Modern Painting, Its Tendency and Meaning

ritten by critics of almost every nationality on that astounding and grotesque colossus, Cézanne. Perhaps no great artist in the world's history

s and Bohemians to a contemplation of that artist. Cézanne's very limitations have been the inspiration for an army of hardy imitators who believe it is more vital to imitate modernity than to reconstruct the past. Indeed it may be said that all art since Impressionism is divided into two groups, one which endeavours to develop some quality or qualities in Cézanne, the other which attempts the anachronism of resuscitating the primitive art of a simple-minded antiquity. For even this latter group, Cézanne is in part responsible. Did he not say that we must become classicists again by way of

rst hand by émile Bernard. To this chronicler we are indebted for practically all the authentic personal anecdotes of the artist. He had always admired Cézanne, and in 1904 a personal friendship was established between them, which endured until the latter's death. After Cézanne had overcome parental objections and had definitely decided on an artist's career, he spent much of his time in Paris. Many influences ent

stablished schools. In Paris he had been a frank and even garrulous companion; but at each contact with the narrow, self-centered and righteous community of Aix, he withdrew into himself. His natural spontaneity and good-fellowship turned inward, became restrained and pent-up. He grew sensitive and wary, and in later life this defensive attitude developed into abnormal irritability. To those who could understand, however, he unburdened himself on all subjects, and his opinions were always the result of profound thought. But he never entirely divulged his methods. If questions became

-of-the-way places. He had given large numbers of them to chance friends on the impulse of the moment. His son cut out the windows of his masterpieces for amusement, and his servant and his wife used his canvases for stove cleaners. He saw his work put to these uses tranquilly, knowing that later he would do better, that he would "realise" more fully. His mind was too exalted to be impatient with the pettinesses of life. His great aversion was politics, and unlike Delacroix, he was above nationality. During the Franco-Prussian War he hid with a relative that he might pursue his own ideal rather than sacrifice himself for the protection of his tormentors. What did he care for France when his whole admiration was for Italy a

xpresses itself through abstractions, while painting, by means of drawing and colour, makes concrete the artist's sensations and perceptions." Zola libelled him at great length in L'?uvre. Cézanne's reply was simply that Zola had a "mediocre intelligence" and was a "detestable friend." In their youth Cézanne took the ascendency over Zola in Latin and French verse; even in his old age he could recite long passages from Virgil, Lucretius and Horace. He knew literature and was able to judge

he artist's gropings for those fundamentals he was finally to discover in the seclusion of his rugged country of the south. Even his early figure pieces carry this sensual delight in objectivity to a greater height than did Delacroix by whom they were inspired. And they attest to a freedom from academic principles which was not surpassed by the Impressionists. These paintings are classic in

liefs and intransigencies became crystallised. The road opened into fields where that new element of colour, which had taken on so vital a significance, led to an infinitude of emotional possibilities. Though Cézanne never completely became a defender of Pissarro's theories, he always looked upon the Impressionists as innovators whose importance as such could not be overestimated. He realised that without them he himself would not have existed, and that they had sketched out a preface to all the great art which was to come. Without them there undoubtedly would have been great artists, but he knew that a painter with the means of a Renoir is greater than one who, though equally competent in organisation, is limited in the

t painters. In his studio Cézanne kept a water-colour by Delacroix-hung face to the wall that it might not fade, and beside it a lithograph by Daumier whom he regarded highly. We may be sure he fully understood the limitations of these men aside from their ambitions. To him they were points of departure rather than goals to aspire to. Both of them he surpassed early in his career. Cézanne admired also the Dutch and Flemish masters. He ha

red and set down its atmosphere and were satisfied. Cézanne, regarding its atmosphere as an ephemerality, portrayed the lasting force of light. "One is the master of one's model and above all of one's means of expression," he wrote. "Penetrate what is before you, and persevere in expressing yourself as logically as pos

motive power, is the same final organisation of illumination. The light suggests no particular time of day or night; it is not appropriated from morning or afternoon, sunlight or shadow. So delicate and perfectly balanced is this light that, with the raising or the lowering of the curtain in the room where the picture hangs, it will d

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ject where the light is strongest is the point nearest the light. As the planes of the object curve away from the light they diminish in brilliancy. The further the plane from the point nearest the illumination, the less light it has to reflect. Consequently it will appear bluish. The Impressionists were satisfied with recording this blue of shadow merely as the complement of the light which was yellow. But Cézanne studied each degradation of tone from yellow to blue. In this study he discovered that light always graduates from warm to cold in precisely the same way; and, that, provided the model is white, each step down the tonic scale is the same on no matter what object. But this discovery was little more than a premise. He was now necessitated to solve the problem of just how much the local colour of an object modifies the natural colours of the light and shadow which reveal that object. In all coloured objects the

se variations were so small that the untrained eye might not have seen them, any more than an untrained ear may not detect the slight variations of pitch in music. But to the man whose eye is trained, even to the degree that a good musician's ear is trained, pictures appear "off" in the same way that a poorly tuned piano sounds "off" to the sensitive musician. Cézanne, had he never achieved any intrinsically great art, would still be a colossal figure in painting because of this basic and momentous discovery. The Impressionists had been content with the mere discovery of light. Their theory was, not that one can enjoy the natural light of out-of-doors more than

em fully, they turn to a contemplation of the simple and na?f. Their process of valuation is thus reversed. Great art is as a rule too compounded for their analytical powers, and they end by imagining that the primitives and the mosaicists represent the highest and most conscious type of the creative will. What to them is incomprehensible appears of little value; and here we find the explanation for the popular theory that the test of great art is its simplicity, its humanitas, its obviousness. Persons who would not pretend to grasp without study the principles of modern science, still demand that art be sufficiently lucid to be comprehended at once by the untutore

t exist for the painter." By this he broadly hinted at an absolute relativity between the degrees of light forces-a relativity which translates itself to us as colour gradations. Again Cézanne said: "One should not say model but modulate.... Drawing and colour are not distinct; as one paints one draws. The more the colours harmonise [namely: follow nature's logical sequences], the more precise is the drawing." Precision in drawing to Cézanne meant among other things the ability to produce volume. Again: "When colour is richest, form is at its plenitude. In the con

because he possessed the greater element-colour, constructed his canvases as nature presents its objects to the sight, as a unique whole. With all of the older painters drawing came first, chiaroscuro second and colour third-three distinct steps, each one conceived separately. Daumier was the first painter to approach simultaneity in execution. Ignorant of colour, he conceived his drawing and chiaroscuro together. Cézanne went a step beyond, and conceived his drawing, form and colour as one and the

ézanne did, and therein lay his claim to greatness. In his best canvases there seems no way of veering a plane, of imagining one plane changing places with another, unless every plane in the picture is shifted simultaneously. Cézanne's solidity is organised like the volumes in Michelangelo's best sculpture. Move an arm of any one of these statues, and every other part of the figure, down to the smallest muscle, must change position. Their plasticity, like Cézanne's, is perfect. The

different direction. When colour was first investigated realistically, artists saw that two pure complementary tints, when juxtaposed, tended to draw away from each other and to differentiate themselves. Therefore they set about to study the influence that one colour has upon another, assuming that lines were more static and absolute and consequently did not change at contact with other lines. Cézanne recognised the fallacy of this assumption, and wrote: "I see the planes criss-crossing

ible odds, for the warring clashes of inharmonious colours. He saw in objective nature a chaos of disorganised movement, and he set himself the task of putting it in order. In studying the variations and qualifications of linear directions in his model, he discovered another method of accentuating the feeling of dynamism in his canvases. He stated lines, not in their static character, but in their average of fluctuation. We know that all straight lines are influenced by their surroundings, that they appear bent or curved when related to other lines. The extent to which a line is thus optically bent is its extr

f optics, but on it our accuracy of vision has always depended. In the lenticular stereoscope the eye-glasses are marginal portions of the same convex lens, which, when set edge to edge, deflect the rays from the picture so as to strike the eyes as if coming from an intermediate point. By this bending of the rays the two pictures become one impression, and present the appearance of solid forms as in nature. The problem of how to transcribe on a flat surface in a single picture the effect later produced by a stereoscope with two pictures, has confronted painters for hundreds of years. Leonardo da Vinci in his Trattato della Pittura recorded the fact that our vision encompasses to a slight degree everything that passes before it; that we see around all objects; and that this encircling sight gives us the sensation of rotundity. But neither he, nor any artist up t

t; and this point, despite the strong effects of light and shadow which are colour sensations, is always the nearest to our eye. The edges of objects retreat toward a centre which is situated on our horizon." It is small wonder that Cézanne, obsessed with the idea of form and depth, should have had little admiration for his contemporaries, Van Gogh and Gauguin, both of whom were workmen in the flat. He let pass no opportunity of expressing himself on these artists who of late years have become so popular. Van Gogh was to him on

they are unable to conduce to an extended ?sthetic experience. Van Gogh and Gauguin said well what they had to say, but it was so slight that it is of little interest to us today. We demand a greater stimulus than an art of two dimensions can give; our minds instinctively extend themselves into space. So it was with Cézanne. He left no device untried which would give his work a greater dept

t perfectly balanced so as to create a dead equality, but rhythmically related so that the effect is one of swaying poise. Obviously this could not be accomplished on a flat surface, for the emotion of depth is a necessity to the recognition of equilibrium. Cézanne finally achieved this poise by a plastic distribution of volumes over and beside spacial vacancies. He mastered this basic principle of the hollow and the bump only after long and trying struggles and tedious experimentations. He translated it into terms of his own intellection: to the extent that there was order within him so was he able to pu

long periods of reflection and analysis. M. Bernard would hear him descend to the garden a score of times during the day's work, sit a moment and rush back to the studio as if some solution had presented itself to him suddenly. At other times he would walk back and forth before his picture awaiting the answer to a problem before him. It is such deliberateness in great artists that has, curiously enough, acquired for them a reputation for esotericism. Their moments of deep contemplation and their sud

fied craftsmen who epitomise mediocrity, whose appeal is to minds steeped in pedantry and conservatism. In France they come out of the government-run Beaux-Arts school to which the incompetents of both America and England flock. Cézanne harboured a particular enmity for that school; anyone who had passed through it aroused his scorn. "

ered, in varying degree, form, colour and light; but the line itself was his preoccupation. Cézanne's genius was for plastic volume out of which the rhythmic line resulted. That is: the one constructed his creations out of colour and made colour appear like form; while in the other's creations, which are the result of colour, the colour is felt to be form. In Renoir is recognised the solidity and depth of form, while in Cézanne the colour is a functional element whose dynamism gives birth to form which is felt subjectively. Renoir synthesises nature's forms, by grouping them in such a way that the lines move and are harmonious. Cézanne looks for the synthesis in each subject he sits before, and instead of grouping his forms arbitrarily, he penetrates to their inherent synthesis. This is why almost every one of his pictures is built on a different synthetic form. His penetration gave him at each essay a different vision of the organism

ust our intelligences. Cézanne is as much a reproach to sculptors as Renoir is to those who continue to use Impressionist methods. He is the great prophet of future art, as well as the consummator of the realistic vision of his time. Both men deformed nature's objects-Renoir slightly to meet the demands of consistency in h

yed Renoir's rhythms we can lay them aside for the time as we can a very beautiful but simple melody. The force of Cézanne strikes us like that of a vast bulk or a mountain. Contemplating his work is like coming suddenly face to face with an ordered elemental force. At first we are conscious only of a shock, but when our wonder has abated, we find ourselves studying the smaller forms which go into the picture's making. In the 1902 Baigneuses of Renoir each separate figure is a beautiful and complete form which fits into and becomes part of the general rhythm. In Cézanne the importance of parts is entirely submerged in the effect of the whole. Here is the main difference between these two great men: we enjoy each part of Renoir and are conducted by line to a completion; in Cézanne we are struck simultaneously by each interrelated part. Viewing a canvas of the latter is like going out into the blazing sunligh

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f his forms recall at times the works of Mokkei who used protuberances and hollows (namely: accidents of portraiture and landscape) to enrich and diversify form. Nature to Cézanne was not simple, and he never depicted it thus. Even in his bathing pieces, whose disproportions are deplored by many, the composition is minutely conceived, not on a simple harmonic figure, but on complic

was nothing worth while. These modern innovators refuted his assertion by proving the contrary, namely: by introducing order into chaotic nature. Their simple arrangements, however, would not have satisfied Michelangelo who, like all men who come at a florescence when the lessons have been learned and it remains only to apply them, demanded an arbitrary organisation which should be not only ordered but composed. Cézanne did little composing in the melodic sense of the word. He stopped at the gate of great composit

His work in this most difficult medium has an abstract significance, for in it even the objective colouring of natural objects is unnoticeable. The colours stand by themselves; and while the aspect of Cézanne's pictures in this medium is flat and almost transparent, the subjective emotion we feel before them is greater than in his oil work. In these pictures there was no going back to retouch. They had to be visualised as a whole before they could be commenced. Each brush stroke had to be a definite and irretrievable step toward the completion of the ensemble. As we study them a slow shifting of the planes is felt: an emotional reconstruction takes place, and at length the volumes begin their turning, advancing and retreating as in his oil painting

his stupendous means as easily as the academicians handled their puny ones. This he could never do, and his age haunted him to the end. Many have taken him literally when he said he desired to expose in Bouguereau's Salon, but though he earnestly wished it, he desired to be received there as Bouguereau was: as one who had mastered his expression. "The exterior appearance is nothing," he explained. "The obstacle is that I don't realise sufficiently." In other words, he did not have great enough fluency to permit only the highest qualities of his art to be felt. In his gigantic efforts to "realise," his pictures changed colour and form many times before they were finished. His respect an

arriage, too weak to walk, should be a lesson to those painters who are always awaiting the combination of propitious circumstances which will provide them with a perfect studio, a perfect model and a perfect desire. Cézanne, however, knew his high place in art history. Once when Balzac's Le Chef-d'?uvre Inconnu was brought

e unintelligent commotion that goes on about his name. Cézanne's significance lies in his gifts to the painters of the future, to those in whom the creative instinct is a sacred and exalted thing, to those serious and solitary men whose insatiability makes of them explorers in new fields. To such artists Cézanne will always be the primitive of the way that they themselves will take, for there can be no genuine art of the future without his directing and guiding hand. His postulates are too solidly founded on hum