Paul Cézanne quotes - page 4

The clear French landscape is as pure as a verse of Racine. (Paul Cézanne)
There are two things in the painter, the eye and the mind; each of them should aid the other. View quote
Paul Cézanne
Is art really the priesthood that demands the pure in heart who belong to it wholly? View quote
Paul Cézanne
I ask you to pray for me, for once age has overtaken us, we find consolation only in religion. View quote
Paul Cézanne
Painting is damned difficult - you always think you've got it, but you haven't. View quote
Paul Cézanne
I am a pupil of Pissarro. View quote
Paul Cézanne
The painter must enclose himself within his work; he must respond not with words, but with paintings. View quote
Paul Cézanne
I've come to the conclusion that it's not really possible to help others. View quote
Paul Cézanne
We must not be content to memorize the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go out and study beautiful nature. View quote
Paul Cézanne
I am the primitive of the method I have invented. View quote
Paul Cézanne
I have nothing to hide in art. The initial force alone can bring anyone to the end he must attain. (Paul Cézanne)
Is it the factitious and the conventional that most surely succeed on earth and in the course of life? View quote
Paul Cézanne
The artist makes things concrete and gives them individuality. View quote
Paul Cézanne
The truth is in nature, and I shall prove it. View quote
Paul Cézanne
I lack the magnificent richness of color that animates nature. View quote
Paul Cézanne
You say a new era in art is preparing; you sensed it coming; continue your studies without weakening. God will do the rest. View quote
Paul Cézanne
My nervous system is enfeebled, only work in oils can sustain me. View quote
Paul Cézanne
A thousand painters ought to be killed yearly. Say what you like: I'm every inch a painter. View quote
Paul Cézanne
People think how a sugar basin has no physiognomy, no soul. But it changes every day. View quote
Paul Cézanne
This is what happens, unquestionably – I am positive: an optical sensation is produced in our visual organ, which leads us classify as light, half-tone or quarter-tone, the planes represented by sensations of color. [Thus the light does not exist for the painter]. As long as, inevitably, one proceeds from black to white, the former of these abstractions being a kind of point of rest both for eye and brain, we flounder about, we cannot achieve self-mastery, get possession of ourselves. During this period (I tend to repeat myself, inevitably) we turn to the admirable works [of the five great Venetian painters a. o. Titian and Tintoretto] handed down to us through the ages, in which we find comfort and support... View quote
Paul Cézanne
Allow me to repeat what I said when you were here: deal with nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere and the cone, all placed in perspective, so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point. Lines parallel to the horizon give breadth, a section of nature, or if you prefer, of the spectacle spread before our eyes by the 'Pater Omnipotens Aeterne Deus'. Lines perpendicular to that horizon give depth. But for us men, nature has more depth than surface, hence the need to introduce in our vibrations of light, represented by reds and yellows, enough blue tints to give a feeling of air. (Paul Cézanne)
As a painter I am beginning to see more clearly how to work from Nature... But I still can't do justice to the intensity unfolding before my eyes. View quote
Paul Cézanne
Everything we look at disperses and vanishes. doesn't it? Nature is always the same, and yet its appearance is always changing... Painting must give us the flavour of nature's eternity. Everything, you understand. So I join together nature's straying hands.... From all sides, here there and everywhere, I select colours, tones and shades; I set them down, I bring them together.... They make lines, they become objects – rocks, trees – without my thinking about them.... But if there is the slightest distraction, the slightest hitch, above all if I interpret too much one day, if I'm carried away today by a theory which contradicts yesterday's, if I think while I'm painting, if I meddle, then woosh!, everything goes to pieces. View quote
Paul Cézanne
Nature as it is seen and nature as it is felt, the nature that is there.. (he pointed towards the green and blue plain; J. G.) and the nature that is here (he tapped his forehead, J. G.) both of which have to fuse in order to endure, to live that life, half human and half divine, which is the life of art or, if you will.. the life of god. The landscape is reflected, humanized, rationalized within me. I objectivize it, project it, fix it on my canvas.. View quote
Paul Cézanne
In that Renaissance (Cellini, Tintoretto, Titian..) there was an explosion of unique truthfulness, a love of painting and form... Then come the Jesuits and everything is formal; everything has to be taught and learned. It required a revolution for nature to be rediscovered; for Delacroix to paint his beach at Etratat, Corot his roman rubble, Gustave Courbet his forest scenes and his waves. And how miserable slow that revolution was, how many stages it had to go through!... These artists had not yet discovered that nature has more to do with depth than with surfaces. I can tell you, you can do things to the surface.... but by going deep you automatically go to the truth. You feel a healthy need to be truthful. You'd rather strip your canvas right down than invent or imagine a detail. You want to know. View quote
Paul Cézanne