Philosophy Research/ Cezanne’s Ideology
Short Introduction
In the history of 20th century painting, one of the artists considered most influential was Paul Cezanne, who continues to inspire generations of modern artists decades after his death. Cezanne has been categorized as a Post-Impressionist because of his analytical approach to nature and unique method of using color to build form which influenced the art of Fauvists, Cubists as well as successive generations of artists known as avant-garde. Post Impressionism was not a formal style or movement. Post Impressionists were a few artists who were independent during the last years of the 19th century, as they had become rebels against the limitations imposed by Impressionism (Boyle-Turner). Post Impressionists developed a collection of personal styles whose focus was on structural, emotional, spiritual, and symbolic elements that they considered to be missing from Impressionism. The combination of the contributions of these artists forms the artistic roots of what is known as modern art for the decades that followed (Rewald, 9).
The first movement in the modern art canon was Impressionism. Impressionism like many of the revolutionary styles was progressively absorbed into the conservatives. Additionally, the limitations of this original movement became a frustration to the generation that succeeded it. Artists such as Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh, and Paul Cézanne although steeped in the Impressionism’s traditions, they adopted a different style which pushed the boundaries in creative ways which laid the foundations of the 20th century art. Thus, the emergence of the Post Impressionism movement was largely because of the reaction against the concern that Impressionist’s had a naturalistic depiction of color and light (Boyle-Turner). Cezanne extended impressionism with one hand rejecting some of its limitations and on the other hand continued using vivid colors, real-life subject matter and thick application of the paint. Nevertheless, these were more inclined to make emphasis on the geometric forms, the use of unnatural color, and distort form to express the effect.
The artistic works done by Post Impressionists did not go unchallenged as some critics such as John Rewald felt that the term ‘ Post-Impressionism’ was not precise but was a convenient one. According to Rewald, the term was convenient when by definition it was limited to the visual arts from France which had been derived from impressionism since the year 1886. The approach that Rewald took in his assessment of historical data was more of a narrative rather than analytical. Beyond this particular assessment, Rewald believed that it was sufficient to have the “sources speak for themselves.” For Paul Cezanne, impressionists had failed to uphold one of the great art’s classical hallmarks: having a structured composition in a manner that visual elements were carefully balanced and refined to work harmoniously with each other (Duchting). Cezanne had the feeling that the technique that was adopted by Impressionists was limited naturally, majorly because they worked quickly to have a glimpse of the atmospheric conditions fleeting effects. Cezanne’s idea was to come up with paintings that had compositions which had a tight organization with the capability of making an impression of something durable and solid such as the art found in museums. Cezanne referred to his pictures as ‘constructions of nature’ where the three dimensional world elements of the sphere, cylinder, and the cone transitioned into patterns of colors and shapes set on a level canvas. It was Cezanne’s artistic work characteristics that made many of his contemporaries misunderstand him and at the same time be a great deal of interest.
Formulation of Questions
Paul Cézanne was born in Aix-en-Provence, France to a wealthy family. Cezanne enjoyed overwhelming support from his parents having that his father had achieved success as a banker while his mother was romantic and vivacious and it was from her that he got the vision and conception of life (Duchting). Nevertheless, in the early years, Cezanne’s father wanted him to be a lawyer but he and his childhood friend, Emile Zola, wanted a career path of being an artist and writer respectively. Cezanne attended law school for two years while at the same time receiving art lessons and it was at this point he made a decision to stop continuing with education and left for Paris. Eventually, Cezanne reconciled with his father and received 400,000 francs as inheritance which got rid of all financial worries (Hoog, & Stonehewr).
It was when Cezanne was in Paris that he got to meet Camille Pissarro an impressionist (Pissarro, Rewald, and Tissot-Delbos). Their friendship grew to that of a disciple and master where Pissarro would become a mentor to the young artist. During his early years in painting, Cezanne used heavy brush strokes that made his early work be referred to as ‘violent’ in nature. Before he met Pissarro, Cezanne painted from his studio through what he imagined (Pissarro, Rewald, and Tissot-Delbos). In addition, his early work was more concerned with the landscape’s figure and included many paintings of groups of heavy and large figures in the landscape. However, after several years of painting, he gained interest in working when directly observing rather than his imagination a trend that gradually made an airy, light painting style. In his mature work also, Cezanne developed an architectural style of painting. Throughout his career, Cezanne found it a struggle to make a bona fide observation of the seen world through the most precise way that he could have it represented in paint available to him (Hoog, & Stonehewr). Because of this, he structurally made an order of his perceptions into color planes and simple forms. Cezanne desire underscored the determination he had to have observation of nature united with an intransience of conventional composition. Nonetheless, many of his compositions were left unfinished because of the difficulty of completing an artwork piece. This meant that it took months for him to complete a single piece (Duchting). Cezanne would build upon each past figure using a new outline. His paintings were first shown in an exhibition in 1863 known as the Salon des Refusés but unfortunately they were not accepted by the Jury up until 1869. He would exhibit through the intervention of fellow artist Antoine Guillemet. Cezanne’s first solo exhibition was in 1895 through the Parisian dealer Ambroise Vollard. Despite the increasing financial success and public recognition, Cezanne made a choice of working in artistic isolation specifically in his birthplace far from Paris. In his career, Cezanne concentrated only in a few subjects and he was successful in genres such as portraits, still lifes, studies and landscape of bathers (Hoog, & Stonehewr).
In his later life, Cezanne as an artist would attract many followers particularly because his work was modern before its time. His first solo exhibition would influence many young artists who liked his geometric fashion style of painting. Despite inspiring many followers, Cezanne was nervous to meet them. Many of his followers such as Emile Brenard, Maurice Denis, and Charles Camoin, saw his work as the father of Cubism, Fauvism, and Modernism. It has been considered that his influence in modern painting cannot easily be subjected to measurement (Loran, 7). Surprisingly, during his life, Cezanne received little critical reception. It was not until his death in 1906 that his work flourished. A good number of artists continued working using Cezanne’s style. In France, for instance, Andre Lhote was obsessed with Cezanne’s gradations of color and “passages” while in German-American Lyonel Feininger kept close the system of intersecting as well as interpenetrating planes with colors suggestive of the style by Cezanne. The work by Cezanne has not only influenced modern art but also created a large academic tradition.
Nonetheless, there exists a conflict that most critics have used on Cezanne which emanates from his paintings and statements. In the last century, much attention has been given to the theories of Cezanne which were expressed in reported conversations and letters (Loran, 7). One of the unnecessary difficulties that the critics find themselves in has been trying to understand the artistic works of Cezanne using the statements that he made. It has been easy for some critics to choose some of the isolated comments that he made and extending their intended meaning to fit concepts which were hardly known to him. Some of the critics known to have done so are the Abstract and Cubist artists. Additionally, some hard fanatics of Impressionism and academicians believe that they follow his words. Nevertheless, the truth has been that there stands a great difference between Cezanne’s intellect, theoretical understanding and his own painting (Loran, 7).
One of the interesting things is that during the time when Cezanne’s art gained some recognition, that is in the 1980’s, the world of art had changed (Orfila). The symbolist movements at the time had ceded to the most recent artistic trends, classicism, and the Latin roots of French culture. This was not the first time that Cezanne’s career had been exposed to extinction. In the beginning of the 20th century, the critical fortune of Cezanne found itself affected by his association with other personalities and artistic movements that had a fluctuating reception. Cezanne involvement with the Impressionists would pose many problems because the particular artistic movement was considered to deviate from the French classical tradition and was more pro-German. Additionally, Cezanne’s association with the cubist painters such as Picasso who had shown appreciation for his art later became a liability after the 1st World War as these artists were considered to be negatively influencing French art having originated from Germany (Orfila).
The believes and stylistic approaches that Cezanne developed during his career in painting would be analyzed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a French Philosopher, primarily known for his existentialism, and phenomenology. In an easy written in 1945 titled “ Cezanne’s Doubt” Merleau-Ponty provides a discussion of how the artist ignored the classical artistic elements like single view perspectives, pictorial arrangements, and outlines which enclosed color just to attempt a “lived perspective” through having all complexities which an eye can observe captured (Toadvine 545-553). According to Merleau-Ponty, Cezanne was more interested in sensing and seeing the objects he painted instead of having to think about them. Merleau-Ponty states that the ultimate point where Cezanne wanted to reach was where ‘sight’ was also ‘touch’. The believe that Cezanne had was that when he was painting, he captured a moment in time and once it had gone, there was no way of getting it back. According to Cezanne, “Art is a personal apperception, which I embody in sensations and which I ask the understanding to organize into a painting (Toadvine).” As the title of Merleau-Ponty’s essay indicate, he was more interested in Cezanne’s “doubt” in other words his lack of confidence, his uncertainty, the tension, and struggle of his life. The anxiety that Cezanne had was deeper than the doubts that he had on his painting abilities. He would openly say that life was terrifying and he feared death to an extent that at the age of forty-six he created a will and began being religious aged fifty. As age caught up with him, Cezanne detached himself more from the people who admired his work, avoided new situations, and became reliant on the established habits of his life (Toadvine, 545).
The assessment of Cezanne’s influence on art is predicated on one critical question. This is:
What are some of Cezanne’s ideologies in the artistic field that influenced the success his works receive today?
This question is interesting to pursue having that Cezanne’s ideologies have proved to be significant because of their contribution to the contemporary art. Many modern artists have borrowed from the style adopted by Cezanne. Cezanne’s painting style has existed for decades because of the firm ideologies that he adopted in all his drawings.
Thesis statement
The purpose of this paper is to examine the direct and indirect contribution that Cezanne had on modern artists. It provides an opportunity to understand why critics such as Merleau-Ponty, and Derrida saw Cezanne as a failure in art which was quite the opposite considering his influence in the contemporary art. The paper will allow readers to appreciate the contribution by Cezanne in shaping the modern art. My argument will be centered on Cezanne beliefs and practices in painting in that they were clearly beyond his time, but critics were ready to pin him down though eventually he emerged the winner because of the strong ideologies he had.

Inter-textual Critique
Cezanne’s Primitiveness
One of the basis in which Cezanne’s critics attacked him was because of his primitiveness approach towards painting. Since the end of the 18th century many theorists, critics, and artists made an argument that, art was better when it is presented to be ‘primitive’ in a way of another. However, arguments of this nature have been considered problematic because they relied on the self concept as an immaterial thing and secondly, they were complicit with the ideologies of colonialists which referred to other cultures as being ‘primitive’ in other words being backwards and the people associated to them as childish. When Cezanne used the word primitive during his career, it was quite consistent with the political neutral use by various contemporary artists and critics to make description of modern art. Notably for instance, in 1886, Pissarro referred to his painting as a one having a modern primitive stamp (Ward 73). In this research paper, I want to argue that the aspect of primitiveness that Cezanne deployed in his painting practice is tenable despite the criticism from Merleau-Ponty, and Derrida.
First, one of the ways to appreciate what Cezanne meant by primitive in his art is having a look at how he described himself with this word a situation which only happened twice (Marshall 22). According to two artists, Jacques Schnerb and R. P. Rivière, who had made a visit to Cezanne in 1905, the artist told them: ‘I am a primitive, I have a lazy eye’ (Rivière, and Jacques 811). In this situation, it seemed that Cezanne used this word to compared himself with a pre-Renaissance Primitive who drew ineptly, just as the expectations of his visitors would have been if they had read about him in the press. Nevertheless, what was unknown to the visitors was that Cezanne disliked the brittleness of the Primitives’ drawing and his remark at this point was a Provencal blague – in a way that it had been pitched too close to the truth that the irony in it was hard to comprehend. But if this happened to be the case and the irony in his comment was little, Cezanne must have been joking with the idea that he had some similarities with the Primitives (Paul, and Cézanne). In fact, what this meant would emerge in a straightforward way when Emile Bernard gave an account of what Cezanne had told him. According to Bernard, Cezanne had said to him, “I am too old. I have not realized, and will not do so now. I remain the primitive of the way I have discovered (Smith 95).” In this context, the meaning of primitive became clear as a pioneer or beginner and it was evident that Cezanne meant suggested that he like many Primitives had started out on a new thing. Cezanne simply was inspiring Bernard to be a follower and a student who would ‘carry his work on’. Clearly, Cezanne had the thought that his work was too good to be worth emulation despite the shortcomings critics saw in it. Therefore, Cezanne’s sense of being a ‘primitive’ meant that he was a beginner of sorts, and at the same time a painter who went back to the very basics.
Cezanne’s artistic maturity allowed him to identify basic primitive qualities in his painting with the basic art-factual processes responsible for its development and the primordial sensations that it embodied. In 1902, Cezanne told Jules Borely of what he had said to Bernard, “I am too old. I have not realized, and will not do so now. I remain the primitive of the way I have discovered.” The remark is a plain recalling the ideologies which Cezanne had been made to believe that he had a vision which resembled that of a child and should be invested with tactility. Nevertheless, theories of this kind cannot be said to fully represent his work because his intent would be fully seen in his paintings. While the actions of Cezanne might not really be acquiescent to a complete explanation, Merleau-Ponty phenomenology does to some extent put what he achieved into words. For instance, there is a suggestion that Cezanne’s art embodied a ‘primordial perception’ inside which ‘sight’ and ‘touch’ cannot be distinguished for a ‘body-subject’ having a ‘primitive’ contact with the universe (Quinn 9-30). In a later language, Merleau-Ponty would depict Cezanne as a kind of seeing which provided an expression of his ‘chiasmatic’ and reciprocal relationship with the ‘world’s flesh.’
Merleau-Ponty referred to Cezanne as an artist with much uncertainty, many failures, and so much labor aspects which puzzled why he achieved success. Merleau-Ponty uses the childhood friend of Cezanne, Zola, to portray him as a failure. Zola was the first person to describe Cezanne as a “genius gone wrong.” Merleau-Ponty says that the painting by Cezanne was paradoxical in that he pursued reality while remaining with the sensuous surface with no pictorial arrangement, with no outlines enclosing the color and without following the contours. In relation to this, Bernard referred to this as Cezanne suicide in that he aimed for reality while at the same time lived in denial of the method to attain it. Merleau-Ponty alludes that the Cezanne’s approach to painting in the 1870s and 1890s was the reason for the distortions and difficulties in his pictures. For instance, saucers and cups on a table seen from side ought to be elliptical, but what Cezanne paints seems to have two the two sides of the ellipse expanded and swollen. In his work table of Gustave Geffroy portrait, Merleau-Ponty says that Cezanne stretched it, something that went contrary to the perspectives of law in particular the lower part of the picture. At one point, Bernard referred to the art of Cezanne as” submerged his painting in ignorance and his mind in shadows.” The point which Merleau-Ponty wanted to drive at this particular point was that it is not possible for one to close their eyes on the outcome of Cezanne’s pictures and open their mind on his theory towards painting.
Merleau-Ponty further argues that it was clear from the discussions between Cezanne and Emile Bernard that he sought to avoid ready-made alternatives which were presented to him; judgment versus sensation, composition versus nature, and primitivism rather than tradition. Nevertheless, the point that Merleau-Ponty may have missed was that in his primitive approach to painting Cezanne never thought that there was need to choose between thought and feeling as if he was making a decision between order and chaos. Cezanne approach to painting was that of a man who did not want to separate the things which we see as stable and the shifting way of their appearance. Cezanne made a distinction of not between the ‘understanding’ and ‘the senses’ but the human organization of sciences and ideas and the spontaneous organization of things human beings perceive. The aim of Cezanne was painting from a primordial world where his art would show the purest nature while the photos of the same landscape depicted a man’s conveniences, work, and imminent presence. There is no contradiction of Cezanne’s wish of wanting to “paint like a savage.” His aim was to put intelligence, sciences, ideas and perspective in touch with the nature of the universe. As he said, he wanted to face up to the sciences with nature “from which they had come.” The aspect of remaining faithful to what he believed in during his career in painting, Cezanne was able to make discoveries of what today’s psychologists have formulated as a lived perspective which people perceive is not photographic or geometric one. Those objects that are seen from close range appear smaller while those in far places appear larger than in a photograph. For instance in films, a train which is approaching appears bigger faster compared to a real train in normal circumstances.
Despite being criticized by Merleau-Ponty that he was lazy and lacked talent, Cezanne’s had the believe that learning to paint was a journey and as part of the learning process was the geometric study of forms and planes. During his career, Cezanne made inquiries of the geological structure of the landscapes he painted. In his brush, the rules of design and anatomy are evident in each stroke just as a games rule underlies each stroke during a match of tennis. Nevertheless, what motivates the movement of a painter cannot be simply geometric, perspective or the laws that govern the breakdown of color or in this case, any knowledge.

Limits

Challenge

Summary

Conclusion

Works Cited
Boyle-Turner, Caroline. Post-Impressionism, History and application of the term, MoMA, From Grove Art Online, Oxford University Press, 2009
Duchting, Hajo. Paul Cezanne. Taschen GmbH, 2009
Hoog, Michel & Stonehewer, Rosemary. Cezanne: The First Modern Painter. Thames & Hudson, 1994
Loran, Erle. Cezanne’s Composition: Analysis of His Form with Diagrams and Photographs of His Motifs – 3d Ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963. Print.
Marshall, S. “David Bloor, Wittgenstein: a Social Theory of Knowledge.” Basingstoke: Macmillan (1985).
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. “Cézanne’s doubt.” University of Massachusetts Lowell (2013).
Orfila, Jorgelina. Paul Cézanne and the making of modern art history. Diss. University of Maryland, College Park, 2007.
Pissarro, Camille, John Rewald, and Christine Tissot-Delbos. Camille Pissarro. HN Abrams, 1993.
Quinn, Carolyne. “Perception and painting in Merleau-Ponty’s thought.” Perspectives: International Postgraduate Journal of Philosophy 2.1 (2009): 9-30.
Rewald, John. Cezanne: A Biography. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. , 1996
Rewald, John: Post-Impressionism: From Van Gogh to Gauguin, revised edition: Secker & Warburg, London, 1978, p. 9.
Rivière, R. P., and Jacques Félix Schnerb. L’atelier de Cézanne. l’Echoppe, 1991.
Smith, Paul, and Paul Cézanne. Interpreting Cezanne. London: Tate Publishing, 1996.
Smith, Paul. “‘Real primitives’: Cézanne, Wittgenstein, and the nature of aesthetic quality.” (2007): 93-122.
Toadvine, Theodore A. “The art of doubting: Merleau-Ponty and Cezanne.” Philosophy Today 41.4 (1997): 545-553.
Ward, Martha. Pissarro, Neo-impressionism, and the Spaces of the Avant-garde. University of Chicago Press, 1996.