An interesting choice by Roy Lichtenstein ... appropriating Cézanne ... and Erle Loran

Erle Loran wrote Cézanne's Composition: Analysis of His Form, with Diagrams and Photographs and published it in 1943; the book was based on his travels in  the Aix-en-Provence countryside and his residency in Cézanne's former studio.  Loran explained Cézanne's paintings -- through the means suggested by his title -- and the book became familiar to generations of art students.  One of the paintings Loran discusses is the Barnes Foundation's "Portrait of Madame Cézanne" from 1885-7:

In his book, Loran says that the usual attempt to "capture" something of the character of the sitter is not the principle idea at work here: "There are qualities of dynamic tension in this portrait ... that cannot be explained on human or literary grounds.  Consequently, it seems advisable to study it with an eye to the axial tipping .... [which] creates a strong tension and pull" because the figure appears to be slanting left.  Loran goes on to say that the background pulls in the opposite, right-hand, direction,  and, moreover, that the split ground looks "as if these were actually two separate planes pulling apart" (pp. 84-5).  Here is Loran's diagram that helps us visualize what he means:

The upward "push" of C and E against the downward direction of D is classic Cézanne ... these are the multiple planes that so inspired Braque and Picasso.  The tilt of the body to the left, however, seems to me a bit of an exaggeration, as I think the patch of white at the top forces color against that possible movement and confines the figure.  And, if you go back to the original painting and place your fingers over the Madame Cézanne's head, you can see that her shoulders are perfectly level; her head tilts -- a bit. B seems an unnecessary line to me ...  there is nothing on that side but a patch of solid blue. The figure does lean, but of its own accord: A is enough to show that, I think.

So, whether we each agree with all the lines and letters, Loran has made a tangible critical point. Years passed, and Roy Lichtenstein looks at the diagram and paints it, calling it "Madame Cézanne," with no reference to Loran, in 1962:

Looks familiar, doesn't it?  Lichtenstein would say, by way of explaining his painting, that "the Cézanne is such a complex painting. Taking an outline and calling it Madame Cézanne is in itself humourous, particularly the idea of diagramming a Cézanne when Cézanne said '... the outline escaped me.'  It is such an oversimplification trying to explain a painting by  A,B,C and arrows and so forth" (an interview with John Coplans, quoted in Michael Lobel's Roy Lichtenstein and the Emergence of Pop Art, p. 151).  And Lichtenstein also said that his version was "about the wife as seen by Cézanne" (Lobel, p. 141).  The critic Arthur C. Danto wrote that Lichtenstein used "the diagrammatic idiom rhetorically .... whatever Roy Lichtenstein is doing, he is not diagramming" (in The Transformation of the Commonplace, p. 147).  But Loran charged Lichtenstein with plagiarism.

We have become, since the 1960's, rather used to appropriation. But this does seem out of character, even for Lichtenstein.  Why didn't he change anything? Anything ... at all? He is so skilled at transformation. Look at this "Still Life with Sliver Pitcher," from 1972:

The painting is a whole new way of seeing the still life. It's gorgeous; and it is totally Lichtenstein. Or this painting, after Cézanne, "Landscape with Figures":

 

These are Cézanne's rhythms, even some of his colors, but, again, Lichtenstein has taken the original "Bathers" out of the pastoral mode (that began somewhere around the seventeenth century) and placed the trees, the tree trunk and the body squarely into a twentieth-century comic-book fantasy. A gift ... why didn't he use it in the copy of the Loran?

I took the Loran original, copied into my "Brushes" program, and played with it just now.  Even this would have been, at least, an artistic commentary on the choices Cézanne, and Loran, had already made:

Tension, the artist's statement, and the painting "At the Milliner's"

The painting is from 1881, by Eduoard Manet, and only appeared after his death. It had been completed, and remained in his studio, for two years. Unusual. The painting is now part of the collection at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, where we saw it last weekend.  It is quite striking, a gorgeous display of Manet's mastery of dark-upon-dark color against a smaller set of lights; here is my photograph of the painting:

Manet gave the same title to at least two other works, a pastel and a print, which could confuse the scholarship a bit, but I have not seen any detailed discussion of this work, even on the museum's own website (which also just posted this piece today).  I would like to know more; I would like to be seated in the studio, asking Manet any number of questions. He would have been open to inquiry, I think;  he wrote a friend: "Please be good enough to come by the studio one of these afternoons -- I would hope to be there, but if by chance I am not take my key from the concierge."  Once we were seated, I would have mentioned that --  I feel that the a-symmetrical pull of the figure, that she is looking into so much space, means that this might have been part of a larger group scene.  Was it? Or is this a kind of "sketch"? Is the look on her face one of contentment? Ennui? Indecision? There is a combination of fluidity and specificity in the background wallpaper; how did you decide to leave the work in such a divided state? How did the perfect outline of the line of her back come to be? How did you see this as fitting in with the Bar at the Folies-Bergere, painted only a few months before?

In short, I'd like to see an artist's statement.

I do realize that is not going to happen. But after walking through a number of galleries yesterday, and reading many statements, I keep thinking, "what if?" What if I could ask Roy Lichtenstein about this print:

It is called "Seascape," and it is from the "Landscape Series," from 1985. I would ask ... what made Lichtenstein combine the meticulous lines with the gestural brushstrokes?  Where did the rust colors come from? And, again, where does this piece fit in with the living rooms and their windows, and with the Cezanne-ian landscapes of the later years (see my October 29 post) ... ?

Some artists do give us articulate, if all-too-brief, statements. Jasper Johns has said "Do something. Do something to that. And then do something to that."  But ---  how did he get to that?

Helen Frankenthaler told Henry Geldzahler (Artforum, 4., no.2, October 1965, p.37) that she remembered, clearly, how she had decided upon her artistic direction, despite coming of age in a time of (almost) too many possible influences: "De Kooning made enclosed linear shapes and 'applied' the brush.  Pollock used shoulder and ropes and ignored the edges and the corner.  I felt I could stretch more in the Pollock framework .... You could become a de Kooning disciple or satellite or mirror, but you could depart from Pollock." I love Helen Frankenthaler.  How wonderful is her explanation?

So, artists' statements might base themselves on tension. Artistic tension, that is, not the kind that resides in your shoulder-blades.  Frankenthaler mentioned once (to Gene Baro, in "The Achievement of Helen Frankenthaler," in Art International, September 20, 1967, p. 36) that she knew a painting worked, for her, when she sensed that it was "a play of ambiguities," what she called, in another interview, the "active" role of "negative" space up against the "positive." 

And, if we think about it, that's where the Manet painting wins us over, and that's where the Lichtenstein breaks through.  Two things, at gentle war with one another, confined in a small space.  I saw many statements yesterday that indicated that the artists in question had come to accept a certain duality in their work: opposites such as high and low, painting and photography, line and color all vie for attention. And should.  I find this idea quite reassuring as I go about adding my odalisques to my abstractions.  It's the tension, really. Keep those statements coming.

Paper carpets and Pyrite soar into space ...

We had seen Isabelle de Borchgrave at the Legion of Honor (see the post from April 23, 2011) in the show "Pulp Fashion."  (The images are still in my head ... the women from distant courts and favorite paintings re-created, in paper, and given artistic life: just wonderful!)  We came across de Borchgrave's work again today, at the Serge Sorokko Gallery on Geary Street in San Francisco. Here, there are no figures. And yet, again, the two-dimensional forms seem to expand as we view them Here are the two pieces that we kept returning to, together and then in detail:

 

 

These are two pieces; the one on the left is called "Dans Le Souk," and is (two-dimensional!) mixed media on cottoen cloth.  I am not sure of the name of the piece on the right, but the materials are the same. For more details, see the gallery website,  http://www.sorokko.com/artists/de_borchgrave.html

So that was our foray into color and space. For another invitation to the viewer -- two dimensions moving into three-dimensional space -- and for another chance at invention combined with sheer gorgeousness, here are two works by Leslie Shows, a local artist (she graduated from CCA and won one of San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art's SECA awards).  Leslie Shows gives us plexiglass, ink, mylar, crushed glass, metal dust and engraving. She places images of pyrite (fool's gold) onto thin aluminum; the aluminum shines, reflects and deepens the layers we see:

And here is a second piece:

Leslie Shows's work is at the Haines Gallery, at 49 Geary Street in San Francisco, through December 24.

The works may not be so different, after all.  These two artists are building their own artistic worlds.  Roy Lichtenstein once said (in an interview with G.R. Swenson in Art News in November 1963) that "organized perception is what art is all about .... It is a process .... It has to do with a way of building a unified pattern of seeing."  That's what has happened here ... go and see the work if you can!

Nakedly Nude, II: The Through-Line from Cézanne and Matisse to Roy Lichtenstein

Dorothy Lichtenstein told the art critic Michael Kimmelman that, in his last year, her husband Roy was working on paintings of women "derived from Cézanne's bathers ... which he was thinking of developing into a whole series of works when he fell ill" (The New York Times, January 4, 1998).  I was surprised when I ran across this remark; I hadn't seen any works by Lichtenstein that seemed influenced by anyone but Picasso. So I looked around and found two sets of drawings and paintings that I find just gorgeous.

Here is Matisse's "Blue Nude," from 1907:

This continues that conversation (the entry of October 27) about the angular, un-idealized nude, women who are really -- purely -- naked.  Now look at Lichtenstein's "Collage for Still Life with Reclining Nude" from 1997:

Lichtenstein re-creates Matisse's figure here; but he also opens up the view behind her. This open window is also Matissean, French plane trees and views out a shuttered window to the Mediterranean.  Rpy Lichtenstein is coming back full circle, to people whose work he barely mentions in interviews. Now look at Cézanne's "Large Bathers," a painting from 1899-1906:

Cézanne painted several of these studies of monumental figures posed against trees, with a tunnel out to a larger plain or river. Now here is Lichtenstein's "Landscape with Figures," this one from 1980:

And here is his "Collage for Interior with Painting of Bather" from 1997, as he was returning to the same theme:

 

This bather is more nude than naked, more stylized, like Lichtenstein's early women from comic books. The artist is still experimenting ...  but see how the model's surroundings have changed since those early enclosed squares with speech bubbles. She is reclining -- in a painting? out of an open window? -- somewhere near Aix-en-Provence, and she doesn't need to say anything.

"Not known, because not looked for..."

This is an enormous -- "brushstroke" -- sculpture in front of the Hirshhorn Museum of Art in Washington D.C..   As you know from my Benday Dot posts and drawings (March 7, 10, 12 and June 17), I really, really like Lichtenstein's work. Seurat, Monet and Picasso all presented us with the ways we see ...  and Lichtenstein's work continues to expose the way we see as an illusion ... but, as with this brushstroke, an illusion we can be "in" on, and illusion we can enjoy, once we see it for what it is,  as something that is both amusing and beautiful.

But Lichtenstein is criticized; just take a look at http://www.brooklynrail.org/2011/06/art/the-pleasures-of-art-peter-selz-with-jarrett-earnest    And so, please, be sure to take a long, fair look at the work, not the work in reproduction ... see the artist's hand, the size of the original, the space it occupies...

Oh, and the quote in the title? from T.S. Eliot's "Little Gidding," The Four Quartets, and again

"Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea..."

What do you think of Lichtenstein?