Picture Perfect

Mont Sainte-Victoire painted by Paul Cézanne

"Love is missing you and the way your skin brushes mine the way Cézanne painted so many Mt. Algiers, different every time but with the passion of the first. It's feeling incomplete without you."

Paul Cézanne was a french Impressionist painter in the late 19th Century. The late 19th-early 20th century has always been a period of immense fascination to me. I truly believe that some of the best art and literature was created in this transition period that we now call Modernism. There is something so profoundly romantic about the uncertainty of change hidden between the glamor and promise of modernity. The disillusionment and journey towards rediscovery in these works never fails to enchant me.

Cézanne in particular caught my interest through the works of French author, Emilé Zola. Zola and Cézanne were childhood friends who became estranged once Zola used him as a character in one of his books - but I digress. I like Cézanne because to me he personifies Modernism - he worked with the purpose of changing Impressionism into something more meaningful and lasting. To this effect, he simplified the landscapes and subjects of his paintings through small strokes and similar color planes, but ended up producing very complex pieces.

For a few years of his career, he painted multiple copies of a mountain in the south of France (pictured above), where he was from, almost to the point of obsession. I realize that the idea of redoing a single landscape multiple times and trying to perfect it is the antithesis of our cultural norm where time is money and technology allows for everything to be edited and improved, rendering the concept of remaking quite obsolete.

I incidentally came across the above quote today and it caught my eye. Could it be that Cézanne and Modernism have anything relevant to teach us other than moral imagination? I can't say for sure, but what I admire most is his pursuit of rediscovery - this much like most other 'modernist' ideals is so simple yet complex, especially for a confused but ambitious person like myself. His was a passion dedicated to perfecting an abstract emotion. This period in his career is known as the Constructive period. It seems to me that the average person today is so fixated on certain ideas and goals that we aren't willing to take a chance on rediscovery and if / when we are forced to do it, it scares the shit out of us.