The Artwork of Paul Cézanne

“I owe you the truth in painting and I will tell it to you.” – Paul Cézanne

After reading the article on “Doing Science Making Art” by Bevil Conway, I was inspired to do a little further research on the artwork of Paul Cézanne, whose scientific painting techniques were mentioned frequently throughout the article.

If one were to take a fleeting glance at the works of Cézanne, one would immediately be struck by the geometric aspect of his artwork, the strong lines, and the bold colors. Cézanne ultimately came to regard color, line, and “form” as constituting one and the same thing, or inseparable aspects for describing how the human eye actually experiences nature.

Unsatisfied with the Impressionist dictum that painting is primarily a reflection of visual perception, Cézanne sought to make of his artistic practice a new kind of analyticaldiscipline. In his hands, the canvas itself takes on the role of a screen where an artist’s visual sensations are registered as he gazes intensely, and often repeatedly, at a given subject.

Cézanne’s desire to capture the truth of perception led him to explore binocular vision: graphically, rendering slightly different, yet simultaneous visual perceptions of the same phenomena to provide the viewer with an aesthetic experience of depth different from those of earlier ideals of perspective, in particular single-point perspective.

Cézanne’s extremely methodical means of constructing a painting that both pleases and challenges the eye, and his dedication to creating an accurate geometric representation of everyday life parallels the way we do science. He first observed his object, studying every form, color, and detail, then hypothesized about how he could create such an accurate representation, then he experimented with optics and perspective, using multiple perspectives in one painting to create a more realistic illusion, and finally he analyzed and concluded whether or not he had been successful. The incredible acclaim that Cézanne has received for his paintings only helps to validate the incredible importance of the link between science and art.