Cézanne, Paul: FromImpressionism to Classicism and Cubism
Cézanneis not an easy man to love, but professors and painters adore him. Art criticslavish him with superlatives, including «a prophet of the 20thcentury,» «the most sensitive painter of his time,» «thegreatest artist of the 19th century,» and «the father of modernart.» But he's not quite a household name, and his posters have never beenbest-sellers at museum shops around the world. In fact, most non-professionalswouldn't stand a chance of recognising a Cézanne unless it was clearlylabelled. Even then, there's no guarantee of appeal.
Not thatposter sales determine an artist's stature, but they do reveal something aboutthe accessibility of his work. Cézanne's pictures are restrained,impersonal and remote — they don't have the gut-wrenching appeal of van Gogh'sportraits, even before he cut off part of his ear. They can't compete withMonet's lush expanses of waterlilies or Renoir's sensuous women with theircome-hither looks. And let's face it, bowls of fruit and the hills and trees ofProvence, where Cézanne spent most of his life, are a hard sell againstthe Tahitian backdrops of Gauguin, with or without the naked women.
Cézanneis an artist's artist. He was obsessed with form rather than content, sosubject matter was always secondary to the act of painting itself. He wantedthe methods and skills of the painter to be more important than the image. Thatmeant the subject of the painting couldn't be so dynamic as to overshadow theartist's act of creation. The more he concentrated on this, the lessviewer-friendly his works became. But that suited his personality just fine.His goal was not to have a mass audience or sales appeal, it was to satisfyhimself.
Cézannewas a brooding, complex man, given to rages, grudges and depressions. He hadfew friends, and those he had he alienated. Even when success finally caught upwith him, he was dogged by feelings of inadequacy. The most famous of hisfriends was his schoolmate and writer Emile Zola, who was everythingCézanne wasn't — charming, eloquent, sociable and successful at anearly age. Zola was art critic, novelist and Cézanne's mentor. Theartist looked at him for strength but gave nothing in return. Zola got tired ofplacating Cézanne's ego, and in later years, when Zola wrote TheMasterpiece of an unfulfilled artist who eventually killed himself,Cézanne was convinced that the author had him in mind. He was soegocentric and so paranoid, he assumed everyone would know Zola was writingabout him. The reality was that no one knew about him at all, but the novelstill destroyed their friendship.
It's hardto imagine that the man who created such restrained, methodical, time-consumingworks had a violent, volatile temper. Painting was his salvation, a way tobalance the fires within. Rather than let his personality shine in his art — that scared him too much — he suppressed it. A psychoanalyst would have had afield day with Cézanne. In spite of his bourgeois background, he was aprimitive, with rough edges and no table manners — although he did improvesomewhat after he met Hortense. He worked in virtual seclusion and seldomventured out. He was such a recluse that one critic doubted his existence. WhenCézanne finally did attend a show of his paintings, he was amazed thatthe gallery had bothered to frame them. Even when he finally enjoyed bothsuccess and sales he remained riddled with self-doubt.
Cézannewas versatile; in his pursuit of perfection and a unique style, he experimenteda lot. Art students often copy paintings — you still see them in museums withtheir sketchbooks — and Cézanne did just that, but unlike most, henever stopped copying. To him, it was an important form of discipline andinspiration. He felt he could understand art better through copying, andwhenever he came to an impasse, he went off to the nearest museum, sketchbookin hand.
Hisearliest works, from his first days in Paris, are expressionistic, with theirimpasto paint surface, broad use of the palette knife, and brooding intensity.He took out his frustrations on the canvas. In the early 1870s, he experimentedwith Impressionism. He tried to combine the principles of light and air-basedart with a more structured pictorial style. After that, he delved intoClassicism, with more balanced and formal compositions. Toward the end of hislife, he was at his most daring, reducing architecture and figures to geometricforms and paving the way for Cubism.
Список литературы
Для подготовкиданной работы были использованы материалы с сайта www.ibiblio.org/louvre/paint/