Where are we going? - Modern Western Art Theory

Author: (American) Chip, translated by Yu Shanshan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2000-01-01
Features: What we know about Cézanne's (Paul Cézanne) artistic views is mostly from a handful of private letters. He was a diligent letter-writer, and many of his letters have been preserved, but he wrote more about family matters, friends, and general issues than about art. Even in his extensive correspondence with his young friend émile Zola—active in the Paris intellectual and art circles at the time—Cézanne mostly discussed personal matters and Zola's novels. Aside from his own paintings, he rarely talked about anything else. And in his letters to his close friend and mentor Camille Pissarro, he spent long passages discussing family disputes—both his own and his friend's—but rarely mentioned art theory.
Content: In 1904, while we were walking near Aix, I asked Cézanne about his views on the masters. "They are fine," he replied. "When I was in Paris, I went to the Louvre every morning; and I love nature more than they do. One must have one's own vision. What do you mean by that?" "To create one's own vision, to see nature with an eye that no one has used before. Wouldn't that result in an overly personal feeling, something others wouldn't understand?" After all, isn't painting like speaking? When I speak, I use the language you use. If I invent a new, unknown language, would you understand me? To express new ideas in a common language may be the only way to make them effective and be accepted by others.