Cézanne [antikvár]

CÉZANNE Now that we have reached the second half of the twentieth century, it ought to be possible, when we look back upon the development of art during the nineteenth century, to establish some semblance of order amidst the manifold and confusing ramifications of artistic activity during that epoch. The 'historical distance' is great enough to enable us to perceive with clarity the relationship between the various phases of development, but it is not yet great enough for the remoteness of time to have added to the essential characteristics of works of art that quality which colours our views of all the productions of older art. We feel that all the most important artistic events of the nineteenth century are easily accessible to our understanding. We feel that we can experience, as ifit were a work of the present day, every picture painted during that period, tracing it back to the primary motives which inspired it. From our present-day point of view we are bound to consider the unparalleled many-sidedness of art as an enduring characteristic of the previous century. In the development of older art it is impossible to find a similar contrast to that offered us by the end of the nineteenth century, when Van Gogh painted the 'portrait' of a chair while another leading artist, Cézanne, was eliminating even from the representation of the human countenance every trace of psychology and feeling. Nor is it likely that remoter posterity will take a different view. At the same time we recognize a unifying fundamental characteristic: the tendency towards representation of the elemental. This tendency, in the form of demonstration of elementary forces or elementary images, was one of the chief aims nineteenth-century painting strove to achieve. It appears with ever-increasing prominence as the fundamental theme to which all other formative intentions were subordinated. No other artist had such an important share in this movement as Paul Cézanne. With the formula of artistic representation of the elemental, however inadequate and universal it may be in itself, it is possible to establish the comprehensive and fundamental character of this complicated artistic personality, and starting from this basis we are able to understand the numerous problems of representation which the paintings of Cézanne bring before us. Elementary images can be created only by sacrificing the individual phenomena, the individual value of the human figure, the tree, the still-life subject, etc. Anyone who sees pictures by Cézanne for the first time, and is impressed by the effect they produce, will be struck when he thinks of the forms of nature depicted, by certain characteristic and surprising phenomena of reduction, which awaken his critical consciousness. An exception must perhaps be made in the case of those who are particularly susceptible to colour, for they will recognize at once that the colour quality of these works is something unique. They will find in Cézanne a power and exclusiveness of chromatic effect for which few parallels can be found among the works of older art; we could go even farther; they will find colours and combinations of colours possessing characteristics which differentiate Cézanne's chromatics from all other kinds of colour-treatment. Actually, those who can see this have grasped the essential point of Cézanne's artistic genius, from which all his processes of representation and form-conception are derived. To such observers it will appear natural to allow this incomparable harmony of colours to produce its effects alone; its laws will be felt or recognized, and everything else which is to be seen in the picture 3