Detail 27 > place, and seems to lie over them in another); the order is never fixed (detail 26). The layer- ing is densest at the very center of that mountain of tapestry, where the two bands of gold intersect and lose their way, and where the edges of a multitude of once-watery color patches crowd ten- and twenty fold. At the inner edge of that heap, where those colors array themselves at the limit of the Detail 26 -bare-paper area of white, they pile atop a buried line of graphite, dense blue atop maroon atop green, probably atop an under- red, one building the translucency of the lines of the gold banding within the tapestry layer of paler blue. There density of pigment other into a density that begins to approach provide the gross indication of surface design confronts absence of pigment in a kind of opacity. Next to it we can see how a loaded and the only road map to its pattern; they meeting of opposed forces. Meanwhile the C-curve ofocheris built on top of a dilute also suggest a kind of structuring armature upper-left contour of the heap of fabric is ocher with veils of pale green and lavender within which color runs riot. And here the gone over in broken, repeated threads of red, beneath, topped off by dense Prussian blue heaping of the tapestry into a massive, almost ocher, blue, and maroon, while interior folds contour strokes above. Above those two geological fold that seems heaviest just are reinforced by blue, maroon, and black interlocked shapes we can see how green above the bent horizontal of the gold banding commas, dashes, and S-marks (detail 24). under blue layered with a touch of red pro- accrues out of the dense, lapidary accretion Below, where the fabric falls on the left, duces a variegated blue ranging from sky of color marks one on top of another, with there is one final confrontation between the and cornflower to lavender. Above that and some aeration by white, as if it were literally figurative use of color and a dense color lay- slightly to the left, the maze of marks and the amassing of pigment layers that accounts ering that suggests abstraction—the gothic colors becomes more complicated, and the for the amassing of the material weight fold of tapestry layered with blue and violet figurative basis of the color layers is increas- of the fabric. Or is it that the folding of color that lies between lobed and outlined shapes ingly buried: an orange is made of red built upon color to the point that its figurative of gold, green, and red, clearly evoking the on top of yellow, lying next to a green that is underpinning is lost to sight was suggested by fruit and flowers of the tapestry design glimpsed through blue and eggplant next the folding of the fabric over itself upon the (detail 2j). Here Cezanne worked his colors to layers of ocher, next to veils of ocher, wine, studio table? The morass of colors both next almost too heavily, for the greens, yellows, and blue. Commas of blue, dark red, and to and beneath and over one another is unde- and wines that lie below the blue and milky black finish it all off—again, line completes cidable, literally stunning in its effect of violet begin to grow muddy, and the rein- color as much as the other way around. rainbow hue and peacock splendor—all we forcement by blue—everywhere blue—red, Again, figuration lies buried beneath kalei- can do is inventory its oranges, reds, ochers, and black lines begins to acquire the look and doscopic color. greens, bl'ues, and purples, and guess at feel of an unwanted pentimento—an effort In the heap of tapestry in the upper left, which lies under and over which (sometimes to correct that began to go too far. Pull back, the complication just described is acute and one and sometimes the other—for instance, however, and it has the advantage of weight- almost indescribable. Here the large dividing a green lies under blue and purple in one ing the sheet, balancing the vivid blue note 118 CEZANNE IN THE STUDIO