impressionism#1

Post-impressionistic Theories (modern art #1)

“One must make an optic; one must see nature as no one has seen before you…” It is with the common language that one must express new ideas.” Paul Cezanne (1839-1906)

2012 

It is said that Cezanne was difficult to get along with and when he rarely met with groups of his peers he was often seen to be argumentative, though his resentment of the teaching of art and all aspects of its institutionalisation may have attributed to his sometimes being misunderstood. Finding it hard to express his views in a group atmosphere might have been a shortcoming but when placed in a one to one situation with someone he was at ease and comfortable with he could freely express his views. Among such confidants was his childhood friend and poet Emile Zola (1840-1902), close friend and mentor Camille Pissaro (1831-1903), and a young Emile Bernard (1868-1941) to whom he would in his later years discuss his theories on art, counter intuitively  surprising given his favourite maxim – to work and to avoid theorizing.

In his correspondence with Bernard, Cezanne writes that he is positive an optical impression is produced on our organs of sight, which makes us classify as light, half tone or quarter-tone the surfaces represented by colour sensations. (So that light does not exist for the painter) As long as we are forced to proceed from black to white, the first of these abstractions being like point of support for the eye as much as for the mind, we are confused, we do not succeed in mastering ourselves in possessing ourselves.

Cezanne’s feelings were that whatever our presence in nature was, we must paint the image of what we see, forgetting everything that existed before us which he believed, permitted the artist to give his entire personality be it great or small.