Anodyne
Sunday, December 08, 2019
 
"The mode of perception, of vision, was of greater consequence to the impressionist or symbolist artist than the view seen or the image presented.  In this respect both impressionists and symbolists placed themselves in opposition to what they regarded as 'academic' art, for such art found its reality and truth in the object of its own creation -- its representation -- the character of which was determined by the academy's rules and standardized technical procedure.  The 'academy' (whether considered as an elite group of artist-members, or as all members of an institutionalized culture) normalized vision through its specific (technical) code of representation; the code would remain an essential mediating device, because without it one could neither interpret nor record vision. In contrast, impressionists and symbolists sought the elusive and perhaps chimerical immediate.  The impressionist's 'impression' -- just as the symbolist's 'symbol' -- represented a vision and a reality which (ideally) involved no extrapersonal or cultural mediation.  The truth which the impressionist sought could be found in any act of perception that had (or seemed to have) the idiosyncratic character associated with a personal, spontaneous 'impression.'  Nonetheless, the impression, as an image or an object of vision, was not the end of impressionist art, but the means to that end, the means to an experience through which the true could be apprehended in an act of seeing."

(Richard Shiff, Cezanne and the End of Impressionism, U. Chicago P., 1984)
- posted by cjb @ 9:55 AM


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