The Cradle of Things: Recognition in Iconography and Paul Cézanne's Portraits of His Wife

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2024

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Abstract

This dissertation seeks to show how a Byzantine theology of icons and can both inform, and be refined by, an engagement with a major figure in modern art. Specifically, I argue that the visual theology of Theodore the Studite (759-826) provides a fruitful lens for interpreting Paul Cézanne’s (1839-1906) portraits of his wife, and Cézanne’s portraits in turn pressure Theodore’s visual theology toward more precision.

I demonstrate that it is possible to trace similar impulses toward skepticism in the iconoclastic arguments of the eighth and ninth centuries on the one hand, and in the emergence of modernism in the nineteenth century on the other. By considering both of these movements in terms of the dialectic between skepticism and anti-skepticism, I claim that certain iconoclastic writers and certain modernist artists and critics harbored a similar attitude of epistemological doubt in the ability of images to fittingly represent their archetypes. I then contend that Theodore the Studite’s iconophilic response to iconoclastic skepticism, premised upon his understanding of the hypostatic union of divine and human in Jesus Christ, can shed light on Cézanne’s portraits of his wife, because both the paintings’ style and the painter’s approach to his practice betray an orientation to images that we might call iconophilic. If, for Theodore, the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ dignifies appearance as the definitive site of recognition and authorizes the painted likeness in an icon as a possible participant in this recognition, then the appearance of Cézanne’s subjects (including his wife), should be adequate for the artist’s sensation (enlightened perception) of his subjects and subsequent réalisation (meaningful depiction) of those subjects. While the dominant interpretation of Cézanne’s paintings tends to claim that the artist skeptically diminished the subject as a result of its (or her) ultimate inaccessibility, Theodore’s visual theology makes sense of and gives credence to Cézanne’s pursuit of recognition.

When read through Theodore’s account of hypostatic recognition, however, Cézanne’s uniquely modernist concerns invite an expansion of Theodore’s visual Christo-logic. While these portraits enact a hope of recognition, they nonetheless demonstrate the tragic possibility of misrecognition. By highlighting the prominent theme of the tragic misrecognition of Jesus Christ as a criminal rather than the Son of God in John’s crucifixion narrative, I show that a theological account of hypostatic recognition must contend with the possibility of such misrecognition in a way that critiques but nonetheless complements Theodore the Studite’s confidence in the ability of images to call forth recognition of their prototypes. Following John’s gospel, I go on to argue that the resurrection of Jesus Christ reestablishes the ground for hypostatic recognition on the far side of tragedy.

In this light, I go on to argue that Cézanne’s portraits of his wife can be understood anew as confessions. The paintings both profess what he can see of her, which is partial and incomplete, while simultaneously acknowledging his own inter-personal entanglement with her. Within the give-and-take of such a painted confession, I argue, the hope of recognition abides.

As an epistemological posture, therefore, confession acknowledges that bodily appearance is the site of inter-personal knowledge and connection, while simultaneously acknowledging that right recognition cannot be certified or controlled by any formulaic construal of apparent parts. The hypostatic presence of the other—whether that be one’s wife or one’s savior—is always a gift. To echo the famous phrase with which Michael Fried ended his watershed essay, “Art and Objecthood,” recognition is grace.

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Ananias, Christina Lynn Carnes (2024). The Cradle of Things: Recognition in Iconography and Paul Cézanne's Portraits of His Wife. Dissertation, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/31106.

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