16.5.1997

Plotinus, Bergson and Cubism

My presentation is drawn from my research-in-progress investigating the relationship between Neoplatonism and the Cubist aesthetic. Philosophically, my focus is on Bergson and Plotinus whose philosophies, consistent with the development of Platonism after the death of Socrates, were literally reactionary; aesthetically, it is on the founders and leaders of Cubism - Picasso and Braque. It is my contention that it was on the back of Bergson’s philosophy that a set of philosophical ways of thinking with a fundamentally Neoplatonic core were carried into at least a number of the leading art currents in the first two decades of the twentieth century - particularly that of Cubism - itself pivotal to Modernism. The thesis will be an interweaving of these two strands - those of two key contributors to a current in philosophy reaching back nearly two and a half thousand years and of two key contributors to a moment in art.

I have chosen to research this subject for two primary reasons. It is generally agreed that Cubism was a ‘defining moment’ for Modernism - thus any determinations that are arrived at on this subject could fairly be applied in an assessment of other art positioned under the rubric of Modernism.

Again, the great philosophical system of Platonism and its development, Neoplatonism, has provided the ideas and inspiration in thought for creatively interpreting the world that has informed so much of Western visual culture, particularly since the Renaissance. 

The awareness and understanding of the depth of this connection, and even of the connection itself, has substantially been lost, buried, during the course of this century, resulting in the image of formalist analysis replacing the analysis of the substance of Platonic Form and the philosophy structured around it. Whilst the theory is regarded as superseded, the practice (in its origins structured substantially by that theory) continues. This philosophy warrants restating and its influence on our present culture, exploration. The more thoroughly a subject is worked through, the more potential for movement beyond it - notwithstanding the imposition of a mere prefix.

Thus, through an exploration of the nexus between Neoplatonism and Cubism I aim to develop my understanding of this ‘defining moment’ and of Modernism, and to contribute to a removal of the bracken from a winding and very well-worn path.

A connection between Bergson and Cubism though (to my knowledge so far) not acknowledged by Picasso or Braque, was established, urged, by fellow artists and critics of Cubism at that time. This is well documented. There is much circumstantial evidence, however, to argue the point regarding Picasso and Braque - not only with regard to their art, statements, influences and circle, but through a comparative analysis of their work in relation to those who did acknowledge that connection.

Similarly regarding Neoplatonism - not only did it experience a re-vitalisation in the dominant French culture in the last decades of the nineteenth century through Symbolism, it permeated that eclectic philosophical mix - including Bergson’s philosophy -  upon which the Cubists and their circle drew for their justification and inspiration. The literature arguing a connection between Bergson and Cubism and particularly, and far more importantly (given his historical standing), between Plotinus and Cubism is sparse and tends to be very problematic.

Bergson’s name occurs frequently in the literature on Futurism, less so in that on Cubism. In 1993 Robert Antliff produced a book in which he explored the relation between Bergson and Cubism. This is the only book I know of which analysed this connection. Yet Antliff’s writing is exemplary of the confusion and hesitancy of scholarship on this subject. On the one hand he argued that Bergson played a seminal role in shaping the art and politics of the Fauvist, Cubist and Futurist movements, that the first attempts to align Cubist theory with that of Bergson began in about 1912 and that ‘no sustained comparative examination of Cubism’s precepts with those of Bergson has been undertaken thus far’, on the other, he wrote not only that Bergson’s influence on Cubism has remained enigmatic but that his (Antliff’s) question was not whether the progenitors of Cubism and Fauvism invented their art forms in response to Bergson, but how his ideas were received in a pre-existing Fauvist and Cubist milieu. Antliff focused only on the minor Cubists, and much of his book is taken up with the French cultural politics of the period. Antliff did not set out or analyse the relationship between Bergson and the current of Neoplatonism.

Mark Cheetham, in his important book detailing the influence of Platonism/Neoplatonism on the development of early twentieth century abstraction omits discussing Bergson. ‘I do not discuss Bergson, because in spite of his tremendous interest in memory and his influence in modern painting (especially Futurism), he was overtly anti-Platonic in his theorising.’ 

Virginia Spate, in her book on Orphism, made many references to Bergson. She clearly stated the influence on artists by him in the first decades of the twentieth century yet weakened the recognition of that influence by placing it second to the formal lessons the artists drew from their own practice. Further, she did not explore connections she cited between Plato/nism, Neoplatonism and Bergson.

Roger Taylor argued that the Cubism of Picasso and Braque can be considered ‘as a visual art illustrating Bergson’s thesis of decomposition’ and claimed to have found the passage in Bergson’s writing which may have ‘started Cubism’. Yet having made such an important connection - that is, between Bergson and the Cubism of Picasso and Braque, Taylor’s analysis remained at the level of form because he did not base his analysis on the essence of Bergson’s theory - the notion of duration. 

I have stated my differences with the above at this point because for these and similar reasons, I consider a careful re-reading and re-statement of relevant aspects of the philosophies of Bergson and Plotinus to be essential to my project. 

Bergson was one of the most influential and widely read philosophers of the first decades of the twentieth century. His lectures at the College de France (where he was a professor from 1900) were immensely popular with students and wealthy intellectuals. By 1910 he was regarded as a national sage, receiving the Legion d’honneur in 1918 and the Nobel Prize for literature in 1928. His most influential works were written between 1889 (Time and Free Will) and 1907 (Creative Evolution).  Creative Evolution is regarded as Bergson’s most important work and it had a very strong impact when it was published. His epistemology was overtly anti-rational, putting ‘intuition’ in the place of reason. His notion of ‘mind’ was plainly dualist - ‘consciousness does not spring from the brain’.

He thought that existence moves as a flow and not dialectically. Deleuze noted that in this there is a Platonic tone. The implication of Bergson’s philosophy is that he did to Plato what Marx claimed to have done to Hegel, yet his philosophy sought to maintain the development of Platonism standing upright. He opposed his eternity of creative evolution to Plato’s eternity of immutability based on Ideas and wrote that Plato was the ‘first and foremost’ to seek true reality in the unchanging, whereas for him, reality lay precisely in what does change. Yet his eternal and ‘independent reality’ of change derives from the immutable of Plato.

Bergson asked how it is possible, having posited unchanging Ideas, to make change come from them, then argued ‘there is more in the motionless than in the moving’, that Ideas are contained in matter and that nothing, the source of becoming, moves between Ideas, creating ‘endless agitation’. Hence duration coexisted with Ideas. 

He thought that we are all born Platonists and that there exists nothing positive outside Ideas. He gave the example of the Idea of a poem, how thousands of people write on an Idea and how our ‘minds’ can leap from the words to the images and from these to the Idea. In view of the highly philosophic assertions made regarding the nature of Cubism, Bergson’s treatment of form is most important. 

He distinguished between the ‘everyday’, ‘positive’ sciences which are characteristic of the intellect (which for him was discursive), remain ‘external’ to the object with the use of symbols, are restricted to separate moments and giving us a relative, convenient knowledge, and ‘true’ science which is obtained by the ascension to Ideas. This science is metaphysics which supposedly dispenses with symbols, is ‘preformulated’ in nature and is capable of attaining the absolute.

Bergson acknowledged his profound obligation to Plotinus and gave a course of lectures on him at the College de France in 1897-98. The metaphysical vision of Creative Evolution has been compared with that of Plotinus’ Enneads. In Creative Evolution Bergson suggested the possibility of applying the term ‘God’ to the source from which all things flow. In ‘The Two Sources of Morality and Religion’, the primal energy at the heart of the universe is stated to be love. Bergson believed there is a ‘tremendous push’ in nature which unites all nature and carries it along. Creative Evolution is based on élan vital which for Bergson is the actualisation of memory in duration. This élan vital drives life to ‘overcome’ matter. 

As in his theorising about science, Bergson’s dualism is again evident in his treatment of the concepts ‘time’ and ‘duration’ (durée) which are fundamental to his philosophy. There is ‘intellectual’ time - that which can be subject to analysis and ‘real’ time - the time of ‘psychological’ experience. There is ‘mere’ duration - the general flow in time of all things (‘the phantom of duration’ ) and ‘pure’ duration, the non-material basis and origin of all things. It is dynamic, creative and irreversible. Most commentators on Bergson incorrectly recognise only one of the two durations - the ‘true’ or ‘inner’ duration.

Knowledge of duration can only be obtained by intuition - a direct, non-conceptual perception in which the act of knowing coincides with the person, experience or object in duration. Duration cannot be ‘spatialised’ i.e. divided into units. According to Bergson we do break movement, and change it into simultaneous moments in order to act. It is in our ‘inner’ life that the reality of change is revealed as indivisible, and it is this indivisible continuity of change which constitutes true duration. ‘Real’ time and ‘true’ duration are the same.

Bergson criticised Plato and Plotinus for turning away from practical life, for  ‘escaping’ change and raising themselves above time, but this is precisely what he did when he distinguished between time of the ‘intellect’ and time of the immaterial ‘mind’. This ‘succession of qualitative changes, which melt into and permeate one another, without precise outlines’ is the site of Neoplatonic reality. Bergson wrote ’(Plato) in his magnificent language ... says that God, unable to make the world eternal, gave it Time, “a moving image of eternity.”’ The Time referred to here is ‘intellectual’ time, the ‘eternity’ is Bergson’s ‘real’ psychological time or ‘pure’ duration. Bergson regarded duration and consciousness as inseparable. Inner duration is perceived by consciousness and ‘is nothing else but the melting of states of consciousness into one another.’

He equated consciousness with memory. Hence duration is essentially ‘conscious’ memory. In duration, there is no distinction between the present and the past and the emotions are paramount, enabling the addition to a present feeling of the memory of past moments. For Bergson, there are different types of memory - memory applicable to daily existence (perception, ‘motor habits’, impulse) and memory attuned with the past (recollection). True memory is not a function of the brain but is independent of matter and ‘there is not merely a difference of degree, but of kind, between perception and recollection.’ The brain is only an intermediary between sensation and duration - ‘in no case can the brain  store up recollections or images’. 

Memory is a synthesis of past and present with a view to the future and duration is resistant to law and measurement. Our perceptions are infused with memories and our memories are activated by what we see - these two complimentary memories - one physical, the other non-physical - insert themselves each into the other. Not only do our different types of memory interpenetrate and interact in duration,  ‘there are always some dominant memories, shining points round which the others form a vague nebulosity.’ 

For Bergson, the synthesis performed by our consciousness of what is and what was, results in a permeation, completion and continuation. Bergson held that change is the essence of life, that states of being do not exist distinct from each other, but as an endless flow. But the change of which he wrote takes place not in objective reality but in the duration of ‘mind’. This change applies even to a motionless object.

Change and duration need to be grasped in their mobility, we need to recapture this essence of reality by moving back into duration. Bergson’s dualism is again apparent in his notion of reality - that it is both external and given immediately to the ‘mind’ - the latter being the reality of duration.

In our perception he thought that we take ‘snapshots’ or ‘instantaneous views’ of flowing reality which we join together to give the appearance of becoming. He compared this with cinematography (‘the cinematographical instinct of our thought’). These solid points of support are necessary for living and for ‘positive’ science. They allow the essence of reality to escape. 

Bergson argued that the elements of the spatial world are perpetually simultaneous with duration, whereas consciousness is pure duration and its states cannot be adequately represented as being extended in space. Objects in the material world are mutually external and only succeed each other in so far as they are remembered as doing so by an observer. Simultaneity is a thing of space and the external world, duration exists in the flow of memory.

In its passage from what has been to what is, memory binds together and constitutes inner duration. Without the survival of the past in the present, there can only be a sequence of separate moments. In reality, the body has no form (since form is immobile) and is changing constantly. Form can only be an instantaneous view of change. 

The above may appear to contradict my thesis that Bergsonism was an adaptation of Platonism and Neoplatonism. However, not only did Bergson use Neoplatonic terminology, and do so in contradictory ways, his maintenance of the relationship between eternal truth (as duration) and appearance (as snapshots of that truth), and of the way by which that truth can be attained (through contemplative intuition) derives from a Platonic and Neoplatonic heritage.

Bergson argued that an accumulation of points of view place one outside the subject and that the only way of attaining the subject’s essence (the absolute, perfection) would be by coinciding internally with the subject, by placing oneself within it. By entering it we attain absolute knowledge, by moving around it and remaining on its exterior we can acquire only relative knowledge.Through entering and identifying with the original, we become it.

Part I/To be continued ...