By John Chmaj
Cezanne’s still life paintings function metaphorically. They are NOT about fruit, or table cloths. If one chooses to experience the objects as shapes, with their own distinct groupings and color combinations, a whole new set of relations – and even emotions – are suggested. The mind naturally seeks to find associations between the colors and placement of the fruit, which are together, which exist alone, and which seem the most strongly linked. Cezanne increases the feelings of motion by tilting the table, peaking the tablecloth and ruffling it between groupings of fruit, as well as bringing the drapery alive in a similar manner. This form of complex but understated emotion suggests some of the compositions of Bill Evans, such as “Time Remembered.” This musical composition evolves groupings in unusual compositions, in a through-composed manner (non-regular and never repeating).
Some musical correspondences include:
Elegant, gentle rhythms
Irregular groupings
Harmony through varied shape correspondences (or in music, through oblique harmonic correspondence)
Sense of motion
- Tilted table, peaked cloth, flow of tapestry
- Motion of fruit down the table in tumbling groups
- Musical shapes repeated throughout
- Irregular but somewhat repeated musical shapes
- Sense of musical pauses and non-resolving cadences
Controlled emotions – balanced yet asymmetrical
Sparse figurations
Clusters of fruit = clusters of harmonic cadence
The mind makes up correspondences given the weak harmonic cadences
Likewise the mind decides which fruit is related
- Greens to greens
- Orange to orange
- Groups of threes
- Groups of twos
- Singles
- On cloth / off cloth
- In bowl
Eight non-repeating figures in Time Remembered by Bill Evans
- Varying length 2 to 6 bars
- Combine different groupings of the melodic figures
- Against different harmonic variations
Ground and balance in painting achieved through solid, stable forms
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- Pitcher
- Table (although tilted)
- Wall
- Tapestry
- Tablecloth
In “Time Remembered,” solidity is through cadence, not through an overarching form. To bring out these gestures and energies the improvisation aims to:
Expose combinations in sequence, emerging and dissolving in slow rhythm
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- Shapes
- Planes
- Gestures
The eye flows
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- Up through the fruit to the apex of the oranges in the bowl
- Tumbling down the tablecloth and fruit to the bottom right
- Up again to the curtain, and across
- Zigzagging back across the table – fruit, tablecloth, perceiving the pitcher as the ‘anchor’ to the motion
- Looking again at the irregular rhythms of the fruit: their groupings, colors, the ‘community of objects’
This painting tells a story, and as such it is far from still. For those willing to look at the objects as themselves pure expressions of color, shape and placement there are many more meanings to be had.
In these ways Cezanne foreshadowed and guided the next generations of modern artists to start to see art as pure expression, its meanings revealed in the pure elements and energies of itself. His aim, as he described it, in each work, was a “realisation”: a capturing of the essence of forms and colors as they act upon the viewer and the soul. It was, in essence, an act of faith and gratitude for the unconditioned purity of experience.
