Cezanne's use of Color
This isolation and
Cézanne's concentration and singleness of purpose may account for the remarkable
development he sustained during the 1880s and '90s. In this period he continued to paint
studies from nature in brilliant impressionist colors, but he gradually simplified his
application of the paint to the point where he seemed able to define volumetric forms with
juxtaposed strokes of pure color. Critics eventually argued that Cézanne had discovered a
means of rendering both nature's light and nature's form with a single application of
color. He seemed to be reintroducing a formal structure that the impressionists had
abandoned, without sacrificing the sense of brilliant illumination they had achieved.
Cézanne himself spoke of "modulating" with color rather than
"modeling" with dark and light. By this he meant that he would replace an
artificial convention of representation (modeling) with a more expressive system
(modulating) that was closer still to nature, or, as the artist himself said,
"parallel to nature." For Cézanne, the answer to all the technical problems of
impressionism lay in a use of color both more orderly and more expressive than that of his
fellow impressionists.
Cézanne's goal was, in
his own mind, never fully attained. He left most of his works unfinished and destroyed
many others. He complained of his failure at rendering the human figure, and indeed the
great figural works of his last years—such as the Large Bathers(circa
1899-1906, Museum of Art, Philadelphia)—reveal curious distortions that seem to have
been dictated by the rigor of the system of color modulation he imposed on his own
representations. The succeeding generation of painters, however, eventually came to be
receptive to nearly all of Cézanne's idiosyncrasies. Cézanne's heirs felt that the
naturalistic painting of impressionism had become formularized, and a new and original
style, however difficult it might be, was needed to return a sense of sincerity and
commitment to modern art.