Still life: 2 ~ Cezanne

When I reproduced this particular still life of Cézanne’s at the end of Still life: 1, it was as an example, and I had no particular thought of discussing it. However, looking at it afresh this morning, it seems to include all the qualities that make Cézanne preeminent as a painter of still lifes. In Still life: 1 I noted that Gauguin had paid much more attention to the arrangements of the fruits in Still Life with Profile of Laval, than had Renoir in Melons and Tomatoes. The difference was considerable: Renoir reveling in an immediate sensuous delight; Gauguin thinking his way into  an unusual and exotic space. The ‘step difference’ between these paintings is then, clear. However, the ‘step difference’ between Gauguin’s Still Life with Profile of Laval and Cézanne’s Still Life with Apples and Biscuits is of a profounder order — even if it is not immediately clear why this should be so.

Still Life with Apples and Biscuits, 1880–82

In comparing the still lifes of Koets, Renoir, and Gauguin, I commented particularly on the treatment and arrangement of the fruits. Koelts’ lemons, grapes, and apples are no more than prettification; Renoir’s tomatoes bear no significant relationship — one to another; while Gauguin’s apples, far from being adjuncts, are fully part of his composition (and are not — so to speak — to be trifled with: in variety of shape, colour, and juxtaposition they far surpass the lightness of touch of Renoir). What then, of the arrangement of Cézanne’s apples in Still Life with Apples and Biscuits? At first glance, they seem to lack the variety of those in Gauguin’s Still Life with Profile of Laval. There are fourteen apples, grouped apparently as any such might be on a table top. The variety of their colours is not as great as Gauguin’s: green is barely present except as the slightest shade  of yellow. They are ‘flatter’ (or apparently less ‘modelled’) than Gauguin’s. It is not so much that the painting lacks form, but that its spatiality is suppressed or subordinated: subtly contra to the ‘norms’ of Renaissance perspective. And, little as this may seem, it was the beginning of the greatest revolution in the history of art — that of cubism and its multitudinous offshoots.   

But I am getting ahead of myself, and the question to ask is, ‘Why should it have mattered that Renaissance perspective should begin — effectively — to be usurped?’ Because, I think, the conventions of landscape, portrait, and still life had been pushed to the limit. Van Gogh may be instanced here: no one had so profoundly explored the language of colour — allied to the brush stroke as a vehicle of meaning. In effect, this plunged art into a crisis: no one could hope to match or surpass Van Gogh in the intensity of his vision. The old ‘patterns’ — of foreground, middle distance, and background — were available as ever; but how to ‘supply’ them with anything that was not mere repetition, reworking, or rote? Design could always have escaped these limitations, to some extent, but painting never — until Cézanne. 

Still Life with Apples and Biscuits is a painting straining after flatness. The table top and the dish   are tilted towards the viewer; and the apples — although given some degree of form — are as flat as Cézanne could make them at this stage in his explorations. Moreover, their grouping has  an intimacy which I think had never been achieved by any painter prior to (or since) Cézanne. How he has achieved this is a mystery: it cannot have been sought, or else he would have fallen into Koets’ trap, and the work would have been lifeless. Somehow it seems to relate to the extraordinary care with which each brush stroke has been applied. I have said little about the colours, but they are wonderful: the blue rim of the plate and the pink and yellow–white biscuits could not be abstracted from the painting without serious loss. So too the depending clasp of the table, the strange patterning around the knob, and the ethereal plant– patterning of the background. It is curious that the latter looks a little like a patch of sky, but I think that Cézanne was more concerned with overall unity of composition than any kind of formal exactitude.

The Salon, George Braque, 1944

This painting of Braque’s is interesting, in that the flattening of the table tops does not abolish perspective in its entirety. The revolution was necessary, but then allows of a variety of ‘returns’.