68
PARTISAN REVIEW
as the world had never known. This alone substantiates our pre–
vious view that an exchange of properties in no way affects the
quality of either art-form. Rather, under certain historical condi–
tions the transposition may be said to enhance it.
We have now to consider the manner in which the painter
presents the world that he has created. For painting is, of course,
not the only means through which it can be presented. A photo–
graph seen through a stereoscope is like a window into a world;
but no one would feel any relation there with painting. A painting
is delivered on its own terms, which is essentially through the
application of colored mud upon a completely flattened surface;
sculpture is also delivered on its terms,-a finished material,
whatever it may be, removed from the artist's hands, which takes
its place with the other objects of the world. The paintings which
seem to assert themselves most intensely
as paintings
thus present
a sort of double vision; I believe this to be what led Cezanne to
distinguish so emphatically between painting and sculpture. The
relation of the forms fixes the three-dimensional planes and "be–
tween-spaces," while the technical delivery continually returns
the eye to the picture-plane. A good example may be offered by
some famous decorations which were never
painted
at all yet
profoundly project the qualities of painting,-the Byzantine
mosaics at Ravenna,-which are flat decorations, solidly integrated
with architecture, yet open up before us an expansive detached
world. The depths do not have the infinity of Baroque decoration,
but on the other hand one is not thrust back as from an Egyptian
wall-painting. In the mosaics there is a definite recession of
planes and a strong modelling of the figures, yet over all lurks
the mosaic-technique, creating a surface life with its occasional
stone of intensified color that acts as a spot to keep the eye un–
consciously on the surface. This is the essence of the true painting
where the individual brush-strokes perform a similar service. The
High Renaissance, with its austere sculptural tradition tended to
obliterate the brush-strokes, and the picture-surface fell back to
the surfaces of the forms themselves. In the next century, influ–
enced by the painter-like Venetians*, even sculpture succumbed
*In regard to the art of many periods (the Baroque perhaps most of all) it is
impossible to be dogmatic, for the degrees of fusion differed in individual cases;
it can only be generalized, I think, that the late Venetians were painter-like in their
conceptions yet sculptural in their execution. And there are many artists even among
those I mention in modern times whom it is difficult to classify through every phase.
