830
PARTISAN REVI!W
ation of the Magi).
They still seek for corporeality according to ac–
cepted practice. But this no longer interests them primarily. The
object
in
itself begins to be disregarded and have no other role than
to serve as support and background for the light playing upon it. One
studies the trajectory of light, emphasizing the fluidity of its passage
over the face of volumes, over bulkiness.
Is it not clear what shift in the artist's point of view is implied
by this? The Velasquez of
The Adoration of the Magi
no longer fixes
his attention upon the object as such but upon its surface, where the
light falls and is reflected. There has occurred, then, a retraction of
vision, which has stopped being a hand and released its grasp of the
rounded body. Now, the visual ray halts at the point where the body
begins and light strikes resplendently; from there it seeks another
point on another object where the same intensity of illumination is
vibrating. The painter has achieved a magic solidarity and unifica–
tion of all the light elements in contrast to the shadow elements.
Things of the most disparate form and condition now become equiva–
lent. The individualistic primacy of objects is finished. They are no
longer interesting in themselves, and begin to be only a pretext for
something else.
XI
Velasquez.
Thanks to chiaroscuro, the unity of the
picture becomes internal, and not merely obtained by extrinsic means.
However, under the light, volumes continue to lurk, the painting of
bulk persists through the refulgent veil of light.
To overcome this dualism, art needed a man of disdainful genius,
resolved to have no interest in bodies, to deny their pretensions to
solidity, to flatten their petulant bulk. This disdainful genius was
Velasquez.
The primitive, enamoured of objective shapes, seeks them ardu–
ously with his tactile gaze, touches them, embraces them. The chiaro–
scurist, already less taken with corporeality, lets his ray of vision travel,
as along a railway track, with the light-ray that migrates from one
surface to the next. Velasquez, with formidable audacity, executes
the supreme gesture of disdain that calls forth a whole new painting:
he halts the pupil of the eye. Nothing more. Such is this gigantic
revolution.
