Short Responce to Chapter 4

Or, 'Realism and Perspective'.
Dear Paul M.,
An interesting thought has clicked in my head, or at any rate a connection has been made. Some thanks is due to another artist friend, Dave A. whom I had tea with yesterday evening (in his studio, surrounded by the smell of oil paint). I had mentioned to him how when I am at PAM I like to look at the impressionist paintings without my glasses and with my eyes completely relaxed.
The text* makes a brief comment, 'Most of us probably assume that we know realistic work when we see it', that has me thinking:
If I could see only as well as I see out of my left eye, impressionist painting would look more realistic (than realist ones). As it is, if I view a Monet, a Childe Hassam, a Gauguin, or even a Rouault through (or out of) my left eye only, it reads well and I can understand it. Perhaps I even understand it better this way; for here the interpretation of light and the pixilation of color offer me something that a realistic painting may not. In the wonderful world of impressionism (and expressionism) uncorrected vision of 22/100 is not a hindrance. What if we consider 'realism' though the eyes of the legally blind?! As much as I like Rembrandt, let us consider his work, such as Saul and David. Let's at the same time consider also Durer, who I greatly admire. These are two of the artist that first stood out to me when I began to like art as a boy. Durer's detail, especially in his woodcuts and engravings absolutely astonishes me; I love it. Rembrandt too, in his light and mood is fascinating (I am thinking of Christ in the Storm on the Lake of Galilee as good example of his consummate ability to convey feeling and mood.). However, much of these men's art turns to mud when viewed through poor eyesight (note: vision is too strong a word to use here, as it has certain spiritual, artistic and poetic connotations).
Now let us look, so to speak, at several painters of various modern isms and at Chagall (who must be his own ism?). I'll set the stage with a Romantic {'(Romantic is the term we've coined, Though what's Romantic here I simply Have no idea; and what's the point?)' -A. Pushkin, Eugene Onegin Ch.VI,23}, William Turner. The example I have in the book before me is The Fighting Temeraire Towed to Her Last Berth, 1838. In this image of ships on a calm sea and the sun setting, I can catch the feeling of it and even read much it visually through my 'bad' eye. (Keep your pirate jokes to yourself.) Now, I put before me Gauguin's The Yellow Christ (1889) and Modigliani's Girl With Braids (1917). Given the separation in years, these paintings do have similarities in overall style and texture of paint. One may even be able to fit early Picasso in with this group -based largely on the use of outline (but who did that better than Picasso?!). The Yellow Christ in particular presents me with much the same feeling and visual information regardless of what I do with my eyes. Who better to use as an example than Van Gogh! I have here a reproduction of Road With Cypresses (1889). In this especially I have the opportunity to see a work as well in focus as out, and with a bad eye. Some of the detail is lost, but I think in Van Gogh's case this isn't important. It still holds tremendous beauty. The Van Gogh in PAM has put me in a swoon nearly every time I've stood before it. It's like walking into the same room with a woman I like; as I ascend the steps my breath grows short and my heart begins taking huge gulps, and changes position; because it knows at any moment she'll come into view; that she'll be pressent. So it is with the Van Gogh painting. Enough of that, let's now move on to Chagall.
This may seem an odd jump, to Chagall. In my mind however it is a rather fun one. Once I began looking at Chagall I became enchanted. How wonderfully dreamlike and imaginative is his work, and his vision (not too strong a word to use here). Only while preparing to write this did I realize that he to could communicate with a semi-blind man. Does this come out of his Russian-ness? -that unique tension between east and west, and the harshness of the land, and life with peasants? The particular example I have before me is I and the Village (1911). Again, the forms and colors reach out through poor eyesight, retaining their clarity.
Detail! None of the works I have mentioned are devoid of detail. It may be more readily apparent in Durer than in Modigliani, but it is never-the-less present; though the emphasis may be more on texture than line. The Chagall and the Van Gogh may read well through interrupted sight, but they are also full of endless detail to be found in the looking; in really looking. I say this in part as a way to show that creating art a blind man could enjoy does not necessitate leaving out any detail a 'seeing' man may notice.
In summing up I would (and am) asking the question, what is 'realism' to a man mostly blind?
If you are at all curious as to why I've left Seurat out of my little talk, I have a silly little poem of explanation, written with you (generally) in mind:
What of Seurat?
No! The thought of
So many dots
On so great a canvas
Yet maddens
This man of patients who
Must needs
paint relatively
small, and quickly.'
---Stefan
Notes:
-While Douglas Cooper includes two of Chagall's works in his The Cubist Epoch, he does not classify him as a true Cubist. Cooper does offer us an interesting place for Chagall among the isms. Marc Chagall, always at heart a fabulator, presents the more curious case of an artist wholly opposed in spirit to Cubism who became for a brief moment involved in the movement.
(The Cubist Epoch, Pg.129, para.1)
-I have used the word 'man' in the pre 1960's sense, which carries the implication of man, woman, child... human being.
-Most of the images I refer to come out of The Story of Painting by H. W. Janson & Dora Jane Janson. Harry N. Abrams, Inc, Publishers, New York
*Sturken & Cartwright, the main text.