Serusier aux sources de l'abstraction

COSMIC ROOTS , SEARCH AND HERITAGE  OF SERUSIER “ TETRAEDRES  “ 1910

Cosmic roots of abstract art

The search for cosmic paintings can be found in the mid of the 18th cent. and kept growing on since Simon-Mathurin Lantara painted in 1752 , “ l’ esprit de Dieu flottant sur les eaux “ (Musée de Grenoble ). The motivation of this search found a new impulse in the quest for the origins of mankind in Paul Gauguin painting in 1897 “ Qui sommes-nous ? d’ ou venons-nous ? ou allons-nous ? “ (Boston Museum of Fine Arts ).

The answer to this quest was found earlier in sciences , in the parallel between the evolution of the embryo ( ontogeny of the individual ) and the evolution of universal life ( phylogeny of the human specie lineage ).

This observation was formulated in the “ principle of recapitulation “ by Ernst Haeckel , the german naturalist , in 1868 ( annex 1) : the human embryo develops in itself all the previous stages of its immemorial specie , in an accelerated way . Each of us has been , step by step , an egg , a reptilian , a quadruped, a marsupial, a mammal , a monkey , a man . The embryo is a condensate of evolution , the symbol of the unity of life , of the natural fraternity of all the living forms. Long before Haeckel , Spinoza stated that “ the human being is a parcel of nature taking conscious of itself “.

In poetry , Victor Hugo formulated the concept of astral copulation , in his poem “ Là haut “ , where goddesses are cosmic creatures , leaving aside mythological harmony for lasciviousness.

Malevich painted in 1908 , the “ tree of life “ (annex 2) where a tree trunk bears a golden embryo , surrounded by a dozen of dancing women fauns. Painters searched for the cosmic womb , where the primordial appearance of life took place ; they found it in the space and near water.

In the space , thanks to Kupka’s painting “ Premiers pas “ (1910-1913) in the MOMA collection in New-York (annex 3) , we can observe the pictorial appearance of sidereal life. He painted spatial bodies looking like oocytes and the main planet appears double a split shell.

Paul Sérusier’ search

Paul Sérusier was a pioneering figure , author of two quality leaps in art ; the “ synthétisme “ he founded in 1888 beside Gauguin , when he painted “ Le Talisman “ ( Musée d’ Orsay ) ( annex 4 ) and the “ Symbolisme “ he established in 1892 with his fellow Nabis  artists.

Sérusier dared abstraction as a way of stating his perception of life in a new cosmic event; he heralded three abstract paintings as the natural answers of a highly cultured artist ,  confronted with the Gauguin’s questioning in 1897 “ qui sommes-nous, ….” ( Boston Fine Art Museum ) .

We can understand Sérusier’s leap into abstraction as a prophetic gesture. We decipher here a mutual thematic that runs through the three abstract masterpieces he painted in 1910 :

- “ Tétraèdres “ , “ Les Origines “ , “ Cylindre d’ Or “ .

The ongoing meditation on “ what we are made of “ - answering Gauguin’s “ qui sommes-nous ?” - was the spark of Sérusier’s painting “ Les Origines “(annex 5) .

A ray of light , the prima substance is painted . The meditation about the luminous essence of the universe allows Sérusier to decrypt the power of the chromatic radiance. In “ Les Origines “ the meditation of the onlooker immediately follows the narration of the birth of the visible realm.

“Les Origines “ is the first cosmic landscape;  new genre of painting different from the landscape genre . A triangle dominates the cosmic view with its derivative the tetraedric pyramid. In this painting we find a parallel with Edouard Schuré ‘s vision of Hermés Trimégiste , where three pyramids and the sacred tetragram allows the introduction of the fourth dimension of time and the sacred counting of seven (Edouard Schuré, les grands initiés , 1889, librairie academique Perrin, p.196) .

The marvellous cosmic sky of “ Tétraèdres “ seduces our senses with eight green tétraèdres floating in the lower dark space with eight yellow and orange tétraèdres in the upper golden light .The presence of green and yellow heralds the blue colour of the planet earth .

Sérusier’s choice of tétraèdres originates from is knowledge of Plato’s solids , where each solid is a symbol of mutation : Tétraèdre is fire .

Therefore we read this painting as the primordial fire , the big bang which produced the universe.

In the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, we see Sérusier ’ s “ Cylindre d’ Or “ (annex 6) the painting which follows “ Tétraèdres “ . Why do “ Cylindre d’ Or “ follows in a chronologic sequence “ Tétraèdres “ and “ Les Origines “ ?

“Cylindre d’ Or “ presents a solid material object , a gold cylinder floating in the night space , above some earth reliefs. Gold owns a cubic faces centered structure ( CFC in chemistry ), and gold is the result of stars collision which resulted in supernovae clouds . Therefore gold , on earth , was aggregated by clouds of former spatial corpses of stars. Earth’s gold is of cosmic origin.

Sérusier painted the  gift of gold as coming from the night space. We can deduct that the gift of the gold cylinder , was preceded by the cosmic fire of the tétraèdres spatial collision , and the dispersal of gold into the earth’s crust .

 But Sérusier was a symbolist painter by excellence, and we see this painting as the revelation of the golden era of humanity which will come with the understanding of an ultimate wisdom : This gold cylinder floating over our heads is elusive , unless we evolve .

In Stanley Kubrick’s “ 2001, space odyssey “ we find the same allusion with the four black monoliths, thrown at humanity as challenges to the human species , in order to stir up their creativity .

The symbology of geometric forms was established among the antique greek philosophers : It was given a new life by Kandinsky and Johannes Itten  in the twenties. Among the greeks we find :

• Plato; Timée , chapter 56 : Tétraèdre – one of the five solids of Plato – is  

fire.

• Pythagore ; he draws the analogy between numbers and figures ,

between arithmetic and geometry; 1 is a point , 2 is a line , 3 is a triangle , 4 is a pyramid ( Tétraèdre ). This teaching is also set in “ theologoumenes arithmetiques ” by the Pseudo-Jamblique.

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