Bob Kirsch
CEZANNE'S PURSUIT
Among the most influential essays on Cezanne is
Maurice Mearleau-Pointy's "Cezanne's Doubt." However, for all
the insight contained within this piece, written by one of the
most perceptive of those who have studied him, the matter of
what Cezanne may have doubted and what he did not doubt is
not presented with perfect clarity. For while Cezanne was cer–
tainly at times dissatisfied with how he was meeting the goals he
had set for himself as a painter,he clearly showed at other times
that he was very pleased with his work. Many of his actions and
statements might be cited as proof, but particularly telling is that
when in 1985 Ambroise Vollard began to organize a one-man
show of Cezanne's work, the painter had no hesitation in provid–
ing him with (if Vollard is to be believed) one hundred fifty
paintings and watercolors. This is, John Rewald reminds us,
three times more than could have been exhibited in the gallery
at once. Cezanne's paintings, as well as his letters and witness
accounts by his contemporaries , furnish unquestionable
evidence that there was much he was sure of. He was not
undecided about the value of Virgil's poetry, Michelangelo's
sculpture, Rubens's decorative ensembles or Delacroix's
paintings; the beauty of the landscape around Aix-en-Provence
(which had been his since childhood) or that of great works of
art; the character of painting as a concrete art. Nor was he unsure
about the importance of line and color, of planes and atmospheric
effect in a composition; nor about the value one person may have
for another, the capacity of God, or the palpable physical and
colorful existence of an apple or a flower.
It is no secret to those who have examined Cezanne 's work
that he was greatly drawn to what was deeply familiar to him
and had slowly become part of his immediate environment.
This general propensity is a complete configuration, a structure
built at least partly consciously to endure and to sustain artistic
