HAROLD BERGLUND, still life
painter, on Cezanne
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detail of a Cezanne painting |
Cezanne is an interesting case of the errors
of art history. In his letter to Emile Bernard from |
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He has
been wrongly attributed to be a "brain" painter, but due to his
devotion to truthfull rendition of the visual reality at a time when his
eyesight was failing and he could not see the colors at the edges of objects
and, therefore, did not paint them, giving the paintings an abstraction
quality that was not his intention. To quote the same letter again "Now,
being old, nearly seventy years, the sensation of color, which give light,
are the reason for the abstractions which prevent me from either covering my
canvas or continuing the delimitation of the objects when their points of
contact are fine and delicate; from which it results that my image or picture
is incomplete."* Cezanne worked slowly and thought a great deal about
his painting but that does not mean he intended to do more than render what
he saw. The
challenge of rendering what we see is indeed demanding. It requires ignoring
the mechanism of color constancy, sharpening the vision for nuances and
training the ability to see the relationship of every part to the whole. Harold
Berglund 2002.3.10 *[Nochlin, Linda. Impressionism and Post-Impressionism 1874-1904 Sources and Documents, Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1966 p. 95 (from John Rewald, ed. Paul Cezannes Letters, trans. Marguerite Kay, London, Bruno Cassirer, 1941)] |
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