Cezane's Anxiety

By Andrew Graham-Dixon. Zoom, 27th October 2021. Picasso admired Cezanne's anxiety. But what was it? Cezanne's reputation was of painter philosopher. Andrew starts by depicting one picture "The Montagne Sainte-Victoire. He didn't consider himself as Impressionist but rather as a classical French painter (think of Poussaine):

It is a pinting of something that will last. Something momunental that will last for a long time. Every mout St. Vicoire is a volcano. It is an artist driven by extraordinary (turbulance) emotions. He made every effort to make things monumental. He emmerged as an artist through the mountain painting. He was late twice, he was a late romantic and a late impressionist (post-impressionist). Zola "passion for the flesh of a women .. nudity desired and never possessed"

After the quote that Zola published, the frienship ended. They never spoke to each other again. Andrew things he has a dark, passionate beginning (1860's). But what is his anxiety? His early work really is dark and macabre, lots of sexual attacks (Lot's daughter) is a scene of rape, the Murder (1870) is algo very charged. Picasso thinks Cezanne asks the right set of questions about nature. Picasso however becomes less driven by the inner thinking and is more extrovert. He begins with cubism and is a claim of inmerssion whereas Cezanne's is the reverse. This painting is closer to Guernica than to landscapes:

Cezanne was refuesed by the Academie of course, but he continued doing controversial paintins like the feast. He then paints the pianist (1868), here he is now changing the narrative and influenced by Mannet at this stage: where Mannet puts himself out (Olympia picture) Cezanne places himself in (A modern Olymplia, 1873). It draws a lot of criticism and is thought of as a madnman. Andrew thinks they are overtly confessional and are about sexual fantasies or autobiographical. Art is the outside presented by the artist's temperament. Andrew feels there is a lot of violence in the Bread and Eggs (1865). His metamorphosis is one of the most remarkable in Art History. He chose a different path in the early 1870's. Cezanne moved to ipressionism but his painting were somewhat dull and predictable. So he invents something different using new techniques including square brushes:

Andrew's believe is that his young instincts were never suppresed in later life. His life was a prolongued struggle to reconcile his emotional turbulance with current demands of observation. He could not fall into either extreme, he was boring on one side, and extremelly violent and non understandable on the other. His most distinctive innovation is painting a jump, painting a movement, a sense of space in art. It is what gives way to cubism: what side is true, which one is mount st. Victoire? How do you paint movement? An object is mobile so it is closer than the idea of cinema. Cezanne is not just painting the physical truth of vision but also the emotional. So, every mount St. Victoire is a volcano. The paintings become his own take, his own time and his own vision of the world.

Somewhere in the middle of this paing you find him. Through the movement of his own movement, you are aware of the time its taking him, his gestures, his perceptions of the passing of seasons. He lives all of the complexity, he lives on for as long as that mountain lives. This is his anxiety, his desire to live on, to capture his world view on paintings. He is projecting a self of himself, a sense of humanity, into his still lives. We are here and generating. We are all part of a chaotic ending that is impossible to resist it. We must move on. What do you take from Cezanne? His anxiety, as Picasso famously said. A new way of seeing, a new language. Picasso claimed in the past you did not have to create your own language, but a good artist has to create his own language. Maybe his later paintings (Bathers) mixed both his early and later styles and summarizes his own language in art: