Читать книгу Cubists and Post-Impressionism онлайн

61 страница из 70

In the suggestion of the lines of the sphere, the cone, and the cylinder, as the elements of all art, one recognizes the alphabet of cubism. But in reducing drawing to these elements Cézanne, without knowing it, simply repeated what Albert Durer printed in book form nearly four hundred years ago, and what the Chinese and Japanese had discovered centuries earlier.[25]

The fact that the work of four men so different, Cézanne, Henri Rousseau, VanGogh, Gauguin, began to be appreciated about the same time, shows how ripe the Paris art world was for the reaction from Impressionism—for a great movement in creative and decorative art.

Matisse taught drawing and for a time—from 1895 to 1899—painted along conventional lines. Influenced by Cézanne he then broke with the academic and sought new light effects, effects quite different from those of the Impressionists.

He sought to break with all ancient laws, and his use of color became and still is largely his own.[26]

While his coloring is always interesting and his drawing facile, there is at times something about his work that is not satisfying, an atmosphere of superficiality. He is described, however, by those who know him as a painter of almost bourgeois earnestness and sincerity, taking himself and his work most seriously.