AnAnalysis of Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin’s Peasant Paintings of the Late 1880’s Through the Lens of Jacques Ranciere’s Regimes of theArts and Interwoven with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Thoughts on Perception and Martin Heidegger’s Writings on Being
FineArt (Hons)
Word Count: 7817
Adissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of a Batchelor ofArts (Hons) degree in FineArt
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design
University of Dundee
2024
Abstract
Initially this thesis set out to investigate the materiality of post-impressionist paintings through imitation and awareness by Being-in-the-world through the lens of Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin and through the works of Jacques Ranciere. I soon recognised the work equally highlights how we construe the low paid in society. This thesis explores Van Gogh and Gauguin’s 1880’s peasant paintings leading up to and including their grape harvest paintings. These paintings are analysed in accordance with Ranciere’s concerns around framing the forms of the sensible in art. The research involved conducting detailed analysis on Van Gogh and Gauguin’s Grape Harvest paintings and the debate is enhanced by their contemporary paintings of peasant-life In the first chapter, I explore the artist within the mainstream society mechanism according to Plato, considering society’s categorical limitations on the artist through setting a classical representation boundary on art. It considers Plato’s problem of the artist as natural philosopher, individuated from the state which could subvert the Republic. The second chapter investigates selected artworks through the lens of representation using Ranciere’s 4-principles based on Aristotelian thought relating to the sayable and the visible in art. It considers the language of Being through Martin Heidegger’s thoughts on the essence of Being beyond the physical person and introduces Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts around artwork as motif and how we recognise motif as sensing something The third chapter explores Hegelian thought about the essence of a thing This informs Ranciere’s entire model which is based on aesthesis; how we are affected by vision which deploys the function of seeing as opposed to viewing. It examines how light, and sight plays its part in seeing. Being-in-the-world is Being-inlight, man is in a temporal existence and this seeing affects our feelings and how we see the world itself.
Table of Illustrations
Gauguin,
Introduction
Firstly, I would like to discuss how this thesis informs my practice. As a painter I grapple with the language of figurative and the abstract using colour. The Post-Impressionists bridged representation and aesthetics through their relationship with colour and composition. I am intrigued by the mind’s interplay within the subject-object paradigm and how philosophical intellect differs from being-inthe-world which deploys discernment. When I stand before an artwork, I enquire how the painting works within me through the vision of the self just like encountering a natural phenomenon As Maurice Merleau-Ponty recognises Max Ernst’s writings: ‘The visible in relation to its material elemental existence forgets its property’. Seeing is more than vision, it invokes sight through the lens of the mind Heidegger recognises that by comprehending the mis-shaped boot we see Being, not the person I have chosen to focus on Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh because they speak directly to me. They were both from managerial backgrounds, pastor and financial clerk, and chose the difficult path of painter. Through their work one gets a glimpse of the peasant, and the metamorphous of the painter into peasant by the path of the prodigal child, I have experienced a similar life journey. Merleau-Ponty states ‘There are inadequacies which stop the world from being a painting’ I think they’d agree. There are three chapters based on the structures of Jacque Ranciere’s regimes of the arts to analyse their 19th century France. In his work the Politics of Aesthetics 2004 he considers aesthetic expression as an art characteristic of modern society the three regimes are: Ethical; a regime where I explore artist as philosopher. Secondly, I analyse Van Gogh and Gauguin’s paintings in relation to Ranciere’s 4-principles system of representation based on Aristotelian thought
Introducing the Paintings
I will analyse (Van Gogh, V., 1888, the Red Vineyard, reference 2, p.2).
Van Gogh, V., 1888, The Red Vineyard, Oil on Canvas, 75x90cm, in the fictional principle, (Van Gogh, V., 1886, Boots with Laces painting, reference 5, p.3)
Van Gogh, V., 1886, Boots with Laces, Oil on Canvas, 37.5cmx45cm in relation to the genre principle and (Van Gogh, V., 1888, The Sower painting, reference 3, p.2)
Van Gogh, V., 1888, The Sower, Oil on Canvas, 32.5x40.3cm for the convenance principle. In the final principle, action, I will analyse (Gauguin, P., 1888, Vision After the Sermon: Jacob Wrestling with an Angel Painting, reference 4, p.3).
Gauguin, P., 1888, Vision After the Sermon: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, Oil on Canvas, 72.2x91cm,
The third chapter explores aesthetics Ranciere considers the significance of meaning in five categories. In the significance of meaning section I discuss (Gauguin, P., 1888, The Wine Harvest: Human Misery, figure 1, p.2)
Gauguin, P., 1888, The Wine Harvest: Human Misery, Oil on Jute Sackcloth, 73.5x92cm, In the infinite expression I discuss figures 2 and 5. Both figure’s 5 and 4 are discussed in the world itself and figure 4 is analysed in relation to human expression How we relate to the world is illustrated through figures 4 and 6 where I consider (Gauguin, P., 1888, The Painter of Sunflowers, figure 6, p.3)
Gauguin, P., 1888, The Painter of Sunflowers, Oil on Canvas, 73 cm × 91 cm
to illustrate how we see ourselves. I consolidate my thoughts and conclude the thesis through the lens of Van Gogh’s Red Vineyard Painting whereby I debate the verbal versus visual expression. Not only will I draw upon the philosopher’s referenced by Ranciere in his construction of the regimes, but I will also enrich the analysis by intertwining the thoughts of Heidegger, in relation to his concept of Being and Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts around the Gestalt Psychology model in his writings on Eye and Mind where he analyses Paul Cezanne’s paintings.
Introducing Jacques Ranciere’s Regimes and The Other Philosophers
Ranciere devised three major regimes for framing the forms of sense through the arts. He contends that art needs an observer, the observer is in time and therefore experiencing being-in-the-world through emotion, what he terms aesthetics, ‘our feelings towards’ which is temporal. This differs from Heidegger’s non-aesthetic thought perspective that we are not in duality, but our body is in existence as an extension of the world. The ethical regime underpins Ranciere’s progressive thoughts on modernity, the ethical regime is grounded in Plato’s Critique of Imitation (Tanke, J.J., 2011, p.77) I will demonstrate the failure with Plato’s idea through Heidegger, in his 20th century writings, he considers how figure 5 depicts the art and the object existing in the material world as a form of Being To paraphrase Heidegger, Being is the presence of a things energy path through life, the path is the language of Being he notes this kind of being as different from being as subject (Ahlberg, L-O., 1992, P.110). Aristotle’s poetics focusses on the impact of catharsis of individual’s emotions through good actors. I will explore how Van Gogh and Gauguin considered this in their works. From this, Ranciere devised a four-principles model based on Aristotelian thought around the imitation of action which stems from Greek Tragedy exploring the impact of the sayable and the visible in art. Finally, in his aesthetic regime, Ranciere shows how Hegel’s second contradiction overthrows all previous thought from a representative system, advocating language as a living entity over narrative. Post-Impressionist representation loses something in the classical representation of a thing’s essence, the thing is a self-expressing entity out with human expression (Tanke, J.J., 2011, p.77). In contrast, Merleau-Ponty discusses the essence of a thing through sight; the visible can exist out with the material existence of a thing. Something Heidegger doesn’t entertain; he focusses on the bent fabric of the boot (Merleau-Ponty, M., 1964, p.167). Hegel’s second contradiction discusses capturing the essence of modernity through aesthetic language of modern art techniques rather than the essence of a thing for example the bent material of the boot (Deranty, J-P, Ed., 2010, p.124).
Chapter 1, The Regimes of the Arts, The Ethical Regime
This chapter discusses the artist as philosopher, how the artist mis-aligns with the state through the discernment of the mind as a vehicle for truth.
1.1 Artist as Philosopher
Plato considers art as political because it has the power to subvert a community (Tanke, J. J., 2011, p.77). I contend that art’s subversive voice is a good thing as it gives prominence to those who have no voice. Plato thinks that the non-thinking masses shouldn’t have free speech because it could subvert a community. Figures 1 and 2 are inadvertently political, cast a light on an uncomfortable
truth of 19th Century French society suffered by the peasants in the field Figure 2 depicts insect like humans gathering upon the land and figure 1 reveals the human misery of such an existence In giving voice to the peasant Gauguin used modern allegory such as death modelled on a mummy The peasant’s hunched position and her facial expression contains a truth of her existence as he philosophises about her (Silverman, D., 2000, p.234) Gauguin became a full-time artist by 1885 (Jirat-Wasiutyenski, V., and Travers Newton, Jnr, H., p.58). Plato would disagree with Gauguin’s selfemployment because only a philosopher has the right to poesis. Gauguin’s painting highlights the problem with Plato, who appears to negate the human heart as a vehicle for truth (Tanke, J.J., 2011, p.77). Consider Van Gogh’s heart-felt writing:
‘…but looking at the stars, always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map. Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?’ (Nemeczek, A., 1995, p.56)
Heidegger disagrees with Plato’s philosophising, he says, the lifeworld is truth, being-in-the-world provides us with lived experiences which are far from ideal, but they are the truth accessible to all. Heidegger’s writing shows art as a means whereby truth reveals itself through Being and not philosophising (Shaver, G., J., 1973, p.744) Plato contends that only philosophers can reach for the ideal forms; but they can be mimicked by anyone here on earth but are degraded in doing so To paraphrase Heidegger, through our learning and growing we become, and in our becoming we come to know the world Merleau-Ponty considers shape that can be recognised as motif among the collective mind which helps us inspect the world. Consider the bent fabric of the Boots in figure 5 as a motif The motif as something Plato can concur with in his ideal forms (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, p.164)
1.2 The State as a Single Source of Truth
Plato claims that giving power to the philosopher is essential to the operation of an ideal state. I contend that through this lens, philosophers would become a dictator. In Plato’s Republic, Plato thinks one should perform one job in life (Tanke, J.J., 2011, p.77). Carl Jung points out that ‘communism is an archaic, primitive and insidious pattern which characterises primitive social groupings’ (De Laszlo, V., Ed 1958 p.xvi). Plato would assert that Van Gogh remain a minister and Gauguin a financial clerk, remaining within their social groupings. I argue that it is for the betterment of society that both elected to follow a path into painting, not only has it enriched debate in the 19th century French artworld and invoked aesthetic joy but is also still speaking to us in the 21st century worldview through books and artworks Homans discusses The Second French Empire as an imperial foundation, a mechanism to stem anarchy and revolutions. Napoleon III held power as the ‘male universal suffrage’ essentially meaning a dictatorship as he represented the entire population. All
executive power rested before the emperor, Plato’s philosopher-king would have, a divine universal right to poesis (Homans, H. W. 1870, p.2-3) Gauguin’s father experienced political instability before the 1852’s anti-Parliamentary French Constitution The family temporarily moved to Meso-America (Silverman, D., 2000, p.121). Gauguin’s father was a political journalist with an alternative voice to the state Gauguin’s father would be accused of poesis against the state in Plato’s Republic; disinformation which could ‘unravel the community’ (Tanke, J.J., 2011, p.77). But who’s to judge whether Gauguin’s father had an ideal form within his writings.
1.3 Art in Service of the Truth Through Discernment
Plato points out that the artwork needs to be faithful to an idea (Tanke, J.J., 2011, p.77). I argue that figure 1 is faithful to an idea by concept, a truth of the peasant’s condition. Thus, it could be seen as a sacred service, not in founding and preserving a community as an ideal, but in recognition of the truthful existence within the peasant worldview through Gauguin’s discernment. Plato asserts artistic representations are judged according to their truthfulness (2011, p.77) I argue that people’s truths are different, Van Gogh from a Dutch protestant reformist background and Gauguin from a catholic seminary education would suggest they have different foundational realities, and this comes through in their paintings Boyd Khun observes that philosophy evaluates the forms of the truth. He contends ‘Discernment is the lens of truth, the instrument of the mind’ Boyd Khun contends ‘discernment can be turned outward upon the world where the cosmos has already written the characters of the creative ideation in the forms of nature’ (Boyd Khun, A., no date, p.110) MerleauPonty asserts that we look out from the inside and in this it is our second sight which looks upon the painting as we see the world. Our physical eyes trace light rays, colours and lines. We process things through the gift of the visible. Vision learns by seeing and learns from itself like Heidegger’s discernment when he considers Being ‘in the boot’s fabric’ from figure 5. Gauguin has seen the Breton community through their religious practice and has discerned from his own upbringing the inadequacies which stop the world from being a painting, the hardship of the day-to-day physical life. The painting is not in-itself because it represents other, the object, in his case a peasant. Through discernment he sees the colours on his palette and decides a modern theme as the painting awaits its colours. The artist sees the work as complete and recognises the immanence of the work. As Gauguin sees Van Gogh’s The Sower (fig 3), he knows another has answered other inadequacies through their lens of discernment too (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, p.165)
Chapter 1’s Conclusion
There is no separation between art and politics because the artist is experiencing the world, has a voice which can be subversive against the inadequacies of the state. In this everyone philosophises
and is capable of poesis because everyone discerns Being is in truth because it is not separate from the world. But within a subjective consciousness we can inspect the world through motif. An artist must reach beyond the norm and be able to individuate from society to impart his vision, because visionaries enrich the world. Truth cannot be faithful to the idea because we deploy discernment through individual subjective experiences.
Chapter 2, The Regimes of the Arts, The Representative Regime
This chapter discusses the 4 representative principles according to Ranciere. Ranciere’s representative regime considers an Aristotelian idea; Aristotle’s poetics is an attempt to individuate art. To analyse this further, Aristotle uses the concept of mimesis which defines the relationship between the sayable and the visible based on the beaux artes (Tanke, J.J., 2011, p.78). The beaux artes in painting shows an artist’s practice which entails careful research from documents, photographs, oil sketches as preparatorily practice, an attribute of a good author. Building up a narrative to represent a classical subject. The Naturalists rejected the Impressionists because of their expressive technique. Gauguin openly criticised des Beaux Arts because of their illusions of reality (Jirat-Wasiutyenski, V., and Travers Newton Jnr. H., 2000, p.85) Ranciere considers through the Regimes of the Arts the importance of the relationship between meaning and world in artwork. He devised a 4-principles system to address the gaps in Aristotle’s poetics (Deranty, J-P., Ed. 2010, p.121) Aristotle gives emphasis on verbal articulation, Ranciere overlays all artworks onto Aristotle’s teachings (2010, p 122)
2.1 Principle one, The Fictional Principle and Visual Analysis of Figure 2
The painting is non-classical in nature but displays cultural issues with modernist colouration, style and symbol It displays a field energised by its workers. Compositional flow from bottom left to top right. A deep register of contrast from purple path bottom centre to the yellow sun, the dark world to the light. Activity is in the lower half of the scene and tales off into stipples. Primitivism and
abstraction aid the composition. Values of nature, status of materiality and the sacred consideration of the land is depicted at the hand of the peasant
I selected this work to analyse Ranciere’s fictional principle. Although it is a scene imagined from real life, Van Gogh has removed the temporal element, therefore depicting the entire crop-cycle, creating a fiction. All parts of the Grape Harvest are present in the image from the Sower to the horse and cart to market. (Tanke, J., J., 2011, p.79). Heidegger would assert that the essence of Being could not be attained because of these diverse subjects and modernist representation (Alberg, L., O., 1993, p.110) Van Gogh’s painting does relate to community and contains a relationship between the sayable and the visible, but termed a fable as the scene is like a motion picture.
2.2 Principle Two: Genericity Visual analysis of Figure 5
Van Gogh, V., 1886, Boots with Laces, Oil on Canvas, 37.5cmx45cm,
This image considers the ‘soul’ of the boot. Simple flow of line, simplistic shadow, the composition moves through the image through the laces. Painting appears unimportant to artists because it is a still-life but is important to philosophers as it questions life. Still life in the classical era was seen as lowly without the need for higher thoughts. Although monotone it has reds and greens throughout, colour is like lumps of earth.
Ranciere discusses genre, the nature of the object being represented (Tanke, J., J., 2011, p.79). Exploring figure 5, I Paraphrase Heidegger: Beingness is seen beyond the actual being of the personification of the peasant but is the life-story of the peasant, not just by the characteristic of the boot’s form and matter, but the very existence of Being woven through the fabric of her bent boots (Shaver, G., J., 1973, p.745):
‘From the dark openings of the worn insides of the shoes the toiling tread of the worker stands forth.’ ‘(…) the wordless joy of having once more withstood want’ (Ahlberg, L-O., 1992, p.114).
The above clearly demonstrates Heidegger’s catharsis I paraphrase Heidegger: Being takes precedence over everything else, it is the presence of a thingy energy The worn fabric witnesses a lived life, is a motif to that life, as Merleau-Ponty would recognise. The boots are moulded by the peasant’s journey through life and are the language of Being (Ahlberg, L-O., 1992, p.114). MerleauPonty notes that the body is caught up in the fabric of the world which becomes a dualistic nature Merleau-Ponty discusses the sensing and the sensed, but in relation to figure 5, it is the boot that senses the sensed, the person. As the boot is the subject of the painting in its appearance, this motif senses the spectre of the person through its shape and form. Merleau-Ponty quotes Cezanne: ‘Nature is on the inside’. This is relating to quality, light and depth of that which is before us, is also registered in us (Merleau-Ponty, M., 1964, p.164). In phenomenology one can list the attributes of a thing for example, leather, tread, rubber, etc., but it doesn’t set apart its thingy entity, the lifeworld of the thing can describe material attributes, but not its non-thingy entity. Hegel is saying a similar thing to Heidegger, life is already expressed in-of-itself as Being in this case the bent fabric as what Hegel would term poetry of a thing (Deranty, J-P., Ed. 2010, p.126)
2.3 Principle Three: Convenance and a Visual analysis of Figure 3 Van Gogh, V., 1888, The Sower, Oil on Canvas, 32.5x40.3cm
The composition displays a Japonist tree’s sprouts which slices through the sun. Tree diagonal against the Sower. Natural colouration and non-natural symbolist simplification The image is a real scene in the material world. The giant sun as Christ’s aura over the arduous labour of the peasant working in the shade, recognising his sacrifice.
Ranciere discusses what is right and proper using underlying norms, by good authors in his principle (Tanke, J., J., 2011, p.79). Silverman discusses figure 3 as having strong symbolism of a peasant figure, angular in his action and dark before a brilliant sun (Silverman, D., 2000, p.108). Through painterly narrative, Van Gogh is attempting to illuminate the pre-industrial rural community by a depiction of exertion from the peasant. Van Gogh is immersed in the visible, the Sower’s body which is itself
visible to him, but he does not appropriate what he sees, the field or the person, but looks upon it what Merleau-Ponty terms ‘to have at a distance’. He represents the peasant using paint, not the subject’s materiality (Merleau-Ponty, M., 1964, p.162). Van Gogh’s figural treatment, brushwork and compositional structure carried the weight of his labour to the canvas medium by his own action but is also displaying a language of the weight of the Sower in his swing casting seed (Silverman, D., 2000, p.110). Merleau-Ponty recognises that the painter takes his body with him not just the physical, but also the mental fictions of the mind, lends to how the mind can paint. Van Gogh maps the visible within the reach of his sight, but the idea is from his motor projections, and this is where the overlapping occurs. The artist knows the work of the physical labour of the peasant and uses physical labour himself upon the canvas, but the sunlight is a sentience, it illuminates the world and therefore an artist can select colour in response to vision by the light-rays. (Merleau-Ponty, M., 1964, P.162). Van Gogh has used underlying norms to properly depict the subject.
2.4 Principle Four: The Representation of Action and a Visual Analysis of Figure 4
Gauguin, P., 1888, Vision After the Sermon: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, Oil on Canvas, 72.2x91cm,
The diagonal tree is a compositional signifier which slices through the centre of the image to divide the non-natural from the natural. The tree is floating between the peasant and the vision. Stylistic expression of subjective experience through the lens of the peasant. The image is primitive in style through Japanese symbolic technique.
Ranciere discusses the translation of expression of the hierarchy between the high and the low of the class system and what is sensible to the structures of societal norms (Tanke, J., J., 2011, p.80). Figure 4 carries Catholic and biblical authenticity shows Breton women having a vision after witnessing a sermon. The priest who performed the sermon is also in the image along with Jacob and the angel, for which the sermon is about. The image is stereotypical as it shows peasant women bowing their heads in silent prayer (Silverman, D., 2000 p.93). The image displays the activity of speech because it depicts a verbal passage. It is a ‘whole story scene’. Gauguin has used a modern compositional
technique, and this is where the painting crosses over into aesthetic considerations and modernism. Gauguin’s use of form and colour is a kind of language (2000, p.92) Silverman discusses his use of bold colours as a backdrop of Jacob and angel, like stained-glass. The colour scheme is simplified as Silverman identifies to dominant areas of ‘deep black, rich blue, luminous white and brilliant red’ The picture is bold and rich, it does not convey the poor and the meek of muted and wash colours. However, the vision, but the peasants are depicted in more of a mono-tonal colouration they are still vibrant and luminous (2000, p.93).
Chapter 2’s Conclusion
The missing temporal element in figure 2 causes the image to take on a fictitious caveat causing it to be a fable about the crop-cycle. It depicts a whole story with diverse subjects and thus detracts from a thingy essence. Genre explores the nature of a thing, figure 5 is a witness to a thing’s senses. Its shape and form through its bent fabric is the poetry of a thing. Convenance underpins societal norms, Van Gogh has used colouration as the language of the peasant. The artist’s weight and movement to canvas brings forth the weight of the Sower casting his seed. Action representing the high and the low class through a good author is seen as sensible, figure 4’s biblical authenticity uses stereotypes, has colour as its language, representing stained glass, but there is no muted tone for the peasantry, however they appear luminous as though they have received the divine.
Chapter 3: The Regimes of the Arts, The Aesthetic Regime
This chapter discusses the infinite expression of the world and human expression within this world. Gauguin and Van Gogh lived amidst political instability in their early adulthood. The Third Republic came to an end in 1870 and eventually a permanent republic was installed in 1875. France became highly divisive until 1889, the year after Van Gogh’s and Gauguin’s collaboration at the Yellow House in Arles. So, they were in a highly charged political environment. On the left the reformists were seeking change in society and, on the right, the conservative peasantry and Catholic church stood its ground (Hanson, S. E., 2010). There is a paradox here. Van Gogh and Gauguin appeared to give voice to the right, the peasant and the church through a traditional representation of an idea but were really causing reform in the artworld as Post-Impressionists pushing techniques and becoming harbingers of modernity (Tanke, J., J., 2011, p.77) The aesthetic regime based on Hegelian thinking addresses the essence of modernity. It has five basic structural elements, which I will detail in this order: The significance of meaning, the infinite expression, the world itself, human expression and how we relate to the world as beings There are contradictions within this because there are freedoms of style and genre promoted in the modern times giving rise to potential choices made by
the artist which contradict the natural essence of the Being of a thing in nature through its own poetic expression (Deranty, J-P, Ed., 2010, p.124)
3.1 The Significance of Meaning with Visual Analysis
Figure 1
I analyse figure 1 to discuss the significance of meaning within an artwork.
Gauguin, P., 1888, The Wine Harvest: Human Misery, Oil on Jute Sackcloth, 73.5x92cm
Gauguin used a high key colour palette. The colour palette is warm; however, the peasant front and centre appear gloomy. There is a curved line composition of thirds, cold leading back to warm. The image is on sackcloth and appears rough at the surface, is textured because of this, but the paint is smoothly applied with a palette knife caking effect. The image is punchy, and symbolic.
Figure 1 displays the language of colour, line, composition, jute material and the consistency of paint applied. Gauguin has embedded his expression into the fabric of the surface and thus the painting is a living language of embodiment not just narrative (Jirat-Wasiutyenski, V., and Travers Newton Jnr. H., 2000, p. 119):
Figure 1 ‘is applied to coarse jute, protruding tooth which held paint’. ‘Some areas of bare canvas still showing’ (2000, p.121). ‘Executed with a palette knife very thickly on coarse sacking in bold outlines filled almost with undifferentiated colours’ (2000, p.123).
Ranciere asserts, art described within the aesthetic regime considers art as its object. The sackcloth of the painting is the object of the painting carries its own meaning. Gauguin has challenged us to interpret what makes art through his choice of material (Deranty, J-P, Ed., 2010, p.125). MerleauPonty discusses a cave painting, he notices the difference between the actual painting and the rock it is painted upon. In the same way Gauguin has considered this paradigm. The image is not present in the same way that the jute fabric is. But as Merleau-Ponty recognises the image is not elsewhere either The painting is nearer to me because the resemblance of the image is inside me, my own emotion witnesses the lust and procrastination of the outside, the world of the peasant. Equally the world of the peasant, the outside, is constituted in the inside through feeling and in this I discover
more of the world. I come to know myself as peasant (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, P.164). Gauguin’s painting spreads itself into the thread of the material but it is not the material I do not look at the image in the same way I look at jute sacking. The image does not inhabit a place like the sackcloth does (Merleau-Ponty, M., 1964, P.164) Ranciere provides an example of Hugo’s novel Notre Dame de Paris. He recognises that the book is built like a cathedral because the cathedral is already a book. The meaning is in its fabric and not separate from it (Deranty, J-P., Ed., 2010, p.125).
3.2 The Infinite Expression, Figure 2 and Figure 5
Ranciere asserts, ‘everything speaks’ within the metaphorical language of nature (Deranty, J-P., Ed., 2010, p.126). Later we’ll discuss the frog in the river speaking its own poetry and the idea that human language vis-à-vis human world plays a part within the whole of nature and is not separate from it (Shuji, T., 2015). Hegel identifies the poetic as a dimension of the world which can be represented in any style and genre to help get to modernity’s essence, but something is lost in natures essence through the expression of man. Heidegger would think that man’s modern genre is an encroachment on a thing being a thing, because it would veil the natural essence of a thing, man’s expression would usurp the thingy nature. Compare the high-key colours of figure 2’s subjects. Hegel recognises, when depicting the world there is a lack of necessary signifiers but also in figure 2, the subject is reticent, its expression as a brown field, yet it, in its temporal existence overflows with sun’s expression and therefore the expression eclipses any human expression for which the painter tries to capture and cannot Heidegger rejects philosophical theory because it causes duality as othering subject from object detracts from Being. For example, in figure 5 there is no othering, the image of the boot’s bent fabric is captured and thus is an extension of the peasant. (Deranty, J-P., Ed., 2010, p.127 and Ahlberg, L-O., 1992, p.113).
3.3
The World Itself, Figure 5 and 4
Ranciere highlights the contradiction at the centre of the aesthetic regime: A poem is re-expressing the poetry inherent in the world’s natural essence, for example, a person tries to capture the river stream’s essence in word through poetic flow. The contradiction of the expressive principle is that the poetic is a dimension of the world itself. Consider the poetry of the bent fabric of the boot, it expresses its own essence in its own language (Deranty, J-P, Ed., 2020, p.126) Another example is, a Japanese person says, ‘In Japan the moon is not a mere natural phenomenon, it is intimate and deeply felt presence in our daily emotional lives’ (Shuji, T., 2015, p.36). Just because we can feel the presence of the moon doesn’t mean we can capture its expressive essence in paint to canvas, we can only express it through human expression In figure 4, the natural essence of a Breton scene is lost, Gauguin has exchanged the muted earthly tones of the world itself for a high key colour palette and
in this there is an intended plasticisation of the real which transcends reality (Deranty, J-P, Ed., 2020, p.127)
3.4 Human Expression, Figure 4
I continue the debate focussing on human experience, Gauguin wished to exhibit figure 4 in the church. The Mysteries of the Cathedrales book brings to our attention the esoteric nature of cathedrals. Within this esotericism Sworder notes ‘Notre-Dame-of-Paris as a philosopher’s church.’ Victor Hugo also recognised the cathedral as: ‘The most satisfying summary of the hermetic science, of which the church of saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie was such a complete hieroglyph’. The cathedral lacks the thinginess of nature but speaks of itself through human abstract thought forms, philosopher and object and the interplay of light, Being-in-time (Sworder, M., 1990, p.40). Authors from Giambattista Vico to Alois Riegl characterised Gauguin’s work as ‘aesthetic as a hieroglyph. Gauguin’s hand has created a living symbol’ (Jirat-Wasiutyenski, V., and Travers Newton Jnr., H., 2000 p.192) Gauguin was aware of the specific resonances between his painting and the set of stainedglass windows and had set out to create a symbol of a vision. He also made statements about angels in church windows, the interplay of light and colour on stained-glass (Silverman, D., 2000, p.115)
Gauguin commented that, ‘The Cathedral’s stained-glass windows as dynamic agents of celestial light, borne by angels, heavenly persons coming from a heavenly vault’. It would appear his intention would serve Plato’s idea of sacred art transcending communities. Plato would judge this on its truthfulness as accurately representing an ideal model within the philosopher/object paradigm Figure 4 fits this thought. But in Aristotle’s model of the sayable and the visible considers how we think about the image as to whether catharsis could be achieved, and this would be up to individual revelations. Here, Aristotle fails in his thinking, catharsis is an individual experience not a collective experience. Heidegger notes, one must stand before the work, Gauguin appears to be considering this within the church context (Silverman, D., 2000, p.116).
3.5 How We Relate to the World as Beings, figure 4 and figure 7
Ranciere thinks that on experiencing the stone, the statues and the architecture, the artist should express their meaning through feelings (Deranty, J-P, Ed., 2020, p.125). I would like to quote a passage from Le Mystere des Cathedrales:
‘Amid dazzling array of painted and gilded arches, of stringcourses and copings, of tympana with multi-coloured figures, each philosopher would show the result of his labours and work out the next sequence of his research’s. It was there they assessed probabilities and discussed possibilities and studied on the spot the allegory of the great book. Not least animated part of these gatherings was the obtuse explanation of the mysterious symbols all around them. They as being in the world can create understanding.’ (Sworder, M., 1990, p.41)
This reminds me of Plato’s relationship with the abstract forms, but it goes further, they’re experiencing feeling’, aesthesis in Being. Heidegger rejects aesthetics because man cannot ‘feel’ what a thing feels. On the contrary Plato recognises the mind’s ability for subjective consciousness as philosophers can interpret abstract forms out with the Earth-world. He considers the removal of the philosopher from ‘being-in-the-world’ through the promotion a subject-object dualism through is ideal forms (Ahlberg, L-O., 1992, p.111 and p.115). Merleau-Ponty suggests nothing is required by us to create aesthesis but to see. To paraphrase Merleau-Ponty in relation to this thought, he would recognise Gauguin’s attempt to display figure 4 alongside stained-glass where there is a play on light and space creates feeling in the viewer that allows the viewer to transcend the physical. The light through the stained glass creates reflections and shadows which causes the cathedral to come to life as its reflections work in us without us, like watching the glistening sea sparkle. For example, a candelabra in darkness is visible to us as a shadow across the altar. Merleau-Ponty would assert that the altar lies at the meeting place of the two lines of sight and makes possible the shadows and the physical candelabra to coexist together, yet they are together, the same. I think Gauguin may have recognised this attribute in the church when considering the context of his painting (Merleau-Ponty, M., 1964, P.167). Light comes through the stained glass and illuminates the object and joins with it, in this case figure 4
To consolidate thinking around the aesthetic regime on expression, I would like to explore other sentient beings as the poetry or language of a thing:
‘The brush warbler singing in the flowers, the voice of the frog that lives in the river – hearing these, we must ask: What living thing does not recite poetry of its own?’ (Shuji, T., 2015, p.32)
I paraphrase Heidegger, Being expresses itself within the language of Being of its specific type, as a Being as to how it exists in the world. It expresses how it expresses, a frog is a frog (Ahlberg, L-O., 1992, p.110). Continuing to paraphrase, Heidegger considers a thing possesses an inadvertent quality, and multi-sensual stimulants as well as form and matter, but the frog’s materiality still doesn’t present as its fullness, for example the actual DNA code of a thing I think this is true of manmade structures too, they are out with my internal structures, but one interplays with them, we cannot determine its thingy entity because they are abstract motifs; thought forms (1992, p.112).
Thinking back to cathedrals, how the light interacts with man-made relics gives life to these artefacts through the mind, in this the light tricks our imagination. We cannot bring these things under our control because they express themselves out with our expression. A human example of this is Gauguin representing Van Gogh; Van Gogh through Gauguin isn’t seeing Van Gogh as Van Gogh Van Gogh on seeing himself as the painter of Sunflowers (fig 6) in Gauguin’s sight but by witnessing the expression of other we become more informed about ourselves.
Gauguin, P., 1888, The Painter of Sunflowers, Oil on Canvas, 73 cm × 91 cm
Merleau-Ponty recognises that the body simultaneously sees and is seen. He says ‘That which looks at all things can also look at itself and recognise what its sees’. He calls this ‘the other side of seeing’
Two things are happening here, we see ourselves through others and we witness ourselves in the act of seeing. Van Gogh could see himself seeing his portrait caused self-realisation and at the same time he was seeing himself through another. This kind of seeing is not a ‘self through thought’ (MerleauPonty, M., 1964, P.162). Van Gogh does not create a form of himself through himself but reacts through confusion and narcissism because he is one who sees in that which he sees. This is like other forms such as nature and the cathedral providing revelation to the human mind, in this case, through Gauguin, he senses the self. Gauguin had used a fictional landscape and is said to have captured Van Gogh copying one of his earlier sunflower paintings. Van Gogh said, ‘It is certainly I, but I gone mad’. Gauguin has thought he had ‘captured his friends innate character’. Van Gogh through seeing himself through someone else he has come to know other. (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, P.163)
Chapter 3’s Conclusion
In the significance of meaning, I considered how the artwork appears to us as image and object, both painting and sackcloth. The two qualities are present through vision of the mind and on seeing the material. Natures infinite expression coexists with human expression. Modern painting is an encroachment on a thing because it veils the things essence. The poetic belongs to the world. The bent fabric of the boot is the boot’s poem just like the moon’s poem is its eminence. We use abstract symbols and hieroglyphs to express ourselves. Man has intellect therefore he conceptualists, but even within the symbolic cathedral there is a play of shadows out with man’s doing and this causes him to know he is in-the-world. Man is observer of this interplay through sight, but not just within vision. Human’s intellect enables us to have subjective consciousness therefore we exist in duality. Like a philosopher studying the forms, but we are beings in time also, therefore beings in light. Through the lack of light, we enable sight, because in the dark we are not deploying vision. The
essence of a natural thing is out with the artist as proclaimer because a thing possesses inadvertent qualities, consider the frog. Van Gogh on seeing himself through the lens of another has looked upon himself, in this, he has seen himself seeing and has become one who sees that which he sees Through Gauguin’s vision he has come to know other.
Thesis Conclusion and Summary using Figure 2 (to consolidate the points raised in this thesis)
Van Gogh, V., 1888, The Red Vineyard, Oil on Canvas, 75x90cm,
Verbal language versus visual is at the heart of the artist as Philosopher Ranciere asserts that paintings try to create another dimension from the 2D. The 2D is black and white, 3D adds dimension to the sayable and creates language, language is produced in any medium and can be the language of imagery out with the viewer’s imagination.
A November evening walk in Arles, ‘They beheld vineyards soaked red and violet after the rain, and sparkling yellow where the earth caught the reflection of the setting sun’. (Silverman, D., 2000, p.224)
But there is no verbal voice in the painting. Verbal expression is our primary method of communication. The painting directed toward me does not articulate the moment like the essence of my own imaginings through the written word of Van Gogh, as above I can stand in a field and articulate what I see. Plato can think that only the philosopher has the right to poesis, but everyone in the world interacts with the world. Everyone can read text and imagine and in this can cause poesis because of individual poesis, Plato cannot stop people from free thinking, but only limit speech. Van Gogh’s writing to Theo, of the above scene through his verbal iteration, comes into being in my experience by my own creation through imagination. When I consider Plato’s thinking that only the philosopher can philosophise, I see the short comings in Plato’s words everyone has a mind, therefore everyone has discernment. Within the Ethical Regime, art should be at the service of truth. I contended that truth is only possible through discernment, which is a function of the internal processes of an individual existing in the world and cannot come to us through an external figure. In duality there is a dual between external policies and discernment at hand. Ranciere understands that the contradiction is through symbolicity: if the thing themselves contain meaning
that overreach the narrow scope of interpretation of man beyond representative logic, man can only discern within his faculties Can he really know what he sees. Philosopher cannot know the truth of a thing because he is not that thing. Van Gogh’s approach to figure 2 illustrates the point that each artist invents a way to circumnavigate his instruments to get to his truth of what he sees. His painting is more than the truth of a muddy field Merleau-Ponty recognises that one cannot make an inventory of the visible, such as Hurssel’s Edict Reduction/Variation, like trying to catalogue the language of a thing. Finally in the Ethical Regime I explored the state as a single source of truth.
Figure 2 has poesis through a contrived method by Van Gogh, but his words have aesthesis as they affect every bone in my body. The same can be said of Heidegger’s writing on figure 5. I experience catharsis through his words. Heidegger recognises, the expressivity of the world liberates language and expression to such an extent that it can no longer be brought back under control by us because the lifeworld expresses itself. Plato’s state would attempt to shut this down.
In the Representative Regime I discussed the principles of fiction and convenance: Van Gogh has reimagined an empty field teeming with labourers in the different phases of the harvest, is fictitious. Hegel would think, Van Gogh’s painting would not capture modernity’s essence because it is not possible to do so despite his invention of an abstract technique because it cannot depict the poetry of the field, although clearly a modern genre, has lost its thingy essence. It does not cry out from the canvas like figure 5. In figure 5 the boots stripped-down simplicity and shady lighting appears as a real essence, of a worn boot’s ambient ghostliness. Figure 2 does display proper norms through the actions of the peasant, in the individual expression and gives prominence to the sun, for which the harvest would not have emerged.
On Genre and Action: Van Gogh and Gauguin’s enquiry after the sunset is a talisman of vision, is temporal and not seen by all. The real objects are the substance of the vineyard, earth, water, elements, etc., but the appearance of the vineyard is how it appeared to them through the visible at the threshold of the material interacting with the light. It is more than the materiality of a thing. For them, they ask, what causes it to be suddenly this thing. In this they considered how the field is selfexpressing in nature through the lights of the sunset, but the appearance of the labourers harvesting the field causes action to be present on a passive scene. A thing can be a thing in the human world, for example the field but the thingy thing of the field is eclipsed by the human mind which considers the translation of the expression of the field into a hierarchy between the high and the low class through the interaction of human brain on seeing the image as it visualises peasants
The significance of Meaning: Ranciere considers the lack of necessary link between signifiers, in this case figure 2 and the referents the passive sun-drenched field of nature asserts that expression
cannot capture the meaning of the world because the referent is either reticent, in this case a harvested muddy field or that the referent is overflowing with stimulation and essence, a radiant sunset. The red sodden field with violet shadows illustrates the divorce of the actual subject within the classical representation of a brown field Merleau-Ponty would recognise that the sunset passes into Van Gogh, but also in this, his mind goes out through the eyes to wander in the vineyard, sees the violets and the reds. Next, I discussed Infinite Expression of Nature: This arrives at the crux of what Hegel terms his second contradiction, for which Ranciere plans his entire aesthetic regime on ‘writing the language of the thing’s themselves’. I Considered the brush warbler singing, no human can emulate this, as Merleau-Ponty puts it, the sensed senses, in this case the brush warbler senses his world out with our senses, the peasant sensed theirs. In the world itself: Merleau-Ponty says:
‘For the painter never ceases adjusting his clairvoyance to them’, in the case of figure 2, the sunset and field, because he is constantly interpreting and reinterpreting the painting before him in the same manner. Merleau-Ponty says it makes no difference if one paints from nature, the essence of a thing, because he has seen and thus, he has received the spectacle into himself, this could be said of the philosophers encountering the cathedral. This embodiment of the essence is a mirror of the universe as in the same thing out there is also in us, they have reflected to us their vision of the Grape Harvest through their imagination. In human Expression, figure 2 does not have a sensed body sensing because it does not have a thingy entity speaking to us like the poetry of the misshaped boot which expresses in-of-itself. Figure 2 has many voices including the field and the sun. But humans’ express things that have expression of themselves and through themselves, also Van Gogh eclipses this expression through his painting.
How we relate to the world as beings: Merleau-Ponty considers the unveiling as the means of the visible, the light, shadows, reflections and colour, which makes a vineyard before our eyes, in this case through sunlight. But he asserts that these attributes are not the real object the sun brings something else. They are spectres which only have existence through sight on the edge of a profane thing, the light dances on the brown field. The painter enquires as to what these spectres do to cause something to be a specific thing, in this case the red vineyard (fig 2). He asks how they compose the visible. In the essence of a thing in nature: In the visible, the eye casts across a vista and invents its own world because it is moved by some element in the world. In this case the peasants bringing in the harvest, it could just as well be depicted as an empty brown field, but the painter has celebrated the visibility that he has restored within the image, and it is his poesis through aesthesis which has revealed to us the nature of the artwork.
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