Cézanne's Still Life with Apples
Watch this video and read the article, both of which discuss an artwork by the Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne. Take note of Cézanne's relationship to older artistic traditions, how he at once reflected on visual traditions (including Impressionism) and innovated through form.
Paul Cézanne, Still Life with Apples, oil on canvas, 1895-98. Museum of Modern Art, New York
Catagorizing the style of Paul Cézanne's (Say-zahn) artwork is problematic. As a young man he left his home in Provence in the south of France in order to join with the avant-garde in Paris. He was successful, too. He fell in with the circle of young painters that surrounded Manet, he had been a childhood friend of the novelist, Emile Zola, who championed Manet, and he even showed at the 1st Impressionist exhibition, held at Nadar's studio in 1874.
However, Cézanne didn't quite fit in with the group. Whereas many other painters of this circle were concerned primarily with the effects of light and reflected color ("To hell with form!" might have been their cry), Cézanne remained deeply committed to form. Feeling out of place in Paris, he left after a relatively short period and returned to his home in Aix-en-Provence. He would remain in his native Provence for most of the rest of his life. He worked in the semi-isolation afforded by the country, but was never really out of touch with the breakthroughs of the avant-garde.
Like the Impressionists, he often worked outdoors directly before his subjects. But unlike the Impressionists, Cézanne used color, not as an end in itself, but rather like line, as a tool with which to construct form. Ironically, it is the Parisian avant-garde that would eventually seek him out. In the first years of the 20th century, just at the end of Cézanne's life, young artists would make a pilgrimage to Aix, to see the man who would change painting.
Paul Cézanne is often considered to be the most influential painter of the late 19th century. Pablo Picasso, who rarely praised anyone besides himself, readily admitted his great debt to the elder master. Similarly, Henri Matisse once called Cézanne, "...the father of us all." The Museum of Modern Art in New York has historically organized its collection so as to begin with an entire room devoted to Cézanne's painting. The Metropolitan Museum of Art also gives over an entire large room to him. Clearly, many artists and curators consider him enormously important. The problem is, when you actually stop and look carefully at his paintings, it is not at all clear that he actually knows how to draw!
Source: Beth Harris and Steven Zucker, smarthistory.org
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