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*2009/05/09 　　Draft for The Plural Present Conference

Cézanne, Smithson and the Limitless Scale of the Present

Toru Arakawa (Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo)

Introduction

1. Time Scales in Smithson/Cézanne

i. Geology and Phenomenology

ii. The Magnitude of Geological Change

2. Entropic Ruin

i. House and Earth

ii. Built-in Breakability

3. Crystalline Spiral

i. Spiral Jetty

ii. Crystalline Spiral

Conclusion

Introduction

A pioneer of the style known as “earthwork,” Robert Smithson wrote in his last published essay that

“The magnitude of geological change is still with us, just as it was millions of years ago.”1 I would like

1 Robert Smithson, “Frederick Law Olmsted and the Dialectical Landscape (1973),” in The Collected Writings, ed. Jack Flam (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), p. 170.

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to begin with this sentence. The scale of geologic time is millions of years, so that it is far beyond the

span of human life. What is it like being with such changes? How can we feel them?

Bearing this question in mind, this paper examines the interaction of time scales in the works of

Robert Smithson and Paul Cézanne. In the first part, I will discuss geologic time in Smithson and

Cézanne. Next, I would like to analyze Cézanne’s La Cabanon de Jourdan through Robert Smithson’s

Partially Buried Woodshed. In this analysis I shall focus mainly on the concept of entropy. Finally, I

would like to analyze the time structure of Cézanne’s painting, through Smithson’s masterpiece Spiral

Jetty.

1. Time scales in Smithson/Cézanne

i. Geology and Phenomenology

Smithson’s sentence “The magnitude of geological change is still with us” is found in the final

paragraph of his essay titled “Frederick Law Olmsted and The Dialectical Landscape,” written in 1973.

In this text Smithson connects together the plan of New York’s Central Park by the landscape architect

Olmsted, the aesthetics of “the picturesque” in 18th century England, and Cézanne’s landscape

painting.

Smithson emphasized what he calls Cézanne’s “direct encounters with the landscape” in the latter’s

Bibémus Quarry (1895). If we amplify Smithson’s view, we can say that in Cézanne’s work of 1904, it

seems that the rocks are now in the process of formation. The rocks vibrate and interact with the trees

and shadows. The geological changes of vast scale seem to synchronize with our phenomenology of

perception. However, it is very unlikely to encounter such a sense of moving earth, except perhaps lava

flows in Hawaii.

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Of course, Cézanne was conscious of geologic time. It is famous that one of his old friends was

Antoine-Fortuné Marion, a scientist who specialized in geology and zoology and who was also a

painter2. Marion taught Cézanne about the history of the earth and the geological origins of Provence,

and how such origins are currently present in color variations in the land. According to the memoir of

his friend Joachim Gasquet, Cézanne said, “I need to learn some geology—how Sainte-Victoire’s roots

work, the colours of the geological soils—since such things move me and benefit me.”3 This

knowledge of changes on a geologic time scale is an essential part of the perception of the present

landscape in Cézanne.

ii. The Magnitude of Geological Change

But what is a time scale in the first place? The pioneer ecological psychologist James J. Gibson wrote

the following about time scales and perceived changes:

The duration of processes at the level of the universe may be measured in millions of

years, and the duration of processes at the level of the atom may be measured in

millionths of a second. [...] The changes that are perceived, those on which acts of

behavior depend, are neither extremely slow nor extremely rapid. Human observers

cannot perceive the erosion of a mountain, but they can detect the fall of a rock.4

Natural time contains different events at various levels. It is up to the observer to choose which scale

is suitable. Robert Smithson distinguished between size and scale. He wrote, “[s]ize determines an

2 Nina Maria Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, Cézanne and Provence: The Painter in His Culture (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 155-157.

3 Joachim Gasquet’s Cézanne: A Memoir with Conversations, trans. Christopher Pemberton (New York and London: Thames and Hudson, 1991), p. 165.

4 James J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Hillsdale, N.J. and London: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1986), pp. 10-12.

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object, but scale determines art.”5 According to this distinction, size is objective and absolute, while

scale is subjective and relative. Smithson emphasized this relativity by saying, “Scale depends on one’s

capacity to be conscious of the actualities of perception.”

In addition, according to Gibson there is a nested structure of time scales:

...it is important to realize that smaller units are nested within larger units. There are

events within events, as there are forms within forms, up to the yearly shift of the path

of the sun across the sky and down to the breaking of a twig. And hence there are no

elementary units of temporal structure. You can describe the events of the environment

at various levels.6

This nesting is very important. By virtue of this hierarchy, we can experience various level of time

scale. We feel earthquakes as very abrupt, and yet they are part of the very slow movements of the

earth’s crusts. In this case, the larger unit operates on the smaller unit. The more we describe nature

from various time scales, the more our vision of natural changes will attain its unity. In the next part, I

will try to capture this problem more concretely.

2. Entropic Ruin

i. House and Earth

5 Robert Smithson, “Spiral Jetty (1972),” in op. cit., p. 147.

6 James J. Gibson, op. cit., p. 12.

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Let me now turn to an analysis of Cézanne’s La Cabanon de Jourdan (1906), by means of the works

of Robert Smithson. My focus in this analysis will be the temporal structure of different scales in the

artwork.

Paul Cézanne, La Cabanon de Jourdan (1906)

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La Cabanon de Jourdan is said to be Cézanne’s last landscape painting. This cabin, now lost, had

existed until around 19457. In this photograph, it seems that the cabin is nearly a ruin, very broken and

with a lot of garbage around it.

First, I would like to focus on the relation between house and earth. There is a striking incorporation

of both these elements at the bottom left of the picture. It seems that the architectural structure of the

house half disintegrates into the wavy movement of the ground. The house stands, not as “the house

itself,” rather “the house from earth.”

This interaction of house and earth reminds me of another work, Robert Smithson’s Partially Buried

Woodshed.

ii. Built-in Breakability

As its title indicates, Smithson’s Partially Buried Woodshed is indeed an abandoned woodshed

covered by dirt. The shed is located in Kent State University in Ohio. It is said that a building

7 John Rewald et al., The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: A Catalogue Raisonné, 2 vols. (New York and London: Abrams, 1996), p. 555.

Robert Smithson, Partially Buried Woodshed (1970)

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contractor hired by Smithson put dirt onto the shed until its central beam cracked.8 Finally, twenty

truckloads were used to bury the shed.

This woodshed was always in danger of collapse, and in 1975 it was partially burned in an arson. In a

photo from 1983 we can recognize the total collapse and ruin of the wooshed. Finally, in 1984, only the

mound and the foundation of architecture are left.

Starting with this work, Smithson created the concepts of “built-in breakability” and “arrested cave-

in.” Almost engulfed by earth, the woodshed gradually collapses over 10 years. Each moment in the

work is part of an ongoing disintegration process. The more the woodshed collapses, the more it

appears as if the structure of time consists of an interplay between environments.

It seems that Smithson simply made the ruin always in danger of collapse. Yet he was interested in

what he called “highly developed structures in a state of disintegration.”9 The sedimentation of

imperceptible change over a long time scale can never be reconstituted or imitated in a few hours or

few days. Smithson called such irreversible processes “entropy”. In an interview, he defined this

concept as follows:

8 Smithson, “Entropy made visible: Interview with Alison Sky,” in op. cit., pp. 305-307. Ann Reynolds, Robert Smithson: Learning from New Jersey and Elsewhere (Cambridge, Mass. and London: The MIT Press, 2003), p. 195.

9 Smithson, op. cit., p. 299.

1983

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On the whole I would say entropy contradicts the usual notion of a mechanistic world

view. In other words, it’s a condition that’s irreversible, it’s a condition that’s moving

towards a gradual equilibrium and it’s suggested in many ways.10

Inspired by Lévi-Strauss’ concept of entropology, Smithson further commented that he would like to

compile all the different entropies. He wrote:

[Entropology] would be a study that devotes itself to the process of disintegration in

highly developed structures. After all, wreckage is often more interesting than

structure.11

By virtue of its own “built-in breakability,” Partially Buried Woodshed embodies the irreversible

entropy over time, and the interaction between its environments.

Smithson went so far as to say “I don’t think things go in cycles. I think things just change from one

situation to the next, there’s really no return.”12 However, if there is only a law of irreversible entropy,

any structured form in the world will gradually collapse. Is there any temporal structure except

entropy? Suspending this question, let us return to Cézanne’s painting, by way of another work of

Smithson, Spiral Jetty.

10 Ibid., p. 301.

11 Ibid., p. 257.

12 Ibid., p. 309.

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3. Crystalline Spiral

i. Spiral Jetty

According to Smithson’s theory of entropy, the adhesion of house and earth in La Cabanon de

Jourdan seems to embody some kind of temporality. In a sense, this adhesion expresses the equilibrium

of house and earth.

Tracing a path, this area of the picture extends to the ground on the right. Through the hard-edged

green field, this flow connects to the blue wall. Above the wall, the polychrome trees draw a curvilinear

line to the vertical center of the picture. If we trace it from the house to the trees, the entire line is

perhaps not a curve but a spiral.

This spiraling structure reminds me of Smithson’s work Spiral Jetty. Created in 1970, this

monumental earthwork is located on the Great Salt Lake in Utah. It is a 1,500 feet long, 15 feet wide

coil, made from basalt and earth.

Salt crystals play a crucial role in making the jetty changeable. In a photo from 2003, Spiral Jetty is

covered by glacier-like salt crystals. In his text, Smithson connected the spiral with crystals:

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty (1970)

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...each cubic salt crystal echoes the Spiral Jetty in terms of the crystal’s molecular

lattice. Growth in a crystal advances around a dislocation point, in the manner of a

screw. The Spiral Jetty could be considered one layer within the spiraling crystal lattice,

magnified trillions of times.13

For Smithson, the Spiral Jetty itself is a gigantic crystal. His library contains a diagram and photo of

the spiral growth of a crystal. From microstructure to macrostructure, the Spiral Jetty can be considered

as a nested structure with a dazzling scale-shift. In addition, crystals and spirals are not timeless forms,

but grow gradually in time. They can never be abstracted as timeless shapes. This temporality of shape

will serve as a key for clarifying Cézanne’s complex morphology.

ii. Crystalline Spiral

Let us go back to the Cézanne’s painting.

Looking at the trees, the rectangular blue of the sky superimposes on the foreground leaves and

branches. This area seems to crystallize, losing the difference between foreground and background,

thing and void. Moreover, the long branch stretching overhead turns into a blue block, extending to the

left chimney.

13 Ibid., p. 147.

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Compared with the watercolor version, this extension may seem very artificial. At the end of this

blue branch, the chimney too seems to crystallize, including its rifts and flaws. Within the house, there

is also a blue opening. Many interpretations were given to this blue, from a blue-colored door to the

tentativeness of this painting. This extraordinary blue seems to extend the picture’s spiral to the ground.

This crystalline spiral is going back and forth between the different layers of depth.

Next, I would like to consider the work’s whole-part relationships. This landscape or garden has a

character of wholeness that cannot be explained as the sum of its parts. The combination of house and

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earth yields entropy. The intertwinement of trees and sky creates crystallization. Finally, the whole

landscape embodies the crystalline spiral of gradual formation.

This character of the picture can be considered as emergence. Emergence describes the onset of novel

properties that arise when a higher level of complexity is formed from components of lower

complexity.14 In La Cabanon de Jourdan, the complexity of time emerges. In the crystalline spiral, we

even become uncertain which time scale we are in. Each element in the picture is almost timeless and

abstract. But when they are connected, each begins to express its temporal formation, and they also

disintegrate differently. Each object was set in the spiral network of supervenience. The scene of this

painting is not a moment. It comprises of different phases of natural time, which is pre-historical and

post-historical at the same time. In this extended temporality, the limitless scale15 of the present

appears. Indeed, the crystalline shape of time itself seems to become tangible in this spiral.

Conclusion

As we see, Smithson and Cézanne extended the limit of time scale in artworks. If, as Smithson

declared, “the magnitude of geological change is still with us,” we can find such a limitless scale of the

present in the entropic ruin and crystalline spiral of Smithson and Cézanne’s works. In these works, the

present moment can never be abstracted from the past and future. Rather, it expands and synchronizes

with different scales. And in this limitless scale of the present, Smithson and Cézanne may constitute

the natural history of art.

14 Pier Luigi Luisi, The Emergence of Life: From Chemical Origins to Synthetic Biology (Cambridge University Press, 2006). Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1983).

15 Smithson, op, cit., p. 152.