Marcel Duchamp, "On the Cliff" 1907

A textual reading of Marcel Duchamp’s 1907 painting “On the Cliff” highlights some of the imagist and impressionist strategies of the image, and the strategies from the two movements seem to be working together in some parts of the image. The imagist strategies of fragmentation, multiple perspectives, and juxtaposition coexist with the impressionist strategies of delayed decoding, singular/individual perspective, and abstraction to create an image which renders the “reader” (the audience/viewer of the painting, but for this assignment of “reading” images I thought I would play with this title) disoriented and unable to make sense of the image. Furthermore, the painting is in conversation with the serious literary and representational problem with imperialism, which was the problem of identifying and representing new world images with a language that is insufficient for the task.

The imagist strategy of fragmentation is applied to the painting visually with color. The cliff itself contains fragments of blue, white, brown, and a sort of mauve/pink color. The same colors are used for the water, but because of the different textures there is a clear distinction between the smooth water and rougher cliff. The top of the cliff contains fragments of green while the subject in the foreground, presumably a person’s head, is painted with fragments of red, brown, pink, and white. The texture of the image can be described as being fragmented, and can be compared to the visual “blotches” of random words and “gaps” in Mina Loy’s poem “Costa Magic”. The imagist strategy of fragmented texture complements and arguably creates the impressionist characteristic of abstraction and disorientation of the image. Although decipherable, the lines are not clearly drawn between the cliff and water, and although there is strong suggestion of the back of a person’s head, the image remains abstract enough to make the “reader” question whether it is a person or a living participant at all.

The imagist strategy of fragmentation is also used in terms of the image the reader actually sees. The image is very limited when considering what the perspective might be (to be discussed later!). On the limited space of the canvas, Duchamp had to make decisions of what parts of the cliff to paint, and how much. In this way, the imagist fragmentation is complemented by the impressionist strategy of a type of delayed decoding. Because the painting is static, the reader is only allowed this moment. The reader is given a visual moment, and Duchamp declared what the reader should be exposed to in this particular moment. This moment resembles something we might think of while reading the arrival passage of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or the moment of discovery we are confronted with in the clip of Apocalypse Now. To summarize, in all of these representations the reader is limited in what is seen at a particular moment, as a result of the applied strategies of fragmentation and delayed decoding.

Perspective is a problem in this painting. Some of the other imagist and impressionist characteristics have been pointed out, and have shown to complement or rely on each other. The problem with perspective in this respect is that we learned that imagism and impressionism have opposite strategies for perspective. Imagism tries to take away the idea of perspective, and sometimes the persona or narrator will not have an “I” or an identity that is inherently important to the poem or prose. Impressionism plays with singular or individual perspective. If the painting were read as an impressionist painting, it may be assumed that this image is being viewed by another person behind the subject, and the painting is in the eyes of this person. However, the imagist fragmentation and limits of the image suggest that this may not be the case, because if the painting were meant to be through someone’s eyes, it would not be so limited. At the same time the already recognized strategy of delayed decoding creates the idea of the author (artist), through which he creates a narrator (eyes) who employs this delayed decoding on his vision (a  horizontally limited image of a person looking out at part of a cliff). On the other hand, the same painting read with imagism in mind would not employ a narrator or any kind of perspective. The image simply becomes a moment, a poetic representation of this person and that cliff, much like “these faces” the image in Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro”. The two readings are conflicting and become more complicated when the results of the aforementioned strategies are considered. I think this conflict of perspective is epitomized by the very title of the painting “On the Cliff”. Nothing is actually “special” on top of the cliff, and the subject or assumed “narrator” is not on the cliff as one might expect, creating a problematic juxtaposition with perspective and image.

Marcel Duchamp’s painting itself is a product of impressionism as well as imagism, as we saw with many of the poems in class. The painting of an observer on a shore resembles images of imperialism or discovering new worlds, as in Heart of Darkness. The combination of impressionist and imagist literary strategies in this painting creates a disoriented reader through the lack of clarity of the image itself, the mystery that surrounds the limited image, and the problem of perspective. This disorientation highlights the problem with representing imperialist images, how much of these new worlds can be effectively represented, and how much of the world the reader can understand by reading this image.