The Art Institute of Chicago Illinois displays Paul Cezanne’s painting The Bay of Marseilles Seen From L’Estaque (1885). This two-dimensional, oil-on-canvas painting measures at 80. Two hundred. 6cm. It is one of several paintings depicting a bay at Marseille, a small French village. Cezanne placed the image at a high point so the viewer could see the village rooftops. Behind the buildings is a large body, which has hills to the distant. Cezanne frequented the Bay of Marseille during his lifetime, which inspired him to create these paintings.

The image is divided in four zones. The image’s center is taken up by the watery blue, which gives it a flat appearance. Mountains become more gentle thanks to their light use and wave-like appearance. Cezanne describes his fascination with the landscape layout and colors. He says, “It’s almost like playing card with its simple shapes. The sun shines so brightly here, it looks like the objects are silhouetted in black and white. Roger Fry, an English critic and painter who studied Cezanne’s works and rejected the dominant modes of criticism. Cezanne thought a picture was a piece of painting. Fry believed that the only thing that was important in art was its form. Cezanne’s work was close to this formal expression. His use of line and tone to create a sense structure in his compositions is a good example. Cezanne tried to show that color could achieve form. It was difficult to observe the contour lines of nature when painting with heavy layers. Cezanne uses a blueish-gray paint tone to create contours. He arranges the paint so that it acts with the space surrounding it, giving it an amplitude. His expressive brush strokes create vibrating effects within his contour lines, which seem slightly apart from his forms’ edges. This effect gives the pieces a weight and gives them a solidity. Fry also explains how simplicity and objects can create an understandable image that communicates a vivid sense if life.

Maurice Merleau Ponty, philosopher, has a different take on Cezanne’s application. Merleau-Ponty’s article Cezanne Doubt discusses how sensations can produce chaotic and spontaneous appearances and how the brain organizes them into a coherent whole. Cezanne captures what it means to ‘be’, before our preconceived notions and biases cloud it. Merleau Ponty uses Cezanne to help him make sense of the world. Cezanne reflects on experience, the way in which confusing and vibrating appearances can be transferred. Cezanne used color and form to communicate a more lived-perspective of human experience.

Merleau-Ponty notes that Cezanne used local tones to create contrast between objects. This helps us perceive nature more naturally. The appearance of complementary colours heightens each others; this effect is evident in The Bay of Marseilles where contrasting reds-browns are used with blue-greens. The phenomenon of the act or seeing is hard to explain as each person’s experience will be different. Merleau Ponty is deeply influenced by Cezanne’s experience and background. This knowledge and understanding helps him to understand perception and transform perception into art-making. Merleau Ponty views a phenomenon as an actual event. We have to live it, and Cezanne does that.

Merleau–Ponty and Fry take Cezanne’s work very differently. Fry views the art as art and does not read into its technique. Merleau-Ponty tries to place the painting in a deeper context. Our physical phenomena’s of looking are processed to organize our minds. Cezanne captures this exact moment before it is transferred. Fry and Merleau Ponty are very similar in the way they approach art. Merleau-Ponty believes that Cezanne captured the moment he applied paint to his life. Fry focuses on Cezanne’s paint application process, noting the various effects achieved with expressive and brush strokes. Cezanne’s bold brush strokes and hatching methods, as well the use pallet knives are part of the key ingredient that draws attention to his work.

Paul Cezanne’s The Bay of Marseilles, Seen at L’Estaque. This theme is pure and uncomplicated. The space is created by a combination of cool and warm colors. It’s built using block-like brush strokes to create the space. Roger Fry, Merleau-Ponty, and Roger Fry have different views on what is key to Cezanne’s compositions. However, they all agree that art can be viewed as an expression of your personal experience.

dylanwest

Dylan West is a 33-year-old education blogger and traveler. He has a degree in education from the University of Texas and has been blogging about education since 2009.