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POSTIMPRESSIONISM
PAUL CEZANNE:
Excerpts from the Letters
THE OLD MASTERS
To Emile Bernard, Aix, 23 December 1904 (# 175, pp. 242-243)
I shall not dwell here on aesthetic problems. Yes, I approve of your admiration for the strongest of all the Venetians; we are celebrating Tintoretto. Your desire to find a moral, an intellectual point of support in the works, which assuredly we shall never surpass, makes you continually on the qui vive, searching incessantly for the way, [which] you dimly apprehend, [that] will lead you surely to the recognition in front of nature of what your means of expression are; and the day you will have found them, be convinced that you will find also without effort and in front of nature the means employed by the four or five great ones of Venice.
This is true without possible doubt+-I am very positive :--an optical impression is produced on our organs of sight which makes us classify as light, half-tone or quarter-tone the surfaces represented by color sensations. (So that light does not exist for the painter). As long as we are forced to proceed from black to white, the first of these abstractions being like a point of support for the eye as such as for the mind, we are confused, we do not succeed in mastering ourselves in possessing ourselves. During this period (I am necessarily repeating myself a little) we turn towards the admirable works that have been handed down to us through- out the ages, where we End comfort, a support such as a plank is for the bather. Everything you tell me in your letter is very true.
To Emile Bernard, Aix n.d. [1905] (#183, p. 250)
The Louvre is the book in which we learn to read. We must not, however, be satisfied with retaining the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go forth to study beautiful nature, let us try to free our minds from them, let us strive to express ourselves according to our personal temperaments. Time and reflection, moreover, modify little by little our vision, and at last comprehension comes to us.
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