The Gaze of the Blind: Notes on Cézanne and Cubism

Art historians usually distinguish between two divergent trends in modern painting: an expressionist one, and another which the essay calls "thing-ist," with adherents from Cézanne to the cubism of Picasso and Braque, from Léger up to Italian arte povera. But this distinction should be closely examined. While Van Gogh and Munch on the one hand and Cézanne on the other appear to open what is perceived as two alternative approaches in modern art, the essay asks whether this distinction is necessary. Is it, in short, something etched deeply into the project of modern art? There are two ways of perceiving the relation between the subject and the real: the Van Gogh lineage aims at representing above all the painter's gaze on what he sees, while the Cézanne lineage is dominated by a vision or view that aims at eliminating the gaze. This distinction can be gleaned from various psychoanalytic, especially Jacques Lacan's, reflections on the dynamics of the gaze; it is a way of putting new wine in old casks, the casks being the commonplace view of Cezanne's painting in particular as aiming at pure visibility. That distinction—which to many can appear too drastic and vague—finds its factual confirmation, however, in neurology.