Cézanne
Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting
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Mont Sainte-Victoire (1892/1895)
Oil on canvas, 73 x 91.9 cm
At one time of his career, Cézanne was no longer interested in reproducing the aspect of things faithfully, he was no longer interested in “copying” nature. He started to look for something else: he put aside the image in order to search for the essence, to look for the relations between forms and colors.
Cézanne considered that there was another world, different from the one we are used to observe. And also that there were many other truths, and therefore we should learn to look with other eyes. So, he started to simplify and reduce nature to geometric forms (as we can clearly see in this landscape). He did not respect the rules of traditional perspective or colors, either.
And this break was decisive for the arrival of modernity. It was not the only one. Manet also broke with many traditions with his Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia, in which he shows there are other truths, different from the ones taught in academies.
Most avant-garde painters considered Cézanne as one of their greatest influences, and those painters would grant him the title of “father of modernity.” Picasso himself said, “Cézanne was my only teacher. Do not think I just looked at his paintings; I spent years studying them. Cézanne was like a father of us all.”
As Cézanne’s synthesis and arbitrary use of color had great influence in the following decades; the search of essence and relations among forms, volumes and colors, the geometrization of nature and the showing of things from different points of view at the same time would be the starting point of Cubism. (The last characteristic can be observed in his paintings of still life; for example a table is seen from below and a fruit bowl from above.)
The confirmation of this lies in the previous phrase of Picasso; and in the fact that his first Cubist painting, The Young Ladies of Avignon —painted more than a decade after the paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire by Cézanne— took him more than 9 years of study and 800 sketches. (And when we say “study” let’s remember his affirmation of having studied Cézanne.)
In order to understand the importance of Cézanne, we have to bear in mind the following: Modernity will no longer represent the world in a conventional manner. It will express the artist’s inner world and to do so, it is necessary to search for the essence of things.
It is as if they become aware of another reality that is the essence of things; and later they “discover” that the essence of things depends on the inner universe of the human being. The artist expresses his vision and thus enriches us. We realize that we can also modify reality with our perception.
Cézanne —a surly and not the most charismatic man— was who indicated the way.
Recommended links:
Paul Cézanne and his Revolutionary Still Lifes.
Characteristic Elements of Post-Impressionist Painting.
Fundamental Post-Impressionist Painters.
Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Picasso.
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