OIL PAINTING: River Coast, 1895
The landscapes of Cezanne pulverize traditional representation. They shear forms, upend spatial expectations and strew compositions with obstacles that block easy entry. The eye must climb up or down, or squeeze past tilted planes, jutting shapes and unexpected solidities. It must reconcile monumental geological facts with small painted ones, and vast open spaces with close, vibrating surfaces that look back to Byzantine mosaics and forward to digital pixilation.Seeing intimatelyIn Provence, Cezanne was a stalker of vistas, obsessed with working in the open air, or "sur la motif" as he put it.