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Explores how traditional relations among the arts have changed in our time, focusing on the radical transformation of Paul Cezanne.
This book explores the contemporary modification of traditional relations among the arts. Interpreting Cézanne as a founder of Modernism, it focuses on an aesthetics of the image (with roots in Bergson, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty) of equivalent value across the arts and in literature.
The author argues that Cézanne's transformation of traditional pictorial images and invention of radically new types of images resulted in the replacement of the mimetic motivation of the pictorial sign by symbolist, plastic, contemplative, and visionary motivations. These yielded four corresponding types of images all of which can be generally found together in all the great Modernist masters. After surveying the transformation of the image in the psychological theories of the nineteenth century, this investigation focuses on the Bergsonian philosophy of the image as a hermeneutical parallel of Cézanne's pictorial theory and practice. Included are original readings of the most important serial paintings of Cézanne, including the Mont. Ste.-Victoire, the Bathers, and the Cardplayers.
"Readers will be challenged by Medina's account, for her good book covers a lot of ground in an original way, successfully dealing with both visual materials and the texts she summarizes thus opening the way for fruitful future discussion." — David Carrier, Carnegie Mellon University
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I. Cézanne and the Unity of Modernism
Modernism: Technique vs. Content
Cézanne: The Late Work
II. From Impressionism to Cézanne: Psychological Theories
The Impression as Medium
The Redefinition of Sensation: Psychology and Epistemology
Psychological Positivism: Taine
Psychological Eclecticism: Psychophysics
Empathetic and Abstract Psychologism
The Bergsonian Synthesis
The Blending of Horizons: Bergson, Cézanne, Modernism
III. From Impressionism to Cézanne: Aesthetic Theories
The Impressionists: From Sensations to Signs
From Truth to Symbol: Optics and Color Science
The Symbolists: From Signs to Images
In Conclusion: Cézanne, the Potential Synthesis
IV.The Path into Modernism: Four Modalities of Imagery in Cézanne
The "Legendary" Cézanne
"Realization" in Nineteenth-Century Aesthetics
Cézanne's Early Period (1863-95)
Symbolic Images: Realization des Sensations
Cézanne's Experimental Period (1880-95)
Plastic Images: Realisation sur Nature
Modulation
Condensation
The Motif
The Period of Serialization (1890-1906)
Contemplative Images: Realisation du Motif
Visionary Images: Realisation du Motif
V. Death and Non-Figuration: Cézanne's Ultimate Synthesis
The Pictorial Materials of the Imagination: Analytic Components and Antecedents of the Shifting Motif of The Cardplayers
The Narrative Materials of the Imagination: Scenes of Cardplaying and Card Fables as Sources of Emplotment
The Affective Materials: The Ugolino Drawing and Other Biographical Images as Indistinct Elements of Motif in The Cardplayers
Excursus: On the Mythology of Modern Death
Conclusion: The Trump Card/Players
Notes
Bibliography
Index