Honoré de Balzac wrote Le Chef d’Oeuvre Inconnu (The Unknown Masterpiece) in 1831. In it an artist spends ten years creating what he thinks is his masterpiece. When he finally shows it to two young artists they stare at it, uncomprehending.
“Can you see anything?”
“No, can you?” “Nothing”. “All I can see are blocks of different colour in a confused mass bound by a multitude of weird lines which form a wall of paint”. The artist is horrified “Nothing! Nothing to show for ten years of work!”
In his book Balzac aims to show the futility of aiming for perfection but, 50 years before Post-Impressionism and nearly 100 years before abstract art, he unwittingly anticipates the bemused reaction to the work of artists such as Cézanne and, later, Mondrian, as shown in the photos above.
In the 1880s Cézanne made around 100 paintings of one mountain, le Mont Victoire in Provence. The subject matter was a pretext. He was trying to show the problem of painting a 3D subject on a 2D canvas, using “blocks of colour” and “mulitudes of lines”. Most viewers saw confusion and weirdness. In the 20th century, artists such as Mondrian were inspired by Cézanne to limit their works to the formal elements of line, colour and “walls of paint”. Balzac is usually categorised as a Realist, a mere recorder of everyday life. The trouble with categories is they are limiting and therefore often wrong. Balzac was also a visionary.