Topology
IV — A Space Of Which One Has No Idea
from La Peinture Cubist (1945-57) by Jean Paulhan
(a work of translation in progress by R. Groome)
If visual space is superior to
tactile space, it is because with a
little goodwill one can give it three dimensions.
-Henri Poincare, Derniere Pensees, III, 3.
There is a celebrated, but laconic thought of Pascal that
insists in being understood on the diagonal: Is it necessary to lend a
trompery to things that are not foolish? Neither Pascal (nor
anyone else) ever supposed that painting in general was vain because it
limited the appearance of an object. He wanted to say — and he
precisely said it — that painting was not vain, but a sort of painting,
a particular species of painting which contents itself with appearance
and fooling the eye — trompe-l'oeil — “What vanity that painting draws
admiration by resemblance to things that one does not admire the
originals". Where it logically follows his call for a painting that
does not attract by resemblance admiration and therefore escapes the
vanity of that which does. In sum, Pascal prefers a painting that
doesn't resemble too much. He would also like to get rid of nenuphars
(water-lilies) and false windows.
He appeals to modern painting. And he would like to mark with the same
blow the vanity of Man, ready to admire in the copy what he does not
admire in the original. He repeats in this manner what the philosophers
have always said — and this is very well what common sense thinks.
Hsieh Ho condemned severely the "the copy of appearances"; Plato, who
counseled painters in the Philebe to use geometric forms as much as
possible "that give the sentiment of turning and moving", and orders
them, in the Republic, to "flee perspective, and other charlatan
things"; Plotin vomits "the imitation pure and simple". The Koran says
that on the day of judgment one will condemn the painters, after
punishing their pretensions, to live the life of the characters and
animals that they have represented. And if they fail, to hell they go!
(They never succeed). Baudelaire revealed in the "copy of appearances"
such dangers — the forgetting of the just and the true; the passion of
beauty, of the pretty, the pictorial; monstrous and unknown disorders —
that he comes to understand and "excuses as the suppression of the
object". Why, and what do they want to say?
First of all, it is to say that a simple art of trompe-l’oeil, rather
than art, is a simple amusement good for teaching the public on the
latest discoveries of optics. It is done mechanically, while the soul
doesn't feel itself in the least engaged: rather it is alarmed, when it
sees at the theatre, at the cinerama, or quite simply in the optical
views and stereoscopes a little more of the relief that it
distinguishes in the world (and finishes by doubting whether there is
anything in this that is truthful). That an artist paints insects so
resembling that monkeys try to eat them is quite humorous, but that
does not go much further (there are a lot of other traps that monkeys
fall into). This is done without the least amount of genius. Nobody has
esteem either for the painting or for the monkeys. The painting that
represents my office with its writing pad (not to forget the ink
stains), the messed up papers and the glasses on top, the clock hanging
on the file cabinet and the two pens, can be resembling to the utmost
degree. But I already have my office, and that suffices. There are even
moments when I have too much of an office that gets out of control.
What is this double worth where I do not even have the chance of
finding the letter I lost last month? What? I do not even dream of
searching for it — and the least that one can say for trompe-l’oeil, is
that it does not tromp (fool)
the eye? I believe everyone would agree with this. But what does
this vanity consist of and what is a trompe-l’oeil?
It is a tableau that attempts to make its quality of being a tableau
forgotten — or to establish that it at least might make it forgotten;
which begins by conserving the exact dimension (whereby the number of
its objects are strictly limited. The trompe-l’oeil can very well
represent a paperweight, but not a mountain; a cameo, but not the
figure of a real woman; a flea, but not an elephant), which voluntarily
makes the choice, in order to reproduce them, of images, of engravings
and tableaux, where the relief of imitation is already in play:
becoming the perspective of a perspective, which uses a mellow and
invisible execution where the hand of the painter does not betray
itself, which avoids arousing us and neither has a unity nor subject
other than simple resemblance, such that the personal spirit of the
painter, her fantasy, her passions, or her faith, does not show itself
any more than the hand. There is still more.
Trompe-l’oeil is not content to mime the space that separates one
represented object from another. It still aims, in the manner of
certain films in relief, to suggest to the spectator a space which
separates it from the canvas. In such a way it shows the spectator
before a rare object, a precious vase, a globe map, a simple writing
pad, which makes of its principal subject, a corner of drapery that
covers and protects it from dust and gazes; or then again, where the
highest steps permit an access to the platform where it is found
exposed. It is a question of compromising the spectator, to make her
enter into this game, where cunning is good: meanwhile, the amateur
from her side multiplies around the trompe-l’oeil traps and passages,
arranging on a chimney the same playing cards of which the
trompe-l’oeil is itself the image, where the ashtray responds to the
half consumed cigarette, where a magnifying glass reveals a miniature,
thus, redoubling from all sides the play of a perspective which no
longer knows any obstacle, which is shown in a pure state, and betrays
clearly its default.
What default and what is finally perspective?
(to be continued)
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