MECHANICS OF ABSTRACT PAINTING
405
painted skillfully enough and the composition is sufficiently bal–
anced to hold them steady. The interest, however, is primarily
centered in the objects themselves, or rather in the associations
which the objects conjure up. As we reflect upon these "symbols of
justice" we picture the wizened hand that has just laid down the
pen, the dusty wig that the hat habitually adorns, the crimes in–
scribed in the dilapidated volume. Such emotions are those which
we call external or "literary,"-that is, they are derived from
associations projected from outside the canvas limits. (For one
who knows nothing of nineteenth century law-courts the picture
would perhaps have little · interest.) This order of emotion was
typical of Daumier's time and to a painter of Cezanne's sensibil–
ities it seemed a noisy straining after something thoroughly local–
ized and ephemeral. The
Still-Life with Oranges,
on the other
hand, in no way depends upon pictorial associations,-in fact it
goes out of its way to exclude them. The rendering suggests such
awkwardness to the casual glance that any fruit-distributor would
hesitate to use these oranges for advertising his wares. Cezanne
must either be very clumsy or impelled by some different motive
from Daumier's. Prolonged contemplation will disclose the true
qualities; every orange-every shape, in fact,-is placed with
such consummate care in relation to every other shape, that there
is no confusion when two contours meet; the composition, although
full of dramatic contrasts, is thus pacified into a completely
ordered quietness. Even the individual brush-strokes are turned
in a manner suggestive of no transient "stylishness" but to enhance
the ponderous monumentality. In such paintings of Cezanne an
emotional sincerity returned to art comparable to that of the
Christian primitives which were also very quiet.
If
we were to
glance once more at the Daumier the objects would by comparison
appear smudged and paper-thin; when we have run through the
literary associations, there is little else to hold the interest.
2.
The general historical pattern toward abstraction* has been
traced. Most of the painters who
~ow
paint abstractly could pre-
*The word "abstract" has from the beginning proved a source of confusion.
It
continues to be employed despite efforts at substitution (non-representational, con·
cretionist, non-objective ) merely because the public has come to associate the term
with pictures that do not represent nature.
