The point to be made clear is that, whatever may be our temperament, or our power in the presence of nature, we have to render what we actually see, … - Paul Cézanne
" "The point to be made clear is that, whatever may be our temperament, or our power in the presence of nature, we have to render what we actually see, forgetting everything that appeared before our own time. Which, I think, should enable the artist to express his personality to the full, be it large or small. Now that I am an old man, about seventy, the sensations of colour which produce light give rise to abstractions that prevent me from covering my canvas, and from trying to define the outlines of objects when their points of contact are tenuous and delicate; with the result that my image or picture is incomplete. For another thing, the planes become confused, superimposed; hence Neo-Impressionism (initiated by Seurat and Paul Signac, ed., where everything is outlined in black, an error which must be uncompromisingly rejected. And nature, if consulted, shows us how to achieve this aim.
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About Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne (January 19, 1839 – October 22, 1906) was a French Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism.
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Cézanne
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Cezanne
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Pol Sezan
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Polʹ Sezann
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Paul Cezanne
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P. Sezanas
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cezanne paul
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p. cezanne
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Additional quotes by Paul Cézanne
He (Delacroix) turns David [French painter] upside down. His painting is iridescent. Seeing one Constable [famous English landscape painter, admired by French painters, then] is enough to make him understand all the possibilities of landscape, and he too sets up his easel by the sea.. .And he has a sense of human being, of life in movement, of warmth. Everything moves, every glistens. The light!.. .There is more warm light in this interior [probably: Delacroix's 'Woman of Algiers'] of his than in all of Corot's landscapes..
In that Renaissance (Cellini, Tintoretto, Titian..) there was an explosion of unique truthfulness, a love of painting and form.. .Then come the Jesuits and everything is formal; everything has to be taught and learned. It required a revolution for nature to be rediscovered; for Delacroix to paint his beach at Etratat, Corot his roman rubble, Gustave Courbet his forest scenes and his waves. And how miserable slow that revolution was, how many stages it had to go through!.. .These artists had not yet discovered that nature has more to do with depth than with surfaces. I can tell you, you can do things to the surface.. ..but by going deep you automatically go to the truth. You feel a healthy need to be truthful. You'd rather strip your canvas right down than invent or imagine a detail. You want to know.
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Alas! The memories that are swallowed up in the abyss of the years! I'm all alone now and I would never be able to escape from the self-seeking of human kind anyway. Now it's theft, conceit, infatuation, and now it's rapine or seizure of one's production. But Nature is very beautiful. They can't take that away from me. [in the last conversation Vollard had with Cezanne]
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