Color helps create an illusion of depth and movement through push-pull. Hans Hofmann wrote in his essay, The Search for the Real:
Pictorial space exists two dimensionally. When the two dimensionality of a picture is destroyed, it falls into parts – it creates the effect of naturalistic space . . . . Depth, in a pictorial, plastic sense, is not created by the arrangement of objects one after another toward a vanishing point, in the sense of the Renaissance perspective, but on the contrary, by the creation of forces in the sense of push and pull. (Hofmann 1967
Since the stone age humankind has created masterworks which possess a
mysterious quality of solidity and grandeur or monumentality. Such works now
sell for tens of millions of dollars. A paleolithic Venus and a still life by Cézanne
both share this monumentality. Michelangelo likened monumentality to
sculptural relief:
Painting should be considered excellent in proportion as it approaches
the effect of relief |1|.
Braque called monumentality space:
You see, the whole Renaissance tradition is antipathetic to me. The hard
and fast rules of perspective which it imposes on art were a ghastly
mistake which it has taken four centuries to redress: Cézanne and, after
him, Picasso and myself can take a lot of the credit for this. Scientific
perspective is nothing but eye-fooling illusionism; it is simply a trick - a bad trick - which makes it impossible for an artist to convey a full experience of space, since it forces the objects in a picture to disappearbaway from the beholder instead of bringing them within his reach, as a painting should.
That's why I have such a liking for primitive art: for very
early Greek art, Etruscan art, Negro art. None of this has been deformed
by Renaissance science ... Cubism was essentially a reaction against the
impressionists ... we were out to attack space which they had neglected
|2|.
Hans Hoffman, himself one of the masters, called monumentality pictorial
depth:
Inner greatness, pictorially, is determined and limited by the degree to
which the pictorial effect of depth, in contrast to the illusion of depth,
serves the artist's purpose |3|.
The masters agreed that greatness is determined by monumentality, but
none of them left a clear explanation of monumentality. In 1943 Earl Loran, the
acknowledged authority on Cézanne's pictorial structure, said:
Complete diagrams explaining Cézanne's formal structure ... have not so
far appeared in book form. To my knowledge, nothing has been
published that makes space organization in any art completely
understandable in diagrammatic terms |4|.
The article you are reading now does provide a clear explanation, (as did
an an earlier book by Robert Casper |5|) and it also traces the history of
monumentality using reproductions. It further explains how some painters
achieved monumentality and how a student can attempt it.
In this essay, I focus on painting and I use the terms pictorial space or
plastic structure or plastic form (1) for monumentality. Pictorial space is created in the tension between pairs of opposing planes. Opposing planes pull against each other, each containing the other, paradoxically, within the flat surface of the canvas. (This may sound obscure but you will see it clearly in the diagrams that
follow.) Sculpture also can be plastic: opposing masses pull against each other, each containing the other and creating tension in the space which lies betweenthem. Painting has other vital aspects like subject matter, expression, style and technique but pictorial space doesn't depend on these and I don't speak of them. Ispeak of color only as it used to construct pictorial space.
Monumentality moves us profoundly and apparently has done so since the Paleolith. In the last section, I use patients' vignettes to suggest a reason for this.
I show that there are profound parallels between the structure of a monumental work of art and the structure of an evolving personality. In Winnicott's words,
For further reading - visit the link below:
I thank Mr. Mc Dowell for clarifying such important ideas and concepts regarding the picture plane.
https://aras.org/sites/default/files/docs/00053McDowell.pdf
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