472
PARTISAN REVIEW
mals do not know how to
look,
to drive into things without stopping
for anything but the truth. In saying that the painter of realities is
a monkey, Emile Bernard says exactly the opposite of the truth, and
we understand how Cezanne could recover the classic definition of
art:
man added to nature.
His painting denies neither science nor tradition. In Paris, Ce–
zanne went to the Louvre every day. He thought that painting is to
be
learned, that the geometrical study of planes and forms is neces–
sary. He studied the geological structure of the countryside. These
abstract relations should operate in the act of painting, but ordered
according to the visible world. When he places a brush-stroke, anatomy
and drawing are there, like the rules of the game in a tennis match.
What motivates the stroke of a painter can never be solely perspec–
tive or geometry
9r
the laws of the breakdown of colors or any
other knowledge whatever. There is only one motive for all the
strokes which, little by little, make a picture: the landscape in its
totality and absolute fullness-which Cezanne calls a "motif." He
began by uncovering geological layers. Then, said Mme. Cezanne,
he moved no more but watched, his eyes dilated. He "germinated"
with the landscape. It was a question, all science forgotten, of grasping
again
by
means of
these sciences, the constitution of the landscape
as an organism in the process of birth. It was necessary to weld
together all the partial views which the eye saw, to reunite what
became dispersed by the variability of the eyes, "to join the wandering
hands of nature," says Gasquet. "A minute of the world is passing,
one must paint it in its reality." The meditation suddenly achieved its
realization. "I have my motif," said Cezanne, and he explained that
the landscape must be grasped neither too high nor too low, but
trapped alive in a snare which lets nothing pass. Then he attacked
his picture from all sides at once, surrounded the first charcoal
draught, the geological skeleton, with spots of color. The picture
became saturated, tied in, drawn, balanced, came
all
at once to ma–
turity. The landscape, he said, is reflected in me and I am its con–
sciousness. Nothing is further from naturalism than this intuitive
knowledge. Art is not an imitation, not even a fabrication following
the wishes of instinct or good taste. It is an operation of expression.
As
the word assigns a name, that is, grasps in its nature and places
before us as a recognizable object what appeared confusedly, the
paintrer, says Gasquet, "objectivizes," "projects," "fixes."
As
the word
does not
resemble
what it designates, painting is not a deception;
Cezanne, in
his
own words, "writes as a painter what has not yet
