The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Henri Bergson and Cubism: Part Three

Bergson thought that one can pass from the reality of intuition to the concepts of analysis, but never in reverse order. Even then ‘the intuition of duration, when exposed to the rays of the understanding ... quickly congeals into fixed, distinct and immobile concepts.’1

Bergson applied the term ‘subjective’ to what is given in intuition (that which can be completely known) and ‘objective’ to what is given through analysis (a constantly increasing number of new impressions). For him the intellect is bound to misunderstand motion and change, reducing such phenomena to points and instants. It is spatially orientated and unavoidably tends to separate states of ‘mind.’ In duration, states of ‘mind’ flow into and interpenetrate each other. Bergson believed that we have almost completely sacrificed intuition to intellect and wanted to develop a philosophy in which intuition subsumed intellect. ‘Intellect leaves us in the darkness of night.’2

For Bergson, there are two levels of conscious life - ‘a superficial level composed of discrete sensations and separate states and a deeper level where there is no separation but a pure  continuity.’3  We  constantly tend to assimilate the latter to the former through separating moments and the use of words. Language reduces the expression and particularity of individual experience to shared conventions. This criticism is most relevant to emotional expression. To put a feeling into words conveys only the shadow of the feeling since it is inevitably bound up with a multitude of feelings. Similarly with ideas (Ideas).

We see that the intellect, so skilful in dealing with the inert, is awkward the moment it touches the living. Whether it wants to treat the life of the body or the life of the mind, it proceeds with the rigour, the stiffness and the brutality of an instrument not designed for such use ... The intellect is characterised by a natural inability to comprehend life.4 

Since ‘mental’ reality does not exist in space, the intellect, which does and deals with spatiality, cannot grasp it. ‘Mental’ reality can only be intuited because it lies beyond spatial explanation. Although the intellect can give an increasingly complete account of the material world, it can only offer a reduction of life into terms of mechanics. Intuition is the faculty of grasping the pure flow of consciousness before the intellect fragments it into separate states and parts.

Bergson thought that geometry is immanent in the universe5 and that nature as a unity can be represented in an abstract and geometric form.6  Geometry as consciousness is prior to intellect  and is the latter’s goal of perfect fulfilment.7 It is eternal and impersonal.8 The intellect through tendency to its goal carries ‘a latent geometrism that is set free in the measure and proportion that (it) penetrates into the inner nature of inert matter.’9 This results in the geometrification of space.10 

Bergson thought that our ‘minds’ give matter its true materiality11 since every aspect of matter acts on every other aspect of matter and that ‘all division of matter into independent bodies with absolutely determined outlines is an artificial division.’12 There is something more but not  different to matter than what is given by the senses, and this is geometry - ‘matter ... is weighted with geometry.’13

The space of consciousness is real motion14 and therefore doesn’t exist between things but in the relations between things and as such is part of duration and the absolute.15 The intuition of space  and direction requires the same geometrisation of nature as the intuition of bodies.16 Bergson wrote that ‘spatialised time’ is a fourth dimension of space. This occurs in consciousness where the ‘mind’ brings together simultaneities or successive moments and gives them duration.

Thanks to philosophy, all things acquire depth, - more than depth, something like a fourth dimension which permits anterior perceptions to remain bound up with present perceptions and the immediate future itself to become partly outlined in the present. Reality ... then ... affirms itself dynamically, in the continuity and variability of its tendency. What was immobile and frozen in our perception is warmed and set in motion. Everything comes to life around us, everything is revivified in us.17

‘Space is no more without us than within us, and ... all sensations partake of extensity.’ The problem with ‘ordinary realism’ is that sensations are extracted from each  other  and  placed  apart  in  an indefinite and empty space.18 In reference to contemporary psychology, Bergson wrote ‘It is maintained, not without an appearance of reason, that there is no sensation without extensity or without a feeling of “volume”.’19 

Bergson used the achievements of science to refute the ‘positive sciences’ and to justify his theories. Not only are all atoms interpenetrating, with each atom occupying the whole of gravitational space, the materiality of the atom dissolves further, with the advance of knowledge, to a point where objective matter no longer exists, but force becomes ‘materialised’. This force returns continuity to the universe.20 Bergson referred to Faraday’s work

For Faraday, the atom is a centre of force. He means by this that the individuality of the atom consists in the mathematical point at which cross, radiating throughout space, the indefinite lines of  force which really constitute it : thus each atom occupies the whole space to which gravitation extends and all atoms are interpenetrating.21

and to that of Lord Kelvin

Lord Kelvin, moving in another order of ideas, supposes a perfect, continuous, homogeneous and incompressible fluid, filling space: what we term an atom he makes into a vortex ring, ever whirling in this continuity and owing its properties to its circular form, its existence and consequently, its individuality to its motion ... vortices and lines of force ... point out the direction in which we may seek for a representation of the real.22

Bergson stressed the interpenetration of all things.23 Although the material world can be extended in space and the ‘mental’ cannot, they form an absolute interpenetration with no independent parts.

A priori and apart from any hypothesis on the nature of the matter, it is evident that the materiality of a body does not stop at the point at which we touch it: a body is present wherever its influence is felt ... The more physics advances, the more it effaces the individuality of bodies and even of the particles into which the scientific imagination began by decomposing them: bodies and corpuscles tend to dissolve into a universal interaction.24 

The importance of Bergson’s philosophy to an understanding of the development of abstraction and early twentieth century Modernism cannot be overstated. The similarity in the treatment of form woven into pictorial space in the art of Cubism, Futurism, Cubo-Futurism and Rayonnism (Rayism) in particular, find their connection here. Obviously, my substantiation of this assertion will be central to my thesis. As I have stated previously, this essay is essentially an explication, owing to the subject’s neglect, of Bergson’s philosophy.

The following are two wonderful and substantial quotations which, I think, have immense bearing on my subject. The first deals with the inadequacy of perception for grasping truth, the second details the process required for bringing duration to consciousness.

That there are, in a sense, multiple objects, that one man is distinct from another man, tree from tree, stone from stone, is an indisputable fact ... But the separation between a thing and its environment cannot be absolutely definite and clear-cut; there is a passage by insensible gradations from the one to the other: the close solidarity which binds all the objects of the material universe, the perpetuality of their reciprocal actions and reactions, is sufficient to prove that they have not the precise limits which we attribute to them.25 

Matter (separate from consciousness) thus resolves itself into numberless vibrations, all linked together in uninterrupted continuity, all bound up with each other and travelling in every direction like shivers through an immense body. In short, try first to connect together the discontinuous objects of daily experience; then resolve the motionless continuity of their qualities into vibrations on the spot; finally fix your attention on these movements, by abstracting from the divisible space which underlies them and considering only their mobility (that undivided act which our consciousness becomes aware of in our own movements): You will thus obtain a vision of matter, fatiguing perhaps for your imagination, but pure, and freed from all that the exigencies of life compel you to add to it in external perception. Now bring back consciousness ... At long, very long, intervals, and by as many leaps over enormous periods of the inner history of things, quasi-instantaneous views will be taken, views which this time are bound to be pictorial, and of which the more vivid colours will condense an infinity of elementary repetitions and changes. In just the same way the multitudinous successive positions of a runner are contracted into a single symbolic attitude, which our eyes perceive, which art reproduces and which becomes for us all the image of a man running ... The change is everywhere, but inward; we localise it here and there, but outwardly’26 

The point Bergson made regarding our perception and the artist’s depiction of a man running differs from Plato on an artist’s representation in that the former deals with an action and the latter with an object. But both the perception of the action and the reproduction of the object amount to partial representations of a standard which exists in a higher, absolute and eternal reality.27 

On the purely physical aspect of perception, Bergson wrote that the cells of our eyes break down into thousands of squares our perception of an artist’s painting and that our final perception is a recomposition of the work into a united whole.28 Again, evolution itself is a process of fragmentation. It proceeds like a shell burst which in turn becomes further fragments. ‘We perceive only what is nearest to us, namely, the scattered movements of the pulverised explosions.’29 He wrote of the explosive force which life bears within it.

Creativity was a key concept for Bergson. He titled his major work Creative Evolution. In this book he discussed his notion of artistic intuition and claimed that the creative urge is at the heart of evolution. He began Time and Free Will with writing on aesthetic feeling. Bergson did not develop a systematic aesthetic. His thoughts in this area refer to ‘old-fashioned’ elements of grace, motion and rhythm as components of beauty. He did not champion a particular style of art. His ideas on art contain the same profound contradiction as did  those of Plato, revolving around notions of art as ‘mere’ representation and art as an inspired and creative practice, around truth revealed in art and truth revealed through art.

On the former, Bergson held that all forms of representation are distorted refractions of the inner self, merely enriching our present, resulting in the inner self being spatialised.

A representation taken from a certain point of view, a translation made with certain symbols, will always remain imperfect in comparison with the object of which a view has been taken, or which the symbols seek to express. But the absolute, which is the object and not its representation, the original and not its translation, is perfect, by being perfectly what it is. It is doubtless for this reason that the absolute has often been identified with the infinite.30

While the inner life cannot be represented by either concepts or images, an intuition of duration can be evoked by an image. For this to happen the work of art must not be constructed analytically (since one can only pass from intuition to analysis but not vice versa) but must induce an alogical state of ‘mind’ in the viewer.31

Part Three/To be continued ...

Notes.

1. The Creative Mind, op. cit., 228

2. Creative Evolution, op. cit.,  268

3. A. Pilkington, Bergson and his Influence, A Reassessment, Cambridge, 1976, 5

4. Selections from Bergson, op. cit.,88

5. Creative Evolution, op. cit.,  361

6. Ibid., 190. Even in extension, the body is defined by geometry, Creative Evolution , op. cit., 349. Also, ‘Descartes reduced matter - considered at the instant - to extension; physics in his eyes, attained to the real insofar as it was geometrical.’ Duration and Simultaneity, op. cit., 160

7. Ibid., 210-211

8. Selections from Bergson, op. cit., 63

9. Creative Evolution, op. cit.,  195

10. Selections from Bergson, op. cit., 135

11. Creative Evolution, op. cit.,  202

12. Matter and Memory, op. cit., 196

13. Creative Evolution, op. cit.,  369

14. Matter and Memory, op. cit., 217

15. Bergsonism, op.cit., 49

16. Creative Evolution, op. cit.,  212

17. The Creative Mind, op. cit., 186

18. Matter and Memory, op. cit., 216

19. Ibid., 217

20. Bergson and Modern Thought, op. cit., 83-84, Matter and Memory,  op. cit., 199-200. Compare with Kandinsky, ‘This discovery (the further division of the atom) struck me with terrific impact, comparable to that of the end of the world. In the twinkling of an eye, the mighty arches of science lay shattered before me. All things became flimsy, with no strength of certainty ... To me, science had been destroyed.’ Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1911, reprint., New York 1977, 14. Also Marinetti, ‘“Let’s go!” I said, “Let’s go friends! Let’s go out. Mythology and the Mystic Ideal are finally overcome. We are about to witness the birth of the centaur and soon we shall see the first angels fly!” ‘The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism,1908, in H. Chipp, ed., Theories of Modern Art, A Source Book by Artists and Critics, California,1968, 284. Lenin wrote that ‘matter’ is a philosophical concept for objective reality, outside the ‘mind’ and that ‘“Matter disappears” means that the limit within which we have hitherto known matter disappears and that our knowledge is penetrating deeper’. V. Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy, 1908, reprint., Moscow, 1977, 241.

21. Matter and Memory,  op.  cit., 201. Antliff has written on the impact of Bergson’s philosophy on Futurism. Gino Severini painted Travel Memories in 1911 in response to his reading of Bergson’s An Introduction to Metaphysics. See ‘Bergson and Cubism: A Reassessment’, op. cit., 345.

22. Matter and Memory, op. cit., 201. In 1912 Apollinaire described Delaunay’s art as ‘Orphic Cubism’. In the same year Delaunay wrote an article titled ‘La Lumière’ in which he made frequent use of Bergsonian concepts - ‘simultaneity’, ‘rhythm’, ‘vital movement’, ‘visual movement’ and ‘dynamic’. His Eiffel Tower (1911) like Gleizes’ Portrait of Jacques Nayral (1911) was painted from collective memories. Antliff wrote that Delaunay’s Eiffel Tower had a Bergsonian genealogy. See ‘Bergson and Cubism: A Reassessment’ op. cit., 345. 

23. Creative Evolution, op. cit.,  266

24. Ibid., 188

25. Matter and Memory, op. cit., 209

26. Ibid., 208

27. See note 56

28. Selections from Bergson, op. cit., 70

29. Ibid., 70

30. An Introduction to Metaphysics, op. cit., 23

31. Compare with Plato’s ‘For a poet is  indeed a  thing ethereally light, winged and sacred, nor can he compose anything worth calling poetry until he becomes inspired and, as it were, mad, or whilst any reason remains in him ... (they compose) from the impulse of the divinity within them.’ ‘Ion’ in Five Dialogues of Plato Bearing on Poetic Inspiration. London,1929,7. Deleuze wrote ‘Platonic inspiration makes itself profoundly felt in Bergson.’ Bergsonism, op. cit., 59.