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Pierre-Auguste Renoir Path Through the High Grass c. 1875. Paul Cezanne Chestnut Trees at the Jas de Bouffan in Winter 1885-87. Q. Why does Post-Impressionism matter? A. The increasingly abstract content was highly influential in the development of modernist painting. Paul Cezanne
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Paul Cezanne Chestnut Trees at the Jas de Bouffan in Winter 1885-87
Q. Why does Post-Impressionism matter? A. The increasingly abstract content was highly influential in the development of modernist painting.
Paul Cezanne 1839-1906 He painted in complete seclusion in Aix-en-Provence. The pictorial space is defined solely by rich and subtle gradations of incorporeal color. Cezanne “had come to feel that a faithful account of what is momentarily seen was of less importance than the examination of his own ‘sensations,’ of his own visual experience, and of the relation of that experience to the object in nature” (Hamilton, 42).
Paul Cezanne House and the Tree1873-74 The even lighting, still atmosphere, and absence of human activity in the landscape communicate a sense of timeless endurance which is at odds with the Impressionists’ interest in capturing a momentary aspect of the ever-changing world. This work demonstrates the artist’s willful disregard for the rules of traditional scientific perspective.
Paul Cezanne Madame Cézanne in Blue 1885-87
Paul Cezanne Woman with Coffee Pot 1890 “The ability to maintain a tension between the actual and the illusionary dimensions is a key characteristic of his work. In the technical sense, this tension is produced by Cezanne’s conviction that no distinction can be made between drawing, line, plane, and color” (Hamilton, 44).
Paul Cezanne Femme au Chapeau Vert (Woman in a Green Hat. Madame Cézanne) 1894–1895 “In practice Cezanne sought this fusion of the pictorial elements by small touches of paint which, if correct in hue and value, would create both the distance and the angle of each plane” (Hamilton, 44).
Paul Cezanne Man Smoking a Pipe 1892
Paul Cezanne The Card Players 1890-1895
“Cezanne reveals a profound visual truth: objects in space may be known separately, but when seen together they participate in each other’s existence” (Hamilton, 46).
“Cezanne’s canvases are cumulative records of successive instantaneities. Each picture is not an account of the motif as an element enduring ideally outside ourselves and so beyond the temporal experience: it is built up by deposits of successive and discrete observations which can still be seen in the multiplied contours of objects, in the constant, suffused and embracing light, and in the shifting perspectives in the landscapes and still lifes” (Hamilton, 44).
The illusion of consistent recession into depth is challenged by the inclusion of blues, pinks, and reds in the foreground foliage, which relate the foreground forms to the background mountain and sky, and by the tree branches in the sky which rhyme with the contours of the mountain, making the peak appear nearer and binding it to the foreground plane” (Stokstad, 1031). Paul Cezanne Mont Sainte-Victoire 1887
Cezanne depicted Mount Sainte Victoire at least thirty times in oil from the mid-1880’s until his death. “The brush strokes, which vary from short, parallel hatchings to sketchy lines to broader swaths of flat color, not only record his “sensations” of nature but also weave every element of the landscape together into a unified surface design” (Stokstad).
Paul Cezanne Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from Les Lauves 1904-1906
“The picture becomes a record of the continuous present, of the experience of space in the mode of time” (Hamilton, 44).
The Nude.Who is it “okay” to show unclothed? I mean, where the nudity is part of the story? • Eve, Venus, Diana, Bathsheba…. • Ingres and Delacroix show those “others” nude—those harem women….since they are not “white” it is considered okay to show them unclothed…. • And Manet goes a little nuts….Olympia and Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe and his paintings drive polite society nuts. But honestly, Manet is merely painting the demi-monde—prostitutes—like Titian painted a courtesan and called it Venus of Urbino. • And no, I don’t even want to make a connection with Canova’s Venus Victrix; to do so would cast aspersions on poor Napoleon’s wayward sister, Paulina. Which reminds me of Madame Pompadour (who was the king’s mistress) and Francois Boucher (Toilette of Venus). • But the Impressionists wanted to liberate the nude from the conventional stories that “allowed” the nude—allegorical and mythological conventions. Which is okay, I guess, but doing so makes the nude seem really unclothed…take a look at Renoir’s Les Grandes Baigneuses, and you will see what I mean…. • And Cezanne, well who knows what he was up to…what do we think? (I think he wanted his apples and pears and oranges back.)
Paul Renoir Les Grandes Baigneuses 1884-1887
