Poussin Problems

Abstract

In the early work of Poussin1 two distinct principles of pictorial composition are found in combination. The one we may call the representation of objects, the other, the representation of sections of space in which objects play a subordinate rô1e.2 This distinction is crucial in pictorial analysis not only because it differentiates two opposed outlooks, but also because it helps to characterize every picture in terms of a common factor, namely the relation between the representation and the frame. The first of these principles of composition involves the surrounding of the object with a frame determined by the object, e. g., in Italian painting, the vertical panels with semicircular tops used for saints. The second lets the frame either include arbitrarily whatever objects happen to fall in the artist's field of vision or else cut across them boldly—violating nature, as Manet put it—e. g. Degas' pictures of races with horses partly cut off by the frame. The function of the frame is important in both cases, but different. In the first case its function is to describe and define, to enclose a value by its four golden walls. In the second case the frame is no less important to hold the picture together, but instead of doing this by a kind of contouring it provides a no less functional rhythmic harmony: its four straight sides form an accord with the complicated curved lines of the composition.