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The title of this simultaneously scholarly and deeply personal book gives some indication of its author's stance — exploratory, meditative — immediately casting the reader into a sense of an intense intertwining of author with subjects held dear in their own
right and in the fascination of their interrelation. Three broad areas provide the framework for Robert Snell's investigations, art in general and the art of Cézanne in particular, psychoanalysis in general and in particular its recent developments in the field theory of Nino Ferro and Giuseppe Civitarese and their concentration on Wilfred Bion, and finally, phenomenology in general and that of Merleau-Ponty and his writings on Cézanne in particular.
In following this complex series of trajectories, Snell makes ample use of quotations from these authors and their different fields of knowledge alongside his own associations to, and involvement with, each of them. This does not make for an easy read nor any definitive general argument that can necessarily be distilled easily by the reader; indeed quite a lot is asked of the reader in holding together these diverse bodies of thought in Snell's own argument.
What is notable in Snell's survey of the precursors of contemporary field theory throughout the twentieth century is the range and number of theoretical attempts to think the social and the psychological, the group and individual as irrevocably related arenas. Like every chapter in this dense book, I wanted more detail, more discussion, and more, much more of its author.
For me, this book registers its impact as a series of fragments that the reader can engage with, spin off from, pursue, or associate to, as potential starting points for personal meditation and exploration. One parallel that Snell raises on the back of a quote by Cézanne's chronicler, Joachim Gasquet, about painting and the ideas of his time is the possibly similar projects that Cézanne and Freud could be said to have been engaged in. ‘In spite o