Pictorial Space throughout Art History: Cézanne and ... - ARAS
Pictorial Space throughout Art History: Cézanne and ... - ARAS
Pictorial Space throughout Art History: Cézanne and ... - ARAS
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<strong>ARAS</strong> Connections Issue 2, 2012<br />
from the problem of structure. But a few painters remained strongly plastic,<br />
particularly in the early Renaissance when the influence of medieval art was still<br />
strong. In the early Renaissance these include Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Bellini,<br />
Botticelli, Ducio, <strong>and</strong> Piero della Francesca. From the high Renaissance to the<br />
nineteenth century examples include Raphael, Michelangelo, Giorgione, Titian<br />
<strong>and</strong> Veronese, Brueghel, El Greco, Velásquez, Goya, Rubens, the later<br />
Rembr<strong>and</strong>t, Poussin, Chardin, <strong>and</strong> <strong>Cézanne</strong>.<br />
In the twentieth century the history of pictorial space was the history of<br />
<strong>Cézanne</strong>'s influence. <strong>Pictorial</strong> space was his main concern. Through him it was<br />
rediscovered by painters of the School of Paris, including Seurat, Rousseau,<br />
Léger, Modigliani, the young Mondrian, Matisse, Braque, Picasso, <strong>and</strong> Hofmann.<br />
You have already heard Braque on the subject of <strong>Cézanne</strong>. Many painters<br />
(Vlaminck <strong>and</strong> Derain, for example) did their best work early, when they were<br />
most under <strong>Cézanne</strong>'s influence. Matisse <strong>and</strong> Picasso were not modest men but<br />
each acknowledged <strong>Cézanne</strong> as his master. Matisse said:<br />
I thought: 'If <strong>Cézanne</strong> is right, I am right;' because I knew <strong>Cézanne</strong> had<br />
made no mistake. There are, you see, constructional laws in the work of<br />
<strong>Cézanne</strong> which are useful to a young painter. He had, among his great<br />
virtues, this merit of wanting the tones to be forces in a painting, giving<br />
the highest mission to his painting ... <strong>Cézanne</strong>, you see, is a sort of God of<br />
painting |16|.<br />
Picasso agreed:<br />
He was my one <strong>and</strong> only master! Don't you think I looked at his pictures?<br />
I spent years studying them ... <strong>Cézanne</strong>! It was the same with all of us -<br />
he was like our father. It was he who protected us |17|.<br />
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