“The Father to Us All”

Paul Cezanne…the name sounded familiar, however I was far from an expert on his work. I would have been unable to identify any of Cezanne’s pieces until we looked at a few in my art history class (“Large Bathers” and “Mont Saint-Victoire”). I was taken aback by Cezanne’s bright, intense colors and broad, painterly brushwork that create energy-charged scenes full of movement. Picasso called Cezanne “the father to us all,” implying that he gave birth to modern art including cubism, abstract expressionism, and surrealism. Before Cezanne, most artists were concerned with portraying objects as they appear in real life, trying to hide their brushstrokes to convey an illusion of reality, but Cezanne changes all that. Cezanne breaks many conventions of color, perspective, and brushwork to represent his subjects in a new way so the viewer perceives the subjects on two levels; what they represent, and what they literally are: paint.

Traditionally, painters paint objects using their colors in real life. Cezanne, however, often uses arbitrary color. Arbitrary color is when an artist uses colors dissimilar to reality. For example, if an artist painted an apple with purple paint, he would be using arbitrary color. Cezanne does this often in his paintings, such as in one of his versions of “Chateau,” in which he paints trees a brilliant violet. Cezanne would carefully select what colors to paint objects, so that complementary colors were next to each other in his compositions. Complementary colors are colors that are opposite from each other on the color wheel, and are therefore not composed of any of the same primary colors. Pairs of colors that are complementary are: yellow and purple, red and green, and blue and orange. Cezanne places the complementary colors next to each other in his compositions to make his pieces active with stark contrast. According to Bois et al, writers of the article, Cezanne: Words and Deeds, Cezanne did not like to mix or blend his colors in any way, but he preferred to place them side by side. He does this in “Chateau” by placing the purple trees next to the bright yellow building. When placed side by side, complementary colors force the eye to move back and forth between the two colors, and it is difficult to dwell on one of the colors for a long time. This is because both colors are equally dominant. Since the viewer’s eyes must move while observing the piece, the objects in the piece seem to be moving. The entire painting becomes more active. In “Chateau” the yellow against the purple makes it appear as if the chateau and the foreground trees are right next to each other. Cezanne is playing tricks on the viewer because he also includes the tree roots in the foreground and the large tree on the left overlaps the chateau, both of which suggest that the trees are in front of (not next to) the chateau. He makes his viewers ask questions about the depth of the scene. Are the trees in front of the chateau or are they next to it? In this way Cezanne is using color to demonstrate perspective. According to Bois et al, “it is up to color to supplement the insufficiencies of linear perspective.”

Along with conventions of color, Cezanne also breaks conventions of perspective. He uses other techniques besides the juxtaposition of complementary colors to confuse the viewer’s sense of depth. Many of the lines in Cezanne’s pieces do not seem to go backward in space towards one vanishing point. For example, his painting, “Still Life 1900” is of a table with a vase, a glass, and a bowl of oranges that are overflowing onto the table and it violates many of the standard rules of perspective drawing. Edges of the table that go in the same direction are not quite parallel. Also a single edge of the table that is interrupted by other objects will be drawn at one angle on one side of the object and at another angle on the other side of the object, even though, technically, it should be the same line. The bowl on the table appears to be tilted up to show the viewer the oranges inside, instead of laying flat on the tabletop. In the background there appears to be three different surfaces, possibly a wall and two different kinds of fabric, but it is difficult to tell what surface is in front of the other. The violations of standard perspective make the inert subjects in the piece seem malleable. The entire piece seems less static, as if the viewer is moving around them during perception. Laporte, the author of “ Cubism and Science,” says that Cezanne realized that the unifying factor in the painting was, to him, the universal geometry of the objects and Cezanne said himself that each side of an object or of a plane “directs itself toward a central point.” Laporte interprets this as meaning that each geometric form, or at least each area, has its own central point. This interpretation explains why Cezanne did not draw all of the geometric subjects in his paintings as relating to one vanishing point. This effect makes the viewer focus more on each individual and rather flat object in the painting, rather than on the scene as a whole. Instead of providing the viewer with the illusion of depth, Cezanne challenges the viewer to hmake sense of how the objects relate to one another in their own mind. Cezanne also manipulates perspective in an unprecedented way in “Large Bathers.” The piece has two groupings of large nudes in the foreground. Looking meticulously, the viewer realizes that many of the figures are superimposed on each other. In conventional perspective, the figures would overlap other figures behind them, but in this painting their limbs, torsos, and shoulders blend and fade into each other. For example, the left-most figure’s right hand is also the blurred face of a seated woman. Also, on the right side of the painting one figure’s buttocks and legs are also the shoulders and arms of a figure kneeling below her. Cezanne is breaking all rules of reality in this painting. It is ambiguous not only where the figures are in the painting, but also what they are. What body parts pertain to each figure? The painting takes on a surreal, transparent, dream-world quality, because this blending of figures could never happen in reality. Laporte complements Cezanne by saying, “As soon, therefore, as the single object as object becomes a negligible factor for the artist, as was increasingly the case in painting since Cezanne, the picture is stripped of a whole set of depth suggestions, and perspective itself reveals its non-artistic character.” According to Laporte, capturing the essence of a scene is not about achieving accurate perspective, but instead, Cezanne depicts his subjects in the most artistic way possible, which sometimes means abandoning conventional perspective.

Another technique Cezanne employs, that becomes more popular in modern art is painterly brushwork. Painterly brushwork is when an artist paints a piece using broad strokes. The brushwork remains visible in the finished piece. Viewers are able to see how the artist moved his hand to create the image. The brushwork places an emphasis on touch because the viewer can observe how Cezanne touched the work. Bois et al suggest that he attempts to combine the two sensory fields of sight and touch to create a type of tactile vision. Cezanne’s brushwork is particularly unique. He makes several strokes in the same direction to convey movement and /or add texture to his pieces. In “Chateau,” this technique is easily visible in the dark tree located in the foreground. All of the brushwork on the leaves is deliberate diagonals going in the same direction. This same diagonal is also echoed in the purple sky in the top right. Cezanne successfully creates the illusion of the leaves rustling and suggests that their movement is from downward gusts of wind from the purple sky above. The choppy, visible brushwork also gives added energy to Cezanne’s paintings because it makes them appear as if they were made very rapidly. The sketchy lines and fluid streaks of paint imply that his work was done quickly, however Cezanne’s work was carefully planned. He may have employed the use of painterly brushwork to manipulate the perceptual experience of his viewers and make it appear as if his subjects or his viewers are moving during the perception of the scene.

Laporte refers to Cezanne as, “The shift from the perceptual approach of impressionism to the conceptual approach of cubism.” Not only did Cezanne paint between the impressionist and cubist movements, but he shaped how artists painted after him in modern society. Cezanne was not concerned about painting subjects exactly how they look, or how someone perceives them during a single movement from a single angle. Instead, Cezanne painted the conceptual essence of his subjects. He once said that he wanted to paint, “the organization of one's sensations” not a mere “servile copy,” but of a “harmony parallel to nature.” The world parallel to nature that Cezanne painted was full of bright arbitrary color, conflicting perspective, and painterly brushwork. Cezanne’s revolutionary techniques paved the way for modern artists to paint objects in a creative way; a way unbound by the rules of reality.