 | Moosekarloff (22)
10/03/2003 |  More influential and historically significant than the layman would realize. Ushered in 20th century abstraction with his rediscovery of geometrical forms as the structural and unifying basis of pictorial space. In this, he not only accorded the breakthroughs of Italian mannerism of 300 years earlier its just due, but amplified these concerns, revivified them and made them his own. This re-alligiance to the geometic set the table for the establishment of cubism and defined the central concerns of modernist painting: (1) how objects rest in three-dimensional space and how to convey this in two-dimensional terms, and (2) painting is essentially about the mechanics and technical problems of painting. Art becomes self-referential rather than being a mere mirror on the material world. The second concern is a major breakthrough that changed visual art to the present day. Cezanne also established interesting planar recession in many of his landscapes, which harkened back to the approaches and forms of painters like Ucello in the 15th century, which established yet another concern of modern art: the homage of tradition and the awareness that painting at any time is also a moment in a cultural continuum. Furthermore, his still lifes are awesome, masterful and have to be seen to be believed.
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