2006 was the centennial of Cézanne's
death. There were a variety of
exhibitions reviewing the complexity
of his oeuvre. On this web-page, I
shall present my personal response to
Cézanne. My interest lies in the
colour space that the artist created
which seems to find very little
commentary in exhibition catalogues.
In 2001, I painted my first landscape as
a “Chromatic Space” based on my
initial drawings from the area around
Aix-en-Provence including the
Montagne Sainte-Victoire. This
painting was my first “Homage to
Cézanne” after seeing an exhibition
titled “Cézanne Finished – Unfinished”
at the Kunstforum in Vienna in 2000.
Since then, I have painted over a
dozen landscapes of the Provence and
at present, I am exploring new
possibilities within the framework of
the landscape as a chromatic space, i.
e. a colour space which is determined
by the pigment particle size of the
crystals and minerals I use to make
pigment.
The nineteenth century witnessed a
complete revolution of artist's
materials. A new colour industry,
based on the growing number of
chemically synthesized pigments was
developing rapidly. The changes in
artist's pigments from natural and
mineral to synthetic, was initially one
of the slowest revolutions in the
history of art. There were new blues,
greens and yellows all particularly
important for landscape painting. This
combined with the invention of the
collapsible metal tube in the mid
1840s was to completely change the
way artists worked.
Although I have found very little
research on the subject, I presume
Cézanne, like most of his
contemporaries, purchased his tubes of
colour from a 'colourman'. With paint
in tubes, it was possible to be truly
mobile and work outdoors. Cézanne’s
palette was composed of the following
colours; yellows: a brilliant yellow,
naples yellow, yellow ochre, raw
sienna; reds: vermillion, red ochre,
burnt sienna, madder lake, fine
crimson lake, burnt lake; greens:
Veronese green , emerald green,
green earth; blues: cobalt,
ultramarine, Prussian blue; peach
black. Except for burnt sienna and the
madder lakes, most of these colours
are opaque in oil, therefore to create a
relatively translucent paint layer,
Cézanne had to use turpentine to thin
the oil paint.
My Homage to Cézanne explores the
painterly aspect of translucency so
obvious in his water colours and some
of his late landscapes, especially those
which led to the question - finished or
unfinished. Compared to modern
synthetic pigments, mineral pigments
such as azurite (blue), lapis lazuli
(blue) and malachite (green) are by
nature translucent.
|
|
