The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Jean-Siméon Chardin · La Raie, the title the canvas has always carried · oil on canvas, large for a French still life of its decade, near the scale of a modest history picture · on a stone ledge in a dim kitchen recess a ray hung from a hook and slit open, a cat on a heap of oysters at the left, vessels on a white cloth at the right · painted about 1725 to 1726, when the painter was about twenty-six · one of the two pictures on which Chardin was received into the Académie royale in September 1728 · Musée du Louvre, Paris · scored as the single canvas as it stands
Mode
The kitchen and fish piece of the Flemish and Dutch tradition raised to the scale and gravity of history painting; a still life centred on one opened body rather than on abundance
Mythos
The slaughtered and displayed victim, a body hung at the centre above an altar-like ledge with the knife laid ready, built by the composition; the cat at the fish, predation and appetite, evoked
Phase
One moment in a kitchen: the cut already made, the cat about to take, the cooking not yet begun
Presentation
Oil on canvas, a large format; about a dozen things on one ledge in three groups, cat and shellfish at the left, the ray at the centre, vessels on a cloth at the right; dark brown and grey ground, light from the left
Register
Grave and uncanny: a terrible beauty at the centre, the opened fish dreadful and splendid together, with small beauties of surface in shell, copper and linen and a note of alarm in the cat
Scale
One ledge, one moment, one hung body at or near life size
Governing Proposition
On a stone ledge in a dim kitchen recess a ray hangs from a hook at the centre, its pale underside turned to us and slit open, the red and pearly interior falling from the wound; above it two nostrils and a mouth make a face that looks back. At the left a cat with its back arched steps across a heap of opened oysters toward the fish; at the right stand a jug, a pot, a skimmer, a bottle and onions on a white cloth, and the handle of a knife juts over the ledge toward the viewer’s hand. The wager of the canvas is that a kitchen piece, the lowest of the academic kinds, can be painted at the size and with the gravity of the highest, and that food shown as what it is, an opened body, can make paint into flesh and the viewer into one more creature at the ledge.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The canvas is large for a French still life of its decade, near the scale of a modest history picture. It shows a stone ledge in a dim kitchen recess, with a ground of dark brown and grey and the light falling from the left. At the upper centre a ray hangs from a hook, its pale underside turned toward us and slit open, so that the red and pearly interior hangs down from the cut. On that underside two nostrils and a mouth read as a face, set just above the wound. The fish is at or near life size.
At the left a cat, its back arched and its fur up, steps across a heap of opened oysters toward the fish, with a few smaller fish near it on the ledge. At the right, on a white cloth, stand an earthenware jug, a cooking pot of copper or brass, a skimmer, a bottle and spring onions, and the handle of a knife projects over the edge of the ledge toward the viewer. About a dozen things in all, in three groups: the cat and the shellfish, the ray, the vessels. No person is in the picture, and no inscription.
It was painted about 1725 to 1726, when Chardin was about twenty-six. In September 1728 it was one of the two pictures, with The Buffet, on which he was received into the Académie royale as a painter of animals and fruit. It stayed with the Académie and is now in the Louvre. What is scored is that one canvas as it stands. The Buffet, the painter’s other kitchen pieces of the 1720s and the many later copies, Matisse’s among them, are context.
Movement II
The kitchen and fish piece came to him from the north. Snyders and Fyt had painted larders heaped with game and fish, with cats creeping at the edge to steal; the Dutch had made the fish still life a kind of its own. In France the still life of Desportes and Oudry was decorative, game and plenty for the great house, arranged for display. The cat, the hung fish, the cloth and the vessels were all the tradition’s own, and Chardin took them over as he found them.
What he changed was the weight. He set a kitchen subject on a canvas near the size of a history picture and painted it with a history picture’s gravity. At the centre he put not an abundance but one opened body, and he turned the plenty toward death and use. The fish is not arranged for admiration. It is cut and hung, as food is cut and hung, and the knife lies ready.
The stake was real. He had no grounding as a history painter, and the still life stood lowest among the genres the Académie ranked. The canvas wagered that it could carry the weight of the high genres, and the Académie received him on it. The turn is of seriousness and scale more than of form: the devices stayed the tradition’s, and the swerve is held below the bar the summit asks. In its own decades its consequence was a career; the painter’s later and sparer still lifes and genre scenes carried more of his influence than this crowded early canvas, and the French still life after him did not take its violence.
Movement III
The meaning is carried by the handling. The ray’s interior is built up in a dragged and loaded paint, with glazes laid over it, so that the red, the rose and the nacre have depth and wetness; pigment becomes flesh, and flesh becomes pigment. That is what the picture knows: the eaten body and the painted surface are made of the same stuff. A print or a drawing would keep the composition and lose the flesh, which is most of what the canvas says.
The rest of the ledge is made with the same economy of touch. The oysters are a few strokes of grey and white that are wet shell. The copper takes the light in a few placed strokes. The white of the cloth is modulated by the dark ground around it. One dim kitchen light crosses a dozen materials and holds them in tone, and one touch handles fur, flesh, shell and metal.
The costs are plain. The cat is drawn with less authority than the fish is painted: its body is stiff and its pose staged. The ledge is crowded at the right, and the space of the recess is summary. The right-hand group is in part a reception piece’s display of range, copper, earthenware, glass, linen and greens, and the bottle or the skimmer could go without loss of meaning. This is a young master in full command of matter and not yet of the economy he reached in his later still lifes.
Movement IV
Everything turns on the centre. The ray hangs as a slaughtered body hangs, opened, and the face above the cut makes it look back. Its interior, rose, vermilion and nacre in a fall of light, is splendid and dreadful at once; it has the look of an altarpiece’s hung body or a flayed figure. The composition builds the archetype without a sign or an allusion: a body hung at the centre between two horizontal groups, above a ledge like an altar, with the knife laid ready. The slaughtered and displayed victim is in the structure, not in the subject.
The cat completes the statement. It is the only living thing and the only motion, and its appetite names what the fish is for: what we will eat is what any animal would take. The knife joins the viewer to the cutting; its handle is pushed out over the ledge toward our hand. What the canvas brings into the open can be stated: food is flesh, and the kitchen is a place of killing. Everything on the ledge is for eating, cooking or killing, ranked by its nearness to the cut, and the pot and skimmer at the right wait to receive the fish.
That is close to all it states. No cook is there, no household, no hunger or plenty behind the table; the force is in large part shock and mood, the uncanny face and the red interior. The archetype is given no second term, no rite and no answer, and the face may be read as a joke as easily as an omen. The vessels at the right belong to another, calmer kind of still life: they obey the law of use but not the tone of the centre. The person, the household, the state and history are absent, and the deeper orders of the rubric read the picture as what it is, a kitchen still life of exceptional weight.
Movement V
The canvas has been in institutional keeping since the painter’s reception: with the Académie, and now in the Louvre, where it is in view. Lining, cleaning and varnish are the ordinary history of an oil of about three centuries, and the image is the one the painter made; its own condition record is not known to the desk, and it is credited no further than the usual. Its esteem has not fallen far, carried through the nineteenth century’s recovery of Chardin, which Proust’s essay on the painter belongs to, and into the twentieth.
Its reach came late and as a single picture. Matisse copied it as a young painter. Ensor painted a ray in 1892 and Soutine painted rays in the 1920s, and in the line of the opened carcass that runs from Rembrandt’s ox to Soutine it is a station, though the debt of those later pictures runs as much to the ox as to the ray. Each later eye found something different: truth to matter, a splendour hidden in the ordinary, a structure of colour, a violence in the flesh. The questions stay open: whether the face is wit or omen, whether the picture is about appetite or death, how far its gravity was the painter’s purpose.
On the desk it stands at 8.0, at the foot of Tier IV. Black Iris III, one magnified natural object whose form carries its meaning more completely, has the same twelve-axis sum and the same 8.0; Girl with a Pearl Earring, the nearest kind among the posted canvases, one image of matter and light made grave, stands a tenth above at 8.1, the more perfectly unified picture, with nothing permitted; The Swing, a private-room picture of the same century made witty, stands at 7.8. The Ray holds the graver archetype and the clearer later line. The fish still hangs open, and the cat has not yet reached it.
Act III · The Twelve
The centre cannot be touched. Remove the ray and there is no picture; remove its opened belly and the ray is merely a fish. The cat is required, though less than it first seems: it is the only living thing and the only motion, the appetite that names what the hung fish is for, and its arching diagonal answers the fish’s vertical. The knife is required: its handle, pushed over the ledge toward us, puts the viewer’s hand at the scene. What yields is the right-hand group. Jug, pot, skimmer, bottle and onions are a second still life, partly a reception piece’s display of range in copper, earthenware, glass, linen and greens, and the bottle or the skimmer could go without loss of meaning. The crowding of the ledge is permitted, not compelled.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Disclosure through image is credited in full, and something can be stated. Food is flesh, and the kitchen is a place of killing: the ray hangs as a slaughtered body hangs, opened, with something like a face above the wound, and the cat makes plain that what we will eat is what any animal would take. The picture refuses the decorum that made the still life a display of plenty; the fish is cut and hung for use, not arranged for admiration. It brings into the open the kinship of our flesh and the food’s. But the disclosure stops close to that one fact. No condition of persons or of a society is in it: the cook, the household, the hunger or plenty behind the table are absent, and much of the force is shock and mood, the uncanny face and the red interior, more than a meaning that grows as it is stated.
Score: 7.7 / 10
The elevation is real and of an uncommon kind for a kitchen piece: a terrible beauty. The opened ray, its interior rose, vermilion and nacre, hung at the centre in a fall of light, is grand and dreadful together; it has the look of an altarpiece’s hung body or a flayed figure, and the face above it makes the dread personal. The height is held, not momentary, since the ray is the centre of the whole canvas. It recurs at a lower pitch in the wet sheen of the oysters, the light on the copper and the white of the cloth, each a small beauty of surface; the cat’s bristling adds alarm. What holds the axis is range: one great image and a scatter of lesser beauties, and a dread that stands nearer the edge of the grotesque than of awe.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Mostly evoked, built in one place. The built place is the sacrifice: a body hung at the centre, opened, with a face, above an altar-like ledge, and the knife laid ready. The archetype of the slaughtered and displayed victim, the crucified, the flayed, the butcher’s ox, is carried by the composition itself, the hung vertical between two horizontal groups, not by any sign or allusion. Elsewhere the deep patterns are summoned, not built: the cat as appetite and predation, the old emblem of the cat at the fish; mortality without a skull. The particulars stay particular, a ledge, a jug, onions. But the archetype is given no further structure, no second term, no rite and no answer, and the face may be taken as a joke as easily as an omen. Evoked strongly, built at its centre only.
Score: 7.5 / 10
The inheritance is the Flemish and Dutch kitchen and fish piece, Snyders and Fyt with their cats and larders and the Dutch fish still lifes, and the French decorative still life of Desportes and Oudry, game and plenty for the great house. The departure is in seriousness and scale: a kitchen subject on a canvas near the size of a history picture, made with a history picture’s gravity, its centre one opened body rather than an abundance, its plenty turned toward death and use. The stake was real. The painter had no grounding as a history painter and stood in the lowest of the academic genres; the canvas wagered that a still life could carry the weight of the high genres. Held below the top because the devices, cat, hung fish, cloth and vessels, are the tradition’s own, and the turn is of weight more than of form.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Substitute another form and much goes. What the picture knows lives in paint as matter: the ray’s interior is laid in a loaded, worked impasto with glazes, so that pigment becomes wet flesh and flesh becomes pigment, and the kinship of the eaten body and the painted surface is the work’s knowledge. A print or a drawing would keep the composition and lose the flesh, which is most of the meaning. The large format puts the ray at or near life size and the viewer at the ledge, within reach of the knife; reduced to a cabinet piece the dread would go. The composition carries the sense: the hung vertical between the cat’s diagonal and the vessels’ stable mass makes the fish both centre and victim. Held below the top because the arrangement is partly additive, three groups on one ledge, and the right side’s form says less than the centre’s.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Evidence over promise: about three centuries, and a record of return by strong eyes. Matisse copied this canvas as a young painter; Ensor and Soutine painted rays in its line; Proust wrote an essay on Chardin, and the nineteenth century’s recovery of the painter brought it back into view. Each found something different in it: truth to matter, a splendour hidden in the ordinary, a structure of colour, a violence in the flesh. The questions it keeps open are real: whether the face is wit or omen; whether the picture is about appetite or about death; how far its gravity is the painter’s purpose and how far the viewer’s reading. Held below the top because the debate is narrower than a great figure picture’s, and much of the return is to the paint rather than to depths of meaning.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The field is French painting of the 1720s, and the still life in Europe after it. The intrinsic force is substantial: the canvas shows that the lowest genre can be painted at the scale and with the seriousness of the highest, and it did so inside the institution that ranked the genres, which received the painter on it. That reorganised the possible for one painter and for the French still life. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: in its own decades it was modest, since it opened a career, and the painter’s later and sparer still lifes and genre scenes carried more of his influence; the French still life after him did not take its violence. Its reach came later and as a single picture: Matisse’s copy, Ensor’s ray of 1892, Soutine’s ray of the 1920s, a station in the line of the opened carcass from Rembrandt’s ox to Soutine. Delayed reach is credited and discounted.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric, at about three centuries. Form: the image is the one the painter made, and no loss to any part that carries its meaning is known to the desk. Presence: received by the Académie royale in 1728 and kept in its collection, now in the Louvre and in view; its esteem has not fallen far, since the nineteenth century’s recovery of Chardin and the modern painters kept it before the eye. Fame lifts the figure a little at most. Fabric: lining, cleaning and varnish are the ordinary history of an oil of its age, and the canvas’s own condition record is not known here, so it is credited no further than the usual. The figure is the usual one for centuries with the form whole, at the foot of that row.
Score: 9.2 / 10
Judged as command of oil on canvas, to the same anchors as every medium, and the making is load-bearing: the meaning is carried by the handling. The ray’s interior is built in a dragged and loaded paint with glazes over it, so that the red, the rose and the nacre have depth and wetness; the oysters are a few touches of grey and white that are wet shell; the copper takes the light in a few placed strokes; the cloth’s white is modulated by the dark ground. The tonal control is fine, one dim kitchen light across a dozen materials. The costs are charged: the cat is drawn with less authority than the fish is painted, its body stiff and its pose staged; the ledge is crowded at the right; the space of the recess is summary. A young master in full command of matter, not yet of the economy he reached later.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the cat, alive, alarmed and moving at the left, and the still group of jug, pot and bottle at the right. One law holds them: everything on the ledge is for eating, cooking or killing, and is ranked by its nearness to the cut. The cat wants the fish; the oysters are opened; the knife waits; the pot and skimmer will receive it. One light and one dark ground bind them, and one touch handles fur, flesh, shell and metal. The law is kept. But two registers meet without full fusion: the drama of the hung fish and the cat, and the calm display of vessels, which belongs to another kind of still life. The two halves obey one law, of use, but not one tone. The range is narrow, one ledge and one moment, and narrowness is not coherence.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The orders held: the animal and its appetite; food and the work of the kitchen, implied by the knife, the pot and the cut; death and the body; and the material world as matter, flesh, shell, metal, clay and linen, rendered as the painter’s subject. The face on the fish brushes the human, and the sacrifice brushes the sacred, both by suggestion only. The one light and the one law of use integrate them. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve is what is absent: no person, no household but its tools, no labour except the cut already made, no state, no history and no sacred order but what the composition evokes. It is a kitchen still life of exceptional weight, and the figure describes the form. The Encompassed clears its floor of 6.0 by half a point.
Score: 6.5 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.0 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 9.2 and The Made at 8.9, with The Living Form at 8.3. An image whole after about three centuries, kept since the painter’s reception and now in the Louvre; a ray’s interior built in loaded, glazed paint so that pigment becomes wet flesh, with shell, copper and linen each made in a few touches under one kitchen light; and a large format that sets the fish at or near life size and the viewer at the ledge, within reach of the knife, so that the knowledge of the picture, the kinship of the eaten body and the painted surface, cannot be had in any other form.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.5: the animal, the kitchen, death and the material world are held, and the person, the household, labour, the state, history and the sacred are absent or only suggested. Above it, The Archetypal Deep at 7.5: the sacrifice is built at the centre and given no further structure, and the face may be wit or omen. Then The Unconcealment at 7.7 and The Swerve at 7.8: the picture states that food is flesh and stops near that fact, and its turn from the Flemish and French still life is of weight and gravity more than of form. The three are one fact: a single opened body on a kitchen ledge, made grave, with nothing round it but its tools and an animal.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.9 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.3, The Made at 8.9, The Inner Law at 8.2, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on four of five: The Imperishable at 9.2 clears the bar of 8.5, but Pressure on Tradition at 7.9 falls short by six tenths, The Swerve at 7.8 by seven, The Unconcealment at 7.7 by eight and The Archetypal Deep at 7.5 by a full point. The Universal Minimum is met, The Archetypal Deep standing at the line at 7.5 and every other axis it governs above it, and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.5. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The twelve sum to 96.1, an average of 8.01 that displays 8.0, at the foot of the band of Tier IV; the summit is withheld on the Epochal Gate, and the aggregate, a full point short of 9.0, would withhold it besides.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the canvas in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (the hung and opened ray with its face, the cat on the oysters, the vessels on the cloth and the knife), of its place in the painter’s reception into the Académie royale in September 1728, and of its later life. No image, technical report or written source was consulted. The work scored is the single canvas as it stands: oil on canvas, painted about 1725 to 1726, large for a French still life of its decade. Not in the unit, and neither scored nor credited: The Buffet, the other picture of the reception; the painter’s other kitchen pieces of the 1720s and his later still lifes; and the many later copies, Matisse’s among them, which with the rays of Ensor and Soutine are evidence of the reach. No words are quoted: the canvas carries none, and no statement of the painter’s is recorded here; the title, La Raie, is given as certain. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the canvas’s exact dimensions, its showing at an open-air exhibition before the reception, the route by which it passed from the Académie into the Louvre, the number of the small fish on the ledge, the condition record and any losses, and the words of Diderot and of Proust on the painter’s fish; that the form survives whole is stated as far as the desk knows it, not as established by technical study.