to oscillate right to left, back and forth, from oak to oak – continuously trying to make sense of the dynamic intertwining.

This interplay is framed within the frame of the painting by two straight vertical lines, one immediately behind the main oak on the right, and a second, immediately next to the smaller oak on the left (this side of the road).

In between the two oaks is the ‘V’ shape which links the two oaks through depth, and creates a swirling motion, back, up and over, around.

This centrally-framed swirl is echoed in smaller swirls of the darker greens of the bushes at the right of the main oak; and these swirls are counterbalanced by the bushes that sneak up behind the main oak.

The energy of the sneaking bushes and the swirling foliage push the oak even more towards us.

Resistance is futile:

let yourself be assimilated into this playfulness!

just enjoy

and discover

playful meditation

to meditate does not mean to fight with a problem
to meditate means to observe
your smile proves it
it proves that you are being gentle with yourself
that the sun of awareness is shining in you
that you have control of your situation
you are yourself
and you have acquired some peace

Thich Nhat Hanh