Mountains in Provence Paul Cezanne
There’s no village here. There’s a house in the background and a shed. That streetscape in the foreground is a cutting, a bunch of broken rocks at the side of the road. Just a couple of vertical lines and some roof type angles lead us astray.
It is though, a community of rocks, assembled to keep each other and Cezanne and us the viewer company.
I could easily walk along that road, knock on a rock, see who’s home.
When we you go to look at the subject in a Cezanne, it blurs away, refuses to be apprehended. You have to submit to the wider picture to glimpse the detail, just don’t look at it!
I went up close to scrutinise the sky with my insistent eye and it dissolved into some very idle brush strokes. Only when I gave up and stepped back, or forgot to look again, that the pale sky, so distant and pale, made the hill high and clear-edged.
For all the realist paintings in this landscapes room of the NGA show, the Cezanne came to be the most conclusive in the addition of its parts. It made the other pictures arithmetic to Cezanne’s maths.
Every detail in it is evasive. Every detail is conspiring with every other detail to concoct a secret whole. Each contestant is sworn to secrecy until the final reveal.
It was just a small picture.
I always walk away from a Cezanne with shame at my own crude devicery.