Discourse On Paul Cezanne's Esthetics Of Painting And Practice

As a French artist and post-impressionist painter, Paul Cezanne was honored as the father of modern art. Both Matisse and Picasso considered him"the father of us all". It is acknowledged that Cezanne acts as the bridge between the impressionism in the late 19th century and the early 20th century's new line of artistic enquiry, i.e., Cubism. Cezanne's work laid the foundations for the transition from conception of art in the 19th century to a new radically different world of art in the 20th century. To be specific,"Art is the harmony in parallel with nature", which was an important artistic remark of Cezanne, represents his views on the relationship of art and the nature. He holds that the artist and the nature are equal in value. Besides, the artists express what they feel in the form of paintings after observing, recording and interpreting the nature. As a result, the objective of painters is to seek for the harmony parallel to the nature instead of imitating the nature without thinking, and then to reorganize the results of the observation based on their own feelings in order to give an original explanation of the nature. In Cezanne's opinion, as a parallel to the nature, art is not dependent completely on the nature. And the creation of works of art is not realized by way of the imitation of the nature. That is to say, the painters'duty is to make the Impressionism something solid and durable, just like the art of the museums.In this way, Cezanne's views on art greatly subverted the traditional views of"art is aimed at imitating the nature". Based on such principles as"exhibit the nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere and the cone","Poussin made over again according to nature", and"the modulation of color is the best way of interpreting the nature", he fulfilled his artistic dream. Some of these artistic principles and practices exert significant influence on the western modern art schools. Therefore, there is no doubt that Cezanne is the key person who serves as the link between the past and the future in the history of the western art.Cezanne's work illustrates the mastery of design, color, composition and draftsmanship. His repetitive, sensitive and exploratory brushstrokes are highly representative. The planes of color and small brushstrokes he used formed complex fields and expressed the sensation of the observing eyes and the abstraction from the observed nature. He broke out the rules of the perspective used in the traditional paintings. On the contrary, he observed the objects from various angles in different periods. Additionally, he perfectly balanced the space of the works and realized the stability of the object by representing the structure with colors. The paintings convey Cezanne's intense study of his subjects, a searching gaze and the efforts to deal with the complexity of human visual perception as well as the attention to the subjective expression of the artists.