Cezanne

Cezanne

Post-Impressionism

Cezanne • Father was stock broker • Cezanne trained as lawyer, while attending drawing academy • Studied in Paris, painted in Impressionists style, but was rejected at 1874 Impressionists exhibition • Went back home (Aix-en -Provence) to continue painting in obscurity • Impressionists used colour to dissolve form, He used patches of colour to build it up.

Cezanne as Impressionist

• He was largely untrained so his early work was crude compared to other Impressionists.

Cezanne as Post-Impressionist

• Cézanne's grasp of form and solid pictorial structures came to dominate his mature style. • His overriding concern with form and structure set him apart from the Impressionists from the start.

Composition and Solid Form

• The subject of the work is less important than a well constructed design and solid forms.

Composition and Solid Form

Composition and Solid Form

• The main objects are arranged roughly in a triangle or pyramid.

Composition and Solid Form

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He paints still-life, landscape, and the figure as if there is a permanent geometry (cones, cylinders, & spheres) under the surface.

Jug and Fruit 1906

Squarish Patches

• Cezanne uses flat squarish patches of colour to serve two purposes: 1) To create a 2D surface for compositional unity, and 2) To suggest separate planes that shape 3D solidity and space.

Still-life with Onions

1895

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Painted over a long period of time ( often fruit rotted - replaced with wax fruit) Forms based on basic geometric forms - cylinder, cubes, cones, & spheres. Design most imp. - distorts for design - more imp. than imitation of objects.

Works like Still-Life with Onions are often seen from multiple perspectives.

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Subject Form & composition, with colour used to achieve both Actual subject not as imp. as solid and unified qualities of work as whole

Perspective • Not sitting in same position each time • Influenced Cubism

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Composition Objects, and direction of line are carefully placed for overall asymmetrical balance. He will even tilt objects to add to flow of composition.

Colour • Warm hues of fruit contrast cool of surroundings. • Warm colours advance and cool colours recede.

Still-life with Plaster Cast

1895

Still-life with Plaster Cast

1895

Subject • Domestic Still-life objects combined with dramatic baroque sculpture (art history)

Still-life with Plaster Cast

1895

• Plaster cupid by Puget is a plaster copy (copy of a copy) & in the background is a painting of a copy of The Flayed Man (copy of copy of copy)

Still-life with Plaster Cast

• Tension between foreground and background • Which is real & which is illusion?

1895

Still-life with Plaster Cast

1895

• There is a tension between two dimensional qualities and three dimensional qualities.

Still-life with Plaster Cast

1895

• Painting contains subtle shifts of perspective due to long period of painting • The artists position changes so perspective changes.

Still-life with Plaster Cast

1895

• The apple placed in background floor is same scale as foreground apples. • Traditional scale & perspective are intentionally ignored in order to balance the composition.

Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1904

Mont Sainte-Victoire

• Part of a series painted more than 30 times • The mountain dominates landscape

Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1904

• Form - Distorted, reduced to pyramid shape (geometry)

Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1904

• Perspective- wanted canvas to remain flat, so he didn't use traditional aerial perspective

Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1904

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Space - depth achieve through contrast of warm & cool colour Compressed space - foreground, middle ground & background painted with same intensity, and similar squarish patches of colour • Canvas maintains flat quality - sky seems as close as foreground

Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1904

• Colour- Felt free to adjust relationships of colour (distort) for design sake. • Modulated - colours and values distributed to produce visual balance