塞尚：用蘋果震懾世界

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) painted hundreds of apples. How do you astonish the 1)sophisticated

critics in the art capital of the 19th century with an

apple? You might try painting an apple that looked more exactly like an apple than any ever before painted. Or， you might show people a new way of seeing an apple.

Take a good， long look at the next apple you plan to eat. What is its basic shape: is it shaped like a ball， or an egg? Look at it from the top， from the bottom， and all around it. Is it bright red， orange-red， yellow， green， or is your apple all these colors? Observe the effect of light on its surface.

Cézanne looked at apples – and everything else he painted – very closely. He would study apples，

flowerpots， and 2)rumpled tablecloths until he

understood them as their basic shapes: 3)spheres，

4)cylinders， and 5)cones. The objects in his paintings

are based on these shapes. He made the objects look more real， more three-dimensional， by gradually shifting from one color to another.

His use of color and way of 6)analyzing and 7)depicting objects

inspired the Fauvists注1，

such as Henri Matisse， the Cubists注2， such as Pablo Picasso (who described Cézanne as “the father of us all”)， and many other

20th-century painters.

Country and City

Cézanne was born and died in Aix-en-Provence in southern France. His father was a 8)prosperous merchant

and banker， who wanted his son to be a lawyer. But

Cézanne dreamed of becoming a painter and spent the summer of 1861 studying art in Paris. He failed the

9)admission exam to the Eacute;cole des Beaux-Arts注3， but he studied at the Academie Suisse (where he met the painter Camille Pissarro). The shy and unsophisticated young man from the country felt out-of-place among the 10)urbane

Parisians. Many people who later told of their

11)encounters with Cézanne described him as a 12)grungy peasant， rude and unfriendly. These judgments were not entirely 1. Cézanne returned to Aix and worked in the family business， but he wasn’t ready to give up his dream of being a painter. Things went much better on his second visit to Paris in 1862， though Cézanne always felt like an outsider there. Even after he was married and had a child， Cézanne spent most of his time in Provence while his wife and son stayed in Paris. Although for most of his life，

Cézanne had to struggle for recognition as a painter， a large inheritance from his father in 1886 meant he could continue painting without having to worry about money.

Cézanne and the Impressionists

In Paris， Cézanne met Camille Pissarro， Claude Monet注4， Auguste Renoir， and Alfred Sisley， who were creating a new style of painting that later became known as Impressionism. In contrast to the more traditional painters of their day， they painted scenes of modern life instead of historical or 13)mythological subjects， they painted out-of-doors instead of in a studio， and they used bright colors and broken 14)brushwork. Their new kind of painting was widely criticized and their paintings were often excluded from the official Paris art exhibition， known as the Salon.

Soon the artists who were rejected from the Salon set up their own exhibitions. In 1863， Cézanne’s work was included in the Salon des Refusés (an exhibition

for artists who had been refused admission to the

official Salon).The first Impressionist exhibition in 1874 also included three paintings by Cézanne.

Early Work

Cézanne’s early paintings tended to be dark and thickly 15)encrusted with paint， often 16)applied with a 17)palette knife instead of a brush. Under the 18)influence of Impressionism， however， he 19)abandoned this early 20)bold style and began painting out-of-doors and using brighter colors.

A New Kind of Painting

Cézanne is called a 21)Post-Impressionist， the name later given to the artists who rejected Impressionism during the late 1880s and 1890s. Some Post-Impressionists，

including Cézanne， decided to take a more analytical

22)approach to painting. He worked very slowly， carefully thinking and rethinking every 23)aspect of his work. In fact， he worked so slowly that the fruit he used for his still lifes would 24)rot， so he started using 25)artificial fruit as his models.

Cézanne also studied how different colors 26)interact when placed next to each other. He 27)ignored the rules of classical 28)perspective， in which all objects are seen from a single view point and get smaller in size and lighter

in color as they go back into the distance. In Cézanne’s

art， different objects in the same painting are seen from different angles. He shows his 29)mastery of these

techniques in Still Life with Apples and a Pot of

30)Primroses. The objects in this painting， such as the apples and the tablecloth， are portrayed without the use of shadow， but through extremely 31)subtle shifts of color. The tabletop is seen from above， the table leg at the right is seen from the front， and the table leg at the left is seen from the side， yet everything seems to make sense as a whole because Cézanne carefully plotted how each

object would relate to the others.

Cézanne painted portraits， scenes of bathers， landscapes， still lifes， and everyday subjects， such as men playing cards. He worked in oil paint and watercolor. By the end of his life， he was highly acclaimed as an artist. An entire room was devoted to his paintings at the 1904 Salon d’Automne in Paris.

保羅·塞尚（1839-1906）畫過數百個蘋果。如何以一個蘋果震懾19世紀藝術之都那些鑒賞力過人的評論家呢？你可以嘗試畫一個別人從沒畫得如此逼真的蘋果。或者，你可以向人們展示一種看蘋果的全新方式。

下次準備吃蘋果的時候，好好觀察一下。它的基本形狀是怎樣的：像一個球，還是像一只雞蛋？把蘋果從上往下看、再從下往上看，然后看一看整個蘋果。它是鮮紅的、橘紅的、黃的、綠的，還是包含了所有這些顏色？觀察光線對蘋果表面上的影響。

塞尚觀察蘋果——以及任何他畫過的物體——都非常細致。他會研究蘋果、花盆以及皺巴巴的桌布，直到搞清楚它們的基本形狀：球體、圓柱體和圓錐體。在其油畫里，物體都以這些形狀為基礎。他通過顏色的漸變使物體看上去更真實、更立體。他對顏色的運用以及分析、描繪物體的方法啟發了如

亨利·馬蒂斯等野獸派畫家、以巴勃羅·畢加索為代表的立體派畫家（畢加索曾把塞尚譽為“眾人之父”），以及很多20世紀的藝術家。

游走于鄉村與城市

塞尚出生于法國南部的普羅旺斯艾克斯，也在那里辭世。他的父親是一名富有的商人和銀行家，一心想把兒子培養成律師。然而塞尚夢想成為一名畫家，他于1861年的夏天前往巴黎學習藝術。雖然他未能通過美術學院的入學試，但得以在瑞士學院學習（他在那里認識了畫家卡米耶·畢沙羅）。這位來自鄉村、靦腆又單純的年輕人在舉止優雅的巴黎人當中格格不入。許多人在后來談到與塞尚的接觸時都把他說成一個邋遢的鄉下人，粗魯又不友善?！?br>