Paul Cezanne
The Garden Terrace at Les Lauves, 1902-06
Private Collection, NY
（昨日の英語版です）
I used to think that Cezanne was a difficult
artist. Difficult – both in terms of understanding
his art and he himself as a person.
My image of him was that he secluded
himself from the rest of the artistic circle in
by himself. Cezanne the hermit—was my image!
But after I learned what Cezanne was up to,
it all started to make sense. He was not
satisfied with Impressionism as most Post-
Impressionist artists were at the time ;
Impressionism was about capturing a certain moment
in time – for example, imagine a Claude Monet painting.
What Monet wanted to do was to convey that fleeting
moment onto his canvas.
Cezanne was not interested in fleeting moments,
but the opposite. He wanted to reconstruct onto
his canvas, what “remains” of the motif that he is
about to paint. The solid firmness of the motif
which does not change.
So this is the reason why his apples appear to be
too 3D and that his mountains seem to be made up
of blocks.
Compare a Cezanne with a Monet the next time
you go to a museum and you will see!
