Paul Cezanne: The resistance of painting (France)

A twofold inquiry has inspired this thesis: what---from the phenomenological and psychoanalytical viewpoints---was Paul Cezanne's experience of Impressionism; and how do Cezanne's works resist such interpretive methods? This two-pronged approach has several ends in view: to reveal the complexity of Cezanne's encounter with Impressionism and its lasting impact on his later works; and to witness the emergence of his painting as an aesthetic-critical object, as a result of the prolonged dialogue with theory.; Chapter 1 discusses Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological interpretation of Cezanne. His debate with the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan is introduced to reveal the blind spot in the philosopher's interpretation of Cezanne.; Chapter 2 examines Cezanne's encounter with Impressionism through a careful analysis of his relationship with Camille Pissarro. Cezanne's belated acquisition of the Impressionist technique and its effect on the structure of his painting is interpreted through Lacan's theory.; In Chapter 3, I study the effect of Cezanne's experience of Impressionism on his works. Careful analyses of several painting series reveal the difficulty in painting that Cezanne internalized through his plunge into Impressionism. Chapter 4 then considers how Cezanne's sexual drive---patent in "pre-Impressionist" works---was sublimated into a formal problem, only to increase his difficulty in painting. Lacan's concept of sublimation is invoked to analyze this complicated relationship between Cezanne and his painting.; Chapter 5 develops the theme of painting as a field of libidinal conflicts by comparing painting and dream. Anton Ehrenzweig's study of color as a signifying element in painting, and Jean-Francois Lyotard's interpretation of Freud's theory of dream, are brought to bear on the affective function of color in Cezanne's late works. And Freud's concept of the uncanny is introduced to elucidate the profoundly paradoxical effect of Cezanne's color on the viewer, simultaneously provoking and defying interpretation.