Still Life with Plaster Cupid

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Still Life with Plaster Cupid: Paul Cezanne

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Paul Cezanne Oil Painting - Still Life with Plaster Cupid

Keywords: Life, Plaster, Cupid

Work Overview: Still Life with Plaster Cupid
Paul Cezanne
Date: 1895
Style: Post-Impressionism
Period: Final period
Genre: still life
Media: oil, paper
Dimensions: 57 x 70 cm
Location: Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK

This is one of Cézanne’s most complex late still-lifes. Beyond the foreground table on which stands a plaster Cupid, the space and the arrangement of figures become highly ambiguous. The green apple on the floor in the far corner seems too large and the floor itself appears tilted. The blue drapery in the painting, propped up against the wall at the left, merges with a similar fabric in Cézanne’s own still-life. Cézanne may have been using these paradoxes to stress the artificiality of the composition, and perhaps, to comment on the act of painting itself. (Permanent collection label)

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Among Cézanne's still lifes, this one is remarkable for the presence of a work of art, a cast of Puget's Cupid. Two works really, for in the background is a sketch after another statue, The Flayed Man. Both are sculptures he studied from casts--we have many drawings from them in his notebooks. His taste in sculpture is revealing. He drew mainly from works of baroque character, with rich contours and powerful contrasted movements; they are often themes of passion or struggle. To place such figures in a context of apples and onions is strange; what other painter would do this? The marriage of the heroic-passionate or idyllic to the commonplace-domestic corresponds to Cézanne's complexity as a man.

Here we sense these poles in the formal contrast of the apples and the statuette: the first, centered and without articulation; the Cupid, a body rich in convexities and turns. But the Cupid is white and the scattered fruit, red, yellow, and green. The two opposites are united, or at least bridged, through the onions--more articulated forms. Three apples at the Cupid's foot continue the rounded bodily line; others in the dish strive to build up to a head. In the upper right, the drawing of the crouching figure confirms the ``unreality'' of the Cupid, which, as a plaster cast, belongs to a third order of existence--a copy of a copy among real fruit, yet no less tangible than these. The drawing is a fourth step away from nature and is already remote and curtailed.

So much for the conception of the objects--the artistic conception is no less original. From a close viewpoint which places the foreground objects below us, we see behind them an intricate composition of tilted lines and planes, ambiguous in places yet so contrived as to belong together and re-enforce the down-stage world. A canvas set behind the Cupid is doubly tilted, and by a paradox of design parallels the main lines of the statuette. At its lower left comer, the canvas meets what seems to be the edge of the floor, but is also the edge of the beautifully formed blue drape and, by a startling artifice, coincides with the line separating the onion from its green stem (a stem fitted neatly into an angle of the drape). Through these devices, all frankly exposed, that whole region of the painting, which is built of straight lines, acquires an appearance of the constructed and ``abstract'', while other parts look more directly ``seen''. But these opposed attitudes do not clash, for the colors and forms of both parts harmonize and are inseparably joined; the most abstract regions have the same qualities of modulation and touch as the more natural parts. The blue drape, at once angular and curved, is also a liaison between the two.

We return to our reflections on the objects: the Cupid and the drawn statue participate in both worlds of the natural and the artificial; they are works of art, and as such represent the erotic and the suffering in a transposed form, which is colorless yet takes its place without strain in the sphere of simple, non-human things. As parts of the visible world, their root colorlessness is modified by the common light which endows them with a delicate range of warm and cool tints and the attenuations of color in space.
-- Meyer Schapiro

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want to raise Cartesian philosophy here. The word is capitalized because it refers to the philosophy of the proto-enlightenment thinker Rene Descartes. Even if you have never heard of this great rationalist, it is likely that you will recognize one of his phrases such as "I think, therefore, I am." This odd sentence is the result of his effort to find irrefutable proof that he actually existed. Philosophers often ask questions that are meant to reveal fundamental truths. Can you imagine for a moment asking yourself this very question--How can I actually prove that I exist? Descartes realized an elegent solution, his very ability to ask the question was the proof of independent consciousness and therefore, of his existence.
With such questions, Descartes raised many considerations that would shape the modern world. Sometimes these questions raised, in turn, conclusions seemingly at odds with each other, such as his scepticism of both perception and of self-evident assumption.

Ironically, such thoughts would eventually lead to a reappraisal of our confidence in society's scientific empiricism. Empiricism relies upon objectivity. You will remember that the word "objective" means a truth that is beyond personal experience. In contrast, the word "subjective" is directly linked to personal experience.
Here is an example. Imagine a minor accident between a taxi and a city bus. A patrolman comes along to reconstruct the event. Does he only ask the cab driver what took place or does he also ask the passenger in the back of the cab and the bus driver and the riders on the bus? The cop's goal is the reconstruct what "actually" happened. But if we take a post-Cartesian position we might ask whether there really was a single actual (objective) event or whether there were actually multiple (subjective) truths, each the result of each witness's perspective. Let's take a more directly applicable example. Look about the room that you are currently in. It probably has six sides: four walls, a floor, and a ceiling. When an architect drew a diagram of your room, he/she would have conceptually stepped outside of the space so that it could be understood in total.

But is this objective view a false one? Now in the built room, you cannot see its totality in a single moment. We can only see bits and pieces of the room at any one time and must rely upon memory to understand the room as a whole. Your more subjective experience has historically been considered less important than the architect's objective conception even though you experience directly and the architect knows the room only theoretically.
Regarding the traditional heirarchical relationship between objective and subjective, Cézanne seems to ask, "which is more true?" and his conclusion mirrors an important development of modernism. In Still Life with Plaster Cupid, it is the subjective view that constructs the space. Cézanne has placed a plaster cast (copy) of an ancient Roman sculpture of a cupid (the son of Venus) on a tabletop so that it dominates the composition.

To an artist of the 19th century such classical sculpture would refer to the great humanist triumph of the Greeks and Romans and the birth of naturalism. In fact, one of the most prominant features of such sculpture would be its contraposto (you remember this: axial shifts responding to weight borne by one leg). Actually, Cézanne's li'l god-ling is also twisting at the waist, creating a subtle spiral torsion. Again, the space is odd, the floor especially, seems to rise up too steeply with the stacked canvases forming its uneven perimeter. Have you noticed that the canvases that line the floor, shape the space of the room and that this "shaping" is related to the twisting of the cupid? Let do this point by point. The right foot of the sculpture points roughly towards us and aligns, more or less, with the receeding orthoganol of the table. The figure's hips have turned. They are aligned with the plane of the canvas at the extreme left that is partly hidden behind the blue tablecloth. The Cupid's shoulders are turned even further and align with the canvas that rests behind the godling's torso.
This is clearly not the objective space of the architect. Cézanne has clearly sought to match the perception of space to the movement of the the body. But isn't that what we really experience? When you walk into a room, do you see the room as an objective whole? No. We can only see a fragment at a time. But as we've already established, we don't actually see in fragements we see continuously and space is shaped by our continuous movement through it. Try it. Focus on any straight line in the room you are now in. Lean forward, and as you might expect, the angles of the room shift. In Still Life with Plaster Cupid, we see Cézanne's attempt to render true human vision, vision that is subjective, continuous, and informed by memory.
Essay by Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker

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Paul Cézanne completed his composition Still Life with Plaster Cast in 1894 and as well as being one of the last paintings he completed in his career, it is one of his more famous still lifes.

This work is often seen as one of the most radical compositions that Cézanne produced due to its abstract tendencies that heralded the coming of the Cubist movement.

In Still Life with Plaster Cast there is a clear distorting of the image. A dirty white colored plaster cast of a young boy with no arms is stood on a table among some fruit. The armless plaster cast (a plaster cast of cupid) is stood next to a painting of a bowl that appears to be holding two onions. However there is a blue cloth that appears to drape down from the picture of the bowl to the table. In fact, there are two blue cloths in the painting. Cézanne was playing with the complex nature of art and reality and he enjoyed expanding true images.

Cézanne's Still Life with Plaster Cast was also unusual because of its subject matter choice. Not only was it a still life diverging from reality, but it was also mixing the mystical with the ordinary. The relationship between the natural and the mystical had been dealt with before (for example in Botticelli's Primavera) but Cézanne added a new element with his abstract tendencies.

After criticism and refusal to enter his works in mainstream exhibitions in 1895 Cézanne agreed with art dealer Ambroise Vollard to show his pieces in a solo exhibition. The showcase was very popular with a new audience who liked what he was doing in the studio.

Paul Cézanne was first and foremost an original who paved the way for other modern artists. Yet, he was inspired by other painters when creating his works.

Camille Pissarro was Cézanne's closest influence and in Still Life with Plaster Cast Cézanne utilized many lighter colors that he had previously steered away from. He had been inspired by Pissarro's color palette to paint his fruit looking luscious and fresh with bright greens, reds and yellows. Additionally he used light blues and dirty whites to produce the shades of the plaster cast.

Paul Cézanne did not create Still Life with Plaster Cast for anything other than his own enjoyment. Hailing from a rich family he did not have to make money from his work and thus created pieces for his own satisfaction, knowing that only a few select collectors were interested in his work. The inspiration behind Still Life with Plaster Cast was to create a piece of beauty that was unconventional in its subject matter - Cézanne did not look at his art as a static entity.

Composition:
The plaster cast of cupid in the center of the image grabs the viewer's attention. The position of the cupid is at odds with the objects placed behind him. Whereas the fruit bowl in the forefront is on the same plane as the cupid, the painting behind him is pointing away from him. The perspective of the painting is distorted and the picture in the backdrop appears to be closer to the floor than the table.

The two bowls of fruit on the right hand side of the painting appear to be placed next to each other. However the taller bowl is from the internal painting and there are two blue cloths rather than one that reaches from the painting down to the table.

The reason for this distortion is because Cézanne did not paint the composition from one position. Rather he rotated his easel around the plaster cast and fruit, capturing the image from numerous angles. Consequently their positions are not accurately represented.

Color palette:
When Paul Cézanne was a young artist he believed that the color in his paintings should mirror his emotional state. Thus he used dark shades that represented his inner turmoil. However after spending time painting with his mentor Camille Pissarro his color palette opened up considerably. Nevertheless, Cézanne was not afraid to utilize dark colors for shading.

Use of light:
Still Life with Plaster Cast is lit from the right hand side of the canvas which can be seen from the shadows painted of cupid's right leg and the food. However the abstract elements of the painting have distorted the positioning of the shadows. For example, the shadowing of Cupid's arm falls in a different direction to the rest of the painting. Paul Cézanne was a true believer in only painting what he saw.

Mood, tone and emotion:
The tone of the painting contrasts between the mythical Cupid stood in the center of the painting and the mystery choice of foods that Paul Cézanne has chosen to paint. Apples have often been used in compositions alongside mystical figures. However what appear to be onions are an unusual choice. Thus the tone of the painting alternates between the mystical and the ordinary.

Brush stroke:
Cézanne used solid brush strokes that left an obvious mark on the canvas and placed his emphasis on shapes rather than color. His canvases are not polished because he rarely finished a work. Cezanne believed in painting everything he could see, which meant he was never able to apply a last brush stroke.

It also means that the fruit is unidentifiable because all Cézanne saw were different shapes and colors, which is what he built up brush stroke by brush stroke as he moved around the table.

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