The term "post-impressionism" was invented by British art critic roger fry.
It is said that in 19 10, a "modern" French art exhibition will be held in London, but the name of the exhibition has not yet been determined due to the upcoming opening. As the organizer of the exhibition, roger fry was very anxious and said impatiently, "Let's call it post-impressionism."
This accidental name, after all, is more practical, because all the exhibitors are painters after Impressionism. Later, "post-impressionism" was used to refer to those painters who followed impressionism and later strongly opposed the bondage of impressionism, thus forming a unique artistic style. Among them, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Lautrec are outstanding. In fact, post-impressionism is not a community or faction, nor does it have the same aesthetic program and declaration, and the artistic styles of painters are quite different. It is called "post-impressionism" because art critics clearly distinguish it from impressionism in style.
Post-impressionism dislikes the overly objective scientific attitude adopted by Impressionism in describing the fleeting effects of natural light and color changes.
They believe that the artistic image should be different from the objective image and full of the artist's subjective feelings.
Cezanne thinks: "painting-does not mean blindly copying reality;" It means seeking the harmony of various relationships. " His concern is to form a neat and orderly structure through clear shapes in painting. Van Gogh and Gauguin pay attention to the expression of spirit and emotion, and their works are permeated with some internal expressive force and thought-provoking symbolic connotation.
Post-impressionism painting deviates from the artistic tradition of objective reappearance in the West, and inspires two modernist artistic trends of thought, namely, abstract art that emphasizes structural order (such as modernism and stylism) and expressionism of subjective feelings (such as brutalism and German expressionism).
Therefore, in the history of art, post-impressionism is called the origin of western modern art.
Cezanne despised the impressionists' imitation of natural surface color and light reflection, and advocated a new understanding of external things according to the painter's thought and spirit, and reorganized his works according to this understanding. Cezanne attaches great importance to the formal beauty of painting and emphasizes the order of visual elements in the picture. In fact, this pursuit has already appeared in the western classical art tradition. Cezanne has always had respect for classical art, and Pu Sang, a French classical painter, is his favorite.
He once said: "My goal is to draw Pu Sang-style works with nature as the object." He tried to make his paintings reach the wonderful balance and perfection in Pu Sang's works. He is so persistent in pursuing this aspect that he does not agree with the traditional law of reproduction. He went to extremes and broke away from the tradition of western art. Cezanne's paintings have distinctive characteristics. He emphasized the purity of painting and attached importance to the formal composition of painting.
He wants to explore the simple form under the natural appearance through painting, and at the same time, he will form an orderly image from the scattered videos he sees. He emphasized the clarity and solidity of the image in the painting. He believes that if the objects in the painting are blurred, then it is impossible to seek the composition of the picture.
Therefore, he opposed Impressionism, a painting language that ignored sketches and made objects hazy. He is determined to "make impressionism as firm and permanent as the art in the museum". Therefore, he tried his best to pursue a painting language that can create bright and solid characters. His paintings often outline objects with black lines, even air, rivers, clouds and so on.
In his paintings, close-ups and distant objects are clearly drawn on the same plane. This processing method not only distanced itself from the traditional expression techniques, but also left room for the picture composition. Secondly, in his creation, he excluded complicated details and focused on simplified and generalized images. He once said: "cylinders, cones and spheres should be used to represent nature." In his works, the description of scenery is simple and full of geometric significance. Cezanne believes that "there are no lines, no light and shade, only the contrast between colors." The volume of an object image is represented by an accurate tonal relationship. "Most of his works are the embodiment of his own artistic thoughts, showing a strong sense of geometry, ignoring the accuracy of the texture and modeling of objects, emphasizing the thick and steady sense of mass, the overall relationship between objects, and sometimes even giving up the independence and authenticity of individuals in order to seek the harmony of various relationships. He was the first to get rid of the restrictions imposed on painters by the replication law of western artistic traditions for thousands of years. In Cezanne's paintings, there are often intentional distortions of objective modeling, such as inaccurate perspective and deformation of characters. He has no intention of recreating nature. His description of natural objects is basically to create a rhythm composed of shapes and colors. He once said: "As for whether the painter paints an apple or a face, it is a kind of support for the painter, a manifestation of lines and colors, and nothing else. "Cezanne's mature view is obtained after long-term painful thinking, research and practice in his way. In his later years, he couldn't explain this theory clearly in words. His success may be achieved more through his discoveries on canvas, that is, through the fragments of nature painted on paintings, than through his research in museums.
He opposes the separation of sketch and color in traditional painting concepts, and pursues the perspective of objects through color. His paintings are harmonious and beautiful in color. In the face of sketching objects, he always observes, thinks and organizes the tone of the picture very carefully, and repeatedly scrutinizes and modifies it, so that many paintings always seem to be unfinished. In order to study repeatedly for a long time, he often paints still lifes. In these well-organized still life paintings, Cezanne pays less attention to the scientific relationship between space, volume and perspective, but pays more attention to the plane layout of picture modeling and color, striving to achieve a plane harmony and balance similar to patterns. For example, in many still lives such as Still Life Apple Basket, Cezanne's performance even surpassed Balzac's oral description. For Cezanne, like other artists before and after him, the charm of still life obviously lies in that the theme it involves can be described and mastered like a landscape or a painted person. Cezanne carefully arranged the inclined apple basket and wine bottle, scattered other apples between the peaks formed by the tablecloth at will, and put the plate with cake behind the table, which is also a vertical vertex of the table. After doing this, he just kept observing until all these elements began to form a certain relationship with each other, which was the ultimate basis of painting. These apples fascinate Cezanne, because the three-dimensional shape of scattered objects is the most difficult to control, and it is also the most difficult to integrate into the larger picture. In order to achieve his goal, while maintaining the characteristics of a single object, he adjusted those circles with small and flat strokes to deform or relax or break the contour line, thus establishing a close spatial relationship between objects and unifying them into color blocks. Cezanne let the bottle deviate from the vertical line, flattened and distorted the perspective of the plate, and shifted the direction of the edge of the table under the tablecloth. In this way, while maintaining the illusion of true face, he transferred the still life from its original environment to a new environment in the form of painting. In this new environment, it is not the relationship between objects, but the close relationship between objects and their interaction, which becomes a meaningful visual experience. Today, 70 years after painting this painting, when we look at this painting, it is still difficult to express all these subtle things in words. It is through these things that Cezanne achieved his final results. However, we can now appreciate the beauty he achieved on different levels. He is a great sculptor, a great colorist and a keen observer in the history of painting, and he is also a man with extremely quick thinking.
But when he paints people repeatedly like this, it often makes people who are models unable to stand and sit for a long time, so it is more and more difficult for him to find suitable models. The most patient and kind model is Miss Cezanne. Among his works, 25 are based on his wife. This one, the lady Cezanne on the red sofa, is one of them. Mrs Cezanne's name is Marie Oldan Figg, and she married Cezanne on 1869. Before that, she was a female worker in a bookbinding factory and worked as a model for Cezanne in her spare time. Cezanne was very moved by her patience and obedience. After getting married, she not only managed the housework and took care of the painter's daily life, but also continued to be a model for the painter. In this painting, the painter contrasts the red sofa with the blue-green tone of the model, and the color is bright and harmonious.
Cezanne is so focused on various themes, such as landscapes, portraits and still life, that few artists in the world can match his contribution to art history. After 1890, Cezanne's brush strokes became larger and more abstract. The contour line also becomes more broken and loose. Color floats on the object to keep its own characteristics independent of the object. He is a painter whom we admire but refuse our love. His relationship with the world is a confrontational one. He keeps his distance from everything through painting, and he is above everything else. Arnason's "History of Modern Art" said of Cezanne in his early days, "He dispelled inner conflicts in scenes of murder and robbery."
He is a typical "pure painter". He doesn't hate the models he draws, but he doesn't love them either. He studied and recreated them. For Cezanne, the gender characteristics of women seem to be only here. Therefore, in the History of European Painting co-authored by De Spitzer and Fosca, Cezanne said: "Because he is a pure painter, he can only find problems in painting. When he faced the model, although he was painting portraits, he was not a portrait painter. He is not interested in the characteristics of people who represent his models, but only in volume, just like painting fruits or jars. " The so-called "pure painter", in other words, may mean that Cezanne was the first real painter in the history of art.
This feature is also reflected in the portrait of his wife, Madame Cezanne, in the greenhouse. According to John Livermore's biography of Cezanne, "it is his wife Figg who must agree to be the hardest model, because Cezanne asked the model not to move." Sometimes after working for several hours, the model is tired and bored, and he doesn't mind at all. ..... Cezanne's work is progressing very slowly. Draw the outline of the model and the relationship between some shadows and colors on the canvas. Models must pose every day for a week. When painting still life, you must use fake flowers and toy fruits, because the flowers will wither and the fruits will rot before the work is finished. It is not surprising that hundreds of models are needed to draw a portrait. "In those paintings, my wife always looked at Cezanne indifferently. In fact, Cezanne looked at her indifferently, but Cezanne was the winner. He turned the things of life into eternal things. There is nothing flashy in Cezanne's paintings. He doesn't need a woman to show pleasure and excitement. There are as many as 25 portraits of his wife, so she has been sitting in front of the canvas for years! The poor woman asked Cezanne to calmly and cautiously draw her head, neck, arms and lower body into cylinders, spheres and cones respectively, and slowly wither like flowers.
Only Cezanne can be said to be unprecedented, and it is not easy to be such a master.