Paul Cezanne - Another little epiphany for me!

I've spent the last few weeks looking at some of the Modernist Masters, from Picasso, Matisse, Pollock and Worhol, but they all are simply building on the shoulders of the ground-braking work carried out shortly after the Impressionist movement (with the usual suspects of Manet, Monet, Renoir and so on), by the true master considered of this period of the late 19th and early 20th Century, that being Paul Cezanne.

Whilst watching a number of excellent videos of the modern masters, my inquiry particularly in Cezanne and how his legacy affected Picasso, Matisse and all those following him, helped me to realise why he was so incredibly important!

It relates to me directly, right now, in this moment of time as a developing artist myself! -

So far on my journey, just like so many others before me, I have had the notion that the most effective way to truly understand and acquire the skills of not only classical painting, but also modern and I believe, Post-Modernism, is through the first step of learning to draw properly.

Most of my past two years of study at degree level have only re-enforced this notion, hence that is where my attention has been.

I have followed the journey through the first steps of drawing; from the line, the shape, the form and tone to create form through tonality, through lights and dark, the capture of the all important shadows and how light is the critical factor to all art, in how we represent it in order to make a two dimensional image into the illusion of a three dimensional form through modelling.  We do this through the variation of tones and this is particularly obvious in drawing in particular.

What had eluded me until today was what Cezanne was trying to do which was so radical.  I simply hadn't grasped it, but now, today, I think I have!

In essence, what makes him different to everyone else before him is that he was trying to create "FORM" through the use of "COLOUR"...  - Not through light and dark at all!

Within this context, you now begin to realize why he painted the same objects, like Mont Saint Victoire and other motifs so many times and in so many subtly different ways.  It was to try to capture not only the 'mood' (as inspired by the Impressionist movement he was both a part of and on the periphery of), but also, and critically sense of the form of objects, through the choices of colour he used, and not the traditional idea of form through tonality alone.

By painting form through the correct use of colour, makes a massive difference to the much more exaggerated sense of materiality in my opinion.