PUBLISHED IN LES CAHIERS DE PSYCHOLOGIE DE L'ART ET DE LA CULTURE N°16, ÉCOLE NATIONALE SUPÉRIEURE DES BEAUX-ARTS, PARIS
Fortunate is any art that is successfully realised and artistically worked out. A true painting, a good painting is obviously fortunate in and of itself, independent of its subject, its psychologically destructive or negative charge (Goya: Disasters of War; Picasso: Guernica; Van Gogh: Wheat Field with Crows…).
Some of Cézanne’s paintings, from the Montagne-Sainte-Victoire series or the Baigneuses, are doubly fortunate. As the painter himself notes: "I feel coloured by all the shades of the Infinite. I have become one with my painting."
Matisse’s violinist (Le Violoniste à la fenêtre, 1917), as well as Paul Klee’s Route principale and Routes secondaires (end 1928-early 1929), also come from this same dimension. It is not the subject that is the cause here. These paintings represent the state of bliss that was theirs while they were being painted.
What state is this?
It is an experience – an experience that impossible to communicate or describe…
Rarely, oh so rarely – but it does happen when painting – the body becomes the precise and perfect instrument. The Conscious and Unconscious joined together become a mere witness.
A witness perceiving with surprise, amazement even, the bursting of the Universal, the Outside of Time – the Timeless qua I Am – into the Here and Now.