Tag: paul cezanne

Art by Ethan Pinch
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A stylized double-portrait of John Constable, painter of "The Vale of Dedham".

John Constable’s “The Vale of Dedham” – The Greatest Painting Ever?

Why paint pictures? Some materials for an answer can be derived from the scenarios presented in preceding essays. It should also be stressed that the culture of painting has never been as distant from contemporary critical practice as it currently stands now. The possibility for some (modern) form of re-engagement with the high forms of art is a fascination or fantasy that continually accompanies the provisional enterprises of an art world which believes it can confront the culture of painting in ways that are conceptually and practically oblique.

It’s a conventional assumption of criticism that what is felt in front of a painting is what is expressed by it, and that this expressive content is somehow traceable to the psychology or soul of an artist. Surely this is because we are culturally and psychologically ‘predisposed’ to idealize an artist as a sort of actor—one who is sincerely moved by the reading of his own lines. The task of criticism then is to distinguish and characterise the mechanisms of production whose effects and meanings we ourselves have caused and produced, for in describing these we do no more than simply reproduce our culture and ourselves as its clients. This is to say that an adequate reading of a work of art will need to be reflexive as well as merely descriptive. The mechanisms of reading will have to be considered as they bear on the language of description. […]

Art by Ethan Pinch
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A stylized photo of Paul Cezanne

Cézanne, Now

Even for the gods, backlash is an inevitability. At one time considered the cutting edge, Paul Cézanne is often now conflated with artistic conservatism and the ‘rappel à l’ordre’. Bring up his name among any of the various plutocrats and brainless artists-in-residence striving to keep up the pretence of modernistic radicalism and you’ll see what I mean. It’s like brandishing a crucifix in a vampire’s face. Surely, nothing could be more unfashionable or un-hip as to talk about Cézanne in the year 2022.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, various ‘litterateurs’ who claim to admire Cézanne’s work can often be doubly guilty of superficiality; adopting a pose of soi disant aestheticism whilst simultaneously accepting all the ludicrous things produced by broadsheet art critics and authors writing history books on holiday. Sentiment, clerisy and derogation-as-vice continue to exasperate Cézanne’s reputational stability. Appropriated and excommunicated in equal turn, he is again and again subjected to the same rotary of clichés and tabloid mythology. A primitive, a prig, a homely gentleman. All middling attempts to make sense of Cézanne’s work in a self-reflecting art world where consensus has vanished and ignorance reigns supreme. […]

Film by Jessica Schneider
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The famous "trench" kiss in Andrei Tarkovsky's "Ivan's Childhood"

A Confession of Influence: Paul Cézanne, Ukraine, and Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Ivan’s Childhood” (1962)

Childhood is a personal thing. It consists of those moments, amid our early years, that serve to shape us, set our foundations into place, and create our impressions. ‘Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man,’ Aristotle said. So, what then? Childhood is a personal thing. Yet admittedly, I found myself struggling to write this essay. As an avid Tarkovsky viewer, I don’t know why this would be the case, other than perhaps the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Before Putin invaded Ukraine in late February 2022, I had already set out to write a number of reviews on Tarkovsky’s films. A beloved director, why should this not be the case? However, now when watching this Russian filmmaker, I admit to viewing his films differently. This is nothing against Andrei Tarkovsky himself, who was a sensitive, empathic man who would be outraged by this war, were he alive. But within his films, there is something there. I caught a glimpse of it whilst watching Stalker (one of my faves), but I most certainly saw it again within Ivan’s Childhood. […]