transformationaL Pra Cti Ceall of this happened in the Cézanne room, which makes an immediate claim
on one’s attention with its powerful pictures. You know how much more
remarkable i always find the people walking about in front of paintings than
the paintings themselves. it’s no different in this salon d’automne, except for
the Cézanne room. here all of reality is on his side [...]
i again spent two hours in front of a few [of Cézanne’s] pictures today; i
sense this is somehow useful for me [...] But it all takes a long, long time.
When i remember the puzzlement and insecurity of one’s first confrontation
with his work, along with his name, which was just as new. and then for a long
time nothing, and suddenly one has the right eyes [...]
(harrison and Wood 2000: 36 and 7)Four features are prominent in these passages: first, the claim that the paintings
made on the writer’s attention, interrupting his habitual practice of attending to the
audience in preference to the works of art; second, the puzzlement and insecurity they
engendered; third, the labour of contemplation required for comprehension; fourth,
that this comprehension, although unspoken, has the character of a new visibility, to
use Rancière’s term.
The above is viewed from the position of viewer and concerns the reception and
treatment of surprise, which in Rilke’s case is resolved through the construction of
a new way of seeing painting. in the following sections we will turn to consider the
production and transformational character of the surprising work of art by examining
the art of Constable, thereby maintaining a certain thread in the discourse on art- based
research. We will begin by articulating Constable’s artistic project, as seen through
Constable’s own account of the development of landscape painting, recorded in Charles
Robert leslie’s Memoirs of the life of John Constable, first published in 1843 six years after
its subject’s death. it will be argued that although Constable’s paintings substantially
realize his artistic ambition, their disjunctive, surprising character resulted in a failure
to see them on his terms. it is suggested that, recognizing this fact, toward the end
of his life Constable sought to articulate a way of seeing his paintings as conjunctive,
rather than disjunctive.
a synthesis of poetry and scienceleslie’s biography of Constable (1951) contains the notes to six lectures that the artist
gave toward the end of his life, between 1833 and 1836. in the first lecture, Constable
opens up six themes that seem fundamental to understanding his attitude to art; past
and present. The first is his ambition to, ‘separate it [landscape painting] from the mass
of historical art in which it originated, and with which it was long connected.’ The
second is his desire to demonstrate that the former is equal to the latter, such that,
‘from being the humble assistant, it became the powerful auxiliary to that art which
gave it birth, greatly enriching the dignity of history.’ The third is his appreciation
of this equivalence, which is for landscape painting to be ‘impressive’. The fourth
is that this liberation is not revolution, but the resurrection of lost achievement.
Referring to, ‘the state of landscape painting among the ancients ...’, he first criticizes
the lack of chiaroscuro in its remnants, such as those found at herculaneum and the