Paul Cezanne

Paul Cezanne is a French artist born on the 19^th of January, 1839, in Aix-en-Provence, and was famously known for his landscapes and static-life paintings that includes things such as apples or mountains (Becks-Malorny 8). Although impressionism was instigated in the 1860s as a style of painting, he is widely contemplated as a postimpressionist artist due to the level of ingenuity he added to the impressionist mode of painting. Impressionism is a technique that largely involves painting outdoors in order to learn the manner in which sunlight changes colors in nature. Impressionists such as Cezanne were known to use vivid colors in painting the daily life scenery which was different from the historical paintings or biblical scenes predominantly used by other artists. His style of painting transmuted ordinary objects into abstract figures that draws out cones, cubes and spheres to his still-life paintings which can be sensed underneath by an observer.

Early life and Adulthood

Louis-Auguste Cezanne was Paul Cezanne’s father who was known to be a no-nonsense businessman and banker whose principles were primarily based on money and accretion. As a distinctive classical pattern for most creative men, young Cezanne largely identified with the mother while being hostile to his father (Loran 135). He however had a successful schooling period that saw him earning numerous prizes in Greek, Latin, and mathematics. At the age of 15, Cezanne also learned drawing at a local drawing academy. While at the Bourbon College in Aix with his childhood friend Emile Zola, they both aspired to be artists and writers respectively. However, in 1859, Cezanne joined up the Faculte de Droit at Aix to study law after his father’s firm insistence of him taking a more respectable career that is lucrative and creditably redound to the family’s honor. While at law school, he did so poorly due the irresistible leaning towards painting and meanwhile, Zola who was in Paris kept on urging Cézanne to flout his father’s desires and come there to learn painting since it has been his invariable dream and preoccupation for many years. Eventually, Cezanne’s father yielded to the ‘importunities’ of his son and approved Paul’s departure for Paris with a furtive hope of him not prospering with his paintings (Becks-Malorny 9).

In 1861, Cézanne finally arrived in Paris after being accompanied by his father and sister Marie where he studied at the Academic Suisse for a while. However, he was disillusioned by his initial experience with Paris and later returned to Aix before the year ended where he worked as clerk in his father’s bank. Despite working in the bank for one year, Cézanne was still obsessed with painting and he once more returned to Paris where he was delighted to see his dear friend Zola (Loran 136). This time around, he studied in a small academy after the rejection of his application to study at the Ecole des Beaux which was an official art academy. In 1866, he presented two canvases to the salon which were both rejected by the reactionary jury due to the crudeness of his early work that lacked the academicism in his literary and historical subjects that was largely required in those days.

Influence on the direction of art

During his time in Paris, Cézanne was able to find the acquaintances of some artists who would later be prominent such as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Renoir, and others who also did not fall into the desired mold of the official Academy. Mainly under the unswerving influence of Pissarro just before 1872, Cezanne ditched literary themes and embarked on landscapes and still-life painting which marked the start of the emergence of a great painter whose life and works are now observed in this essay (Loran 136). While Courbet and Manet painted with much realism and boldness in a contemporary manner, Cézanne’s style which was earlier disorderly became more stable as he was now more focused with his dynamism under Pissarro’s authority. His paintings were now subdued with brighter hues of earthly colors and shifted away from the shadowy heavy tones and thick textures of his previous paintings. Taking an interest in both farmland and rural township outlooks, Cézanne and Pissarro together painted the en plein air which was deeply influenced by the southern French countryside. The group he worked with would later be famed as the Impressionists although Cezanne’s work was exceptionally different from the rest as moved towards meeting other artistic concerns (Vollard 51).

Although the group were met with economic constrains and constantly being discarded by the annul Academy exhibition and the official Salon, Cézanne persistently showed his work with his fellow group members in their autonomous exhibitions. Even though he went back to Aix-en-Provence where he married and had a child, he went on with working in his family home and sometimes used his wife and child as models for his numerous drawings and paintings. Either in outdoors or in his studio, Cezanne worked in solitude in trying to reach perfection and was rarely contented with his work (Loran 136). He was also bothered that no one appreciated or even comprehended his work apart from his fellow Impressionist acquaintances. However, for the first time in 1874, Cézanne was able to publicly exhibit with the Societe Anonyme Des Artiste-Peintres, Sculpteurs et Graveurs.

Although he was damned in that exhibition by critics, he had one of his pictures being hanged at the Salon through the help of Guillemet who was a jury member. Cezanne was delighted when he held his first show dedicated to his work in 1895, where all his pictures were framed and from later on, he had his work being hanged in various exhibitions. However, on October 22, 1906, Cézanne died after having almost realized his life-long ambitions in painting (Loran 136-137).

Conclusion

Cezanne’s mature artistic was self-dependent on his experiences while painting and was also shaped by his unrelenting desire of gaining a reflexive comprehension of himself as a painter. Although this reflexivity was not always explicit in his thinking, it was sufficiently close enough to the surface to enlighten his practice and the colors he used. Therefore, Cezanne operated in relation to the verity that his ‘true’ self was a multifaceted function of thoughts, sensations, or even the intentionalities that he experienced in both his regular, non-artistic life and throughout the process of painting. Today, Cezanne is considered to be an ‘Old Master’ in the world of art and his immutable work is well dignified and respected.

Works Cited

Becks-Malorny, Ulrike. Paul Cézanne, 1839-1906: pioneer of modernism. Los Angeles, CA: Taschen, 2001. Print.

Loran, Erle. Cézanne’s composition: analysis of his form, with diagrams and photographs of his motifs. California: University of California Press, 1963. Print.

Vollard, Ambroise.Cézanne. Toronto, Ontario: Courier Dover Publications, 1984. Print.

Martin Puryear

Martin Puryear is an African-American sculptor born on May 23, 1941, in Washington D.C. The acclaimed artist widely created sculptures from wood and other eccentric materials such as rawhide, rattan, tar, and wire-mesh which he carefully crafted and wheedled into a variety of shapes and forms (Driskell, Olivia, Cosby, and Hanks 150). From such materials, Puryear could form semiabstract sculptures that resembled a sense of life to recognizable objects. His Minimalist abstract sculptures and artistic ideas largely depended on location which was integral to form and significance. He integrated his sculptures with concepts of minimalism that defied categorization, placidity quietness and poetic, while exploring natural figures and materials in order to take on issues pertaining to history, culture, and identity. Generally, Puryear is widely recognized for his virtuoso usage of wood (Puryear & Elderfield 7).

Early Life and Adulthood

Martin Puryear was born to Reginald Puryear, his father, who was a Nova Scotia postal employee from Halifax, and Martina, his mother who was an elementary schoolteacher from Washington, D.C (Otfinoski 162). He was the oldest child in the family where he had five brothers and two sisters and he was the first child in that family who consistently showed an interest in making art, tools, musical instruments, boats, as well as furniture through practical teaching and instruction. He was further motivated into artistry at the age of six by an instance where he observed a black artist painting a man’s portrayal on a Washington street (Otfinoski 163). While residing in Washington, his family would pay regular visits to the National art Gallery and the Smithsonian Museum which was Puyear’s favorite due to its diverse compilations and exhibitions of nature and animal life. His parents had always wanted to progress his artistic endeavors amid the racial segregation that characterized America during that period. However, he attained a scholarship to local children’s art school and later on in 1963, he graduated with a BA from Catholic university (Otfinoski 162).

Influence on the direction of art

After college, Puryear later on joined the Peace Corp in 1964 which saw him going to Sierra Leone for two years. His time in the West African country deeply sharpened his sculpture-making skills after numerous encounters with local carpenters who convolutedly forged items without the aid of any mechanical technology. The elegant African sculptures would later on leave a lasting effect on Puryear’s work. Puryear had already made up his mind on becoming a sculptor especially one who would work with wood when his time in Sierra Leone came to a close (Driskell et al. 153). He resorted to the traditional means of wood joinery by working with his hands rather than using machines or entrusting the handiwork to assistants as most modern sculptors were accustomed to. Some of his major work includes the ‘Booker T. Washington Ladder,’ where he builds a meandering ladder that is over thirty-five feet tall out of a ‘jointed ash wood’. His work has seen his winning numerous awards at various events.

In 1966 to 1968, Puryear went to Sweden where he learned etching and sculpture at the Swedish Royal Academy in line with his passionate interest in wood crafting (Puryear & Elderfield 16). His time in Sweden also saw him meeting James Krenov who was a master in woodcraft, and this association would later on have a significant effect on his sculptures. In 1971, after returning back to the U.S, Puryear enrolled at Yale University where he obtained a master in fine arts degree. While his earlier paintings and prints were more realistic in nature, his work was now more abstract in form especially after his time in Africa. However, since his time in Sweden, he entirely devoted himself to working in three dimensions (Otfinoski 162). Despite working with less conventional materials over the years, wood has always been Puryear’s primary medium.

Conclusion

Puryear’s art not only brings out the beauty of wood, it also conveys the line that defines it’s from to a great deal. Every prescribed room in Puryear’s works always seem to be connected to a larger puzzle which is a design challenge that needs an all-encompassing infatuation in order to execute. Despite starting his dreams and interest in a racially segregated era, his art has continued to transverse both national and international confines of race and has tremendously set the pace for other African-American artists. The love for Puryear’s work profoundly shows the extraordinary beckoning power and passion that art can draw us into. He has been described as ‘linear in the sense that spiral is linear’ due to his extemporary sculptures (Puryear & Elderfield 13). His modern art continues to maintain a pre-modern belief in designing things that convey the bounds of human thoughts as well as practice. Consequently, Martin Puryear can be termed as the greatest sculptor of all time since his work has been cited as beckoning power and passion in his articulation of imagery (Puryear & Elderfield 14).

Works Cited

Driskell, David., Camille, Cosby., Bill, Cosby., & Rene, Hanks. The other side of color: African American art in the collection of Camille O. and William H. Cosby, Jr. California: Pomegranate, 2001. Print.

Otfinoski, Steven. African Americans in the visual arts. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2003. Print.

Puryear, Martin & Elderfield, John. Martin Puryear. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2007. Print.