Seminar 9: Paul Cézanne and Sensation

 

Sunday 19 November 2006
9.30am Coffee
10am - 12pm Talks
Domain Theatre, Lower Level 3
Art Gallery of NSW

Admission $10
Enquiries & bookings: Tel. (02) 9225 1878

The Writing and Society Group at the University of Western Sydney
in association with the Art Gallery Society of the AGNSW present:

Paul Cézanne and Sensation

Speakers:
Terence Maloon (Art Gallery of NSW)
Paul Uhlmann (Edith Cowen University)
Lawrence Held (reading from ‘conversations’ with Paul Cézanne)

Convenor:
Anthony Uhlmann (University of Western Sydney)

In the late 19th century Paul Cézanne, attempting to bring ‘classicism’ to Impressionism by returning to an interest in processes of composition which had been left to one side, developed the concept of ‘sensation’ to describe thinking in painting, and argued for the possibility of a ‘logic of organized sensations’.

Whereas the idea of an ‘impression’, for the French Impressionists, carries the sense of a passive reflection, with nature impressing its image on the artist who then faithfully records the moment, ‘sensation’ involves a complex process of interaction which is more active than passive. Sensation is projected by external nature and seen, but then it needs to be organised by the internal nature, or mind, of the artist through a process of composition which draws relations between ‘motifs’ within what has been sensed. Once it has been organised, or understood, the sensation is transferred to the brushstroke, with each ‘touch’ constituting a sensation, laying down sensation in turn on the canvas, which might then be experienced or confronted by a viewer.

The world, then, can be drawn into the painting, even in unexpected ways. In a letter to Emile Bernard of 1888 Vincent Van Gogh wrote of the apparent clumsiness of some of Cézanne’s brushstrokes: “I thought about Cézanne, especially in regard to his touch, which is so inept in certain studies – skip the word inept, given that he probably executed those studies when the mistral was blowing. Since, half the time, I have to cope with the same difficulty, it dawned on me why Cézanne’s touch is sometimes so sure and sometimes appears clumsy: it’s his easel shaking”

Rather than passing through naive formulas or simplistic conventions, Cézanne’s aesthetic is built upon a complex theory of human perception and the emotions produced through perception. For this reason it is apparent that Cézanne’s theories have again become immediately relevant, strongly resonating with theories of cognition currently being developed in cognitive science (in the work of Antonio Damasio, for example) which in turn resonate with theories of perception in contemporary philosophy (in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Martha Nussbaum, for example). The interrelation of these ideas is becoming increasingly provocative to current artistic practice: we may be looking for Cézanne and those who worked in light of his ideas behind us, when, instead, they are still ahead of us.

This seminar draws together an art historian, curator and thinker with a formidable knowledge of Cézanne’s work, Terence Maloon; an award-winning contemporary painter who is currently researching questions of artistic practice in a number of painters including Cézanne, Paul Uhlmann; and a distinguished actor, Lawrence Held, who will perform extracts from Cézanne’s published ‘conversations’ with Joachim Gasquet and Emile Bernard.