From Earth to Sky: Cezanne, Klee, and Heidegger.

Résumé

The purpose of this article is to prove that the difference between Cezanne’s art and Klee’s may be viewed as based upon a different opening of each unto the world.

           I look for the reason behind Cezanne’s holding on to works linked with the geological and his not getting into a thinking which could have led him to espouse art’s opening unto the cosmos, as happened in Klee’s art. I follow a philosophical-descriptive method, allowing me to describe being and artistic production through the reading grid provided by the Heideggerian concept of ground-attunement. Each ground-attunement constitutes a specific relationship with (in) the world and determines the production of the artist residing and creating within it. Moreover, a ground-attunement could function as a link and transition from one attunement to another, thus allowing the artist taking it upon himself to effect a qualitative change placing him in a new type of thinking and creation. This allows us to consider Cezanne and Klee through the discovery of their different situations within such ground-attunements, in such way as to explain the difference between them.

I discover the reason behind Cezanne’s remaining in the earthly-geological dimension, that is his residing in the attunement of deep boredom, in its conflicted poles, i.e., nothing and the whole, then his getting in a defective way into the attunement of mourning, wherein he stops at the pole of sadness. I also discover the reason behind Klee’s eventual going toward cosmic thinking and artistic production, that is lying in his going beyond Cezanne, since he not only goes through deep boredom, but he also gets into mourning with both its poles, i.e., sadness and bliss. I am also able to explain this more complete residing in mourning as an effect of his going into the attunement of melancholy, upon which philosophical, i.e., the most cosmic/universal, thinking is built.