C's Aesthetics: Philosophy in the Painting
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C’S ÆSTHETICS Philosophy in the Painting Joseph Masheck Philadelphia: Slought Books and the Center for Visual Culture, Bryn Mawr College Joseph Masheck, FRSA, studied art history under Meyer Schapiro at Columbia University and proceeded to the doctorate under Rudolf Wittkower and Dorothea Nyberg. A member of the Society of Fellows in the Humanities there, and sometime editor-in-chief of Artforum (1977- 80), he taught at Barnard and went on to Harvard and Hofstra. Books include a new edition of his Marcel Duchamp in Perspective (Da Capo) and a centenary reprint, with essay, of Arthur Wesley Dow’s Composition (University of California Press), in addition to collections of his essays on architecture (Building-Art: Modern Architecture Under Cultural Construction, Cambridge) and art (Modernities: Art-Matters in the Present, Penn State). A lecture comprising part of a forthcoming book on Adolf Loos is available online in audio format at http://Slought.org Copyright © 2004 by Joseph Masheck and Slought Foundation For Marjorie, in return All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or parts thereof, in any form, without written permission from either the author or Slought Books, a division of Slought Foundation. No part may be stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. Printed in Canada on acid-free paper by Coach House Books, Ltd. Set in 9pt Arial Narrow. Design by Sinder Design & Consulting, Philadelphia For further information, http://slought.org/books/ SLOUGHT FOUNDATION 4017 Walnut Street Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Masheck, Joseph. C’s aesthetics : philosophy in the painting / Joseph Masheck.-- 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-9714848-3-X (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Cézanne, Paul, 1839-1906--Aesthetics. 2. Cézanne, Paul, 1839-1906--Criticism and interpretation. 3. Painting--Philosophy. I. Bryn Mawr College. Center for Visual Studies. II. Title. ND553.C33M338 2004 759.06--dc22 2004017602 Preface and Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xiii CONTENTS Introduction 1 I Critical Background 7 II Two Naturalisms 29 III Radical Naturalism: ‘Impressionism’ 51 IV Senses of Sensation 81 V Antinaturalism: ‘Postimpressionism’ 101 VI The Truth of Art 127 Abstract art has been a major preoccupation for most of my life, including a mild obsession with its prehistory in a classic search for origins. In that abstract painting was made possible by a cubism whose patron saint was the postimpressionist ‘C,’ what follows is a search for the implicit philosophical aesthetics of the single most crucial artist for the development of modernism. Implicit aesthetics, I say, because I rely as much upon my understanding of the painter’s work in general and of particular works analyzed here as on the letters (which still yield meaning), and more on both these sources than on the same few remarks that art history goes on rehearsing. But I also write as a teacher who sees a generation afoot that has learned to deal with postmodernism before understanding modernism (if at all)—which might be something like the American way of starting the dinner with the salad, if one ever got some meat. So I am perhaps also doing something constructively remedial about that, attempting to think, on its own terms but ‘forward’ again, through the work of a mythic PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS founder whose work opened so much future. The actual essay derives from a thesis written several years ago under the direction of William Lyons, now Professor Emeritus of Moral Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin, and subtitled ‘Enquiry Into the Premises of Painting.’ I was fortunate to be able to pursue this project in fulfillment of two longstanding hopes: to return to Trinity, where some 30 years before I had pursued initial research for what became my Columbia dissertation in art history, and to learn something firsthand about ‘doing’ philosophy. Philosophical analysis is obviously not my natural métier, as any reader can infer; having long respected the great analytical tradition in twentieth-century thought, in almost the same breath as the ‘analytical’ cubist painting substantially inspired by C, I wished to learn in practice something of the modern philosophical approach. I already ix had a strong intuition that such a mode of thinking was especially appropriate to this particular I also want to acknowledge my dear companion, Marjorie Welish, for her sense of artist—that as a ‘dumb painter’ he was no idiot savant but rather one of the great analytical the worthwhileness of the project as a nonspecialist contribution to aesthetics, her untiring thinkers of his time—when Bill Lyons’ intellectual sympathy led him to suggest my trying to analytical criticism and her faith that I would—to use C’s most characteristic expression— bring out the philosophical potential of what already concerned me from the art side, in search realize the work. The rewriting of the text for this publication was thankfully encouraged by of the artist’s possibly implicit aesthetics. Aaron Levy, director of the Slought Foundation, who has patiently facilitated its production. It would be too easy to say that the analytical and historical modes of thinking are For making publication possible we are grateful to the Department of the History of Art and the good for different purposes. For one thing, there are diastrophic new starts in the realm of Center for Visual Culture at Bryn Mawr College. Thanks also to Mr. David Scrase, Keeper of culture that have no counterpart in the natural world that philosophy as well as science is Paintings, Drawings and Prints (and Associate Director of Collections) at the Fitzwilliam pleased to assume abides (even for other-worlds ‘thought experiments’). Modernity changed Museum, Cambridge, for permission to use the photograph of the Still Life with Apples in the the very nature of Western art more radically than ever before since the Neolithic (which in museum’s collection. some ways it recapitulated)—much more than with the Renaissance, and even more than with As should become evident in reading, the device of reducing the painter’s name to postmodernism, which as a great unraveling and a phase of extreme eclecticism has had its ‘C’ is something more than an analytical affectation: it is a way of defetishizing a name all too precedents. Yet after a hundred years of abstract art it still today proves difficult (especially in famous in one way (art) so that we may perhaps for once assess with some detachment what the literary sphere) to find in aesthetics a reformed, modern sense that representation is its bearer may have accomplished on other (aesthetic-philosophic) terms. neither a necessary nor a sufficient reason—it is not even an appropriate reason!—for something’s counting as a work of art. A single example: Gordon Graham in his Philosophy of the Arts: An Introduction to Aesthetics (1997), almost obliges, only to backslide on recalling, “Cognition, Aristotle tells us, trades in universals,” because, supposedly, “Paintings, plays, sculptures and so on portray, and must portray, particulars.”1 Well, since when is a primary color or an elementary geometric form a particular? And how can an aesthetics, it seems almost impertinent to ask, manage to get along in 1997 with definitions of painting as art that rule out Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian? The earlier text carried the formal statement that it was “entirely my own work.” But this statement obscures the enormity of my debt to a great teacher who could repeatedly excise most of every draft and nevertheless convey encouragement as he posed the next challenges to precipitate argumentation. I salute Bill Lyons, then, for his part in all the thinking here but the worst—which for him will include a few choice art-historical ‘bagatelles’ (Kant’s word) that have crept back in. Stimulating responses from the other readers of the academic version have also improved the essay. Dr. Lilian Alweiss, of Trinity, was helpfully challenging in regard to the account of formalism and what I consider phenomenological naturalism. Dr. Tony O’Connor, of University College Cork, in the National University of Ireland, gave insightful critiques of the analyses of works of art. Professor David Berman chaired the committee. I have also learned from other Trinity philosophers more informally, especially my friend Paul O’Grady. 1. Gordon Graham, Philosophy of the Arts: An Introduction to Aesthetics (London: Routledge, 1997), 49. x xi B = Bernard, Émile Bernard. Souvenirs sur Paul Cézanne; Une conversation avec Cézanne; La méthode de Cézanne. Paris: Michel, 1926. C = Cézanne (exhibition catalogue), ed. Françoise Cachin, Joseph J. Rishel, et al. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1996. ‘C’ numbers refer to catalogue numbers (with accompanying illustrations) in this catalogue. ABBREVIATIONS D = Doran, P. M. (ed.). Conversations avec Cézanne. Paris: Collection Macula, 1978. G = Gasquet, Joachim. Cézanne: A Memoir with Conversations, trans. Christopher Pemberton, preface by John Rewald, introd. by Richard Shiff. London: Thames and Hudson, 1991. L = Cézanne, Paul. Letters, ed. John Rewald, trans. Seymour Hacker, rev. ed. New York: Hacker Art Books, 1984. Addition of ‘z’ to page number indicates letter by Emile Zola. R = Rewald, John, with Walter Feilchenfeldt and Jayne Warman. The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: A Catalogue Raisonné, 2 vols. New York: Abrams, 1996. V = Venturi, Lionello. Cézanne: Son art, son oeuvre, 2 vols. Paris, 1936; repr. San Francisco: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, 1989. The ‘V’ numbers of this catalogue raisonné remain standard. xiii [J]’avais résolu de travailler dans le silence, jusqu’au jour où je me serai senti capable de défendre théoriquement le résultat de mes essais.