Mashell Chapeyama
Topic: Art History
Year 2012
Level: Bachelor of Science in Business Administration

Key Words: les demoiselles, Bonheur de vivre, Applied African Art

Picasso and Cezanne
Art evolved over many centuries to come to where it is today. Some artists copied or learned from others. That is what occurred about a century ago. Picasso and Matisse learnt a lot from Cezanne. Therefore there are similarities in the work of Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso. Matisse and Picasso took on cubists forms. This essays looks at how Cezanne influenced the work of Matisse and Picasso.
Matisse and Picasso learned a lot from Cezanne. The first thing they learnt from Cezanne was the idea of ignoring geometric formulae in their artistic work. Cezanne was the first one to create art forms that had paintings that could be viewed from different points. He discarded art that could only be viewed from one stand point. Both Picasso and Matisse adopted the same approach. So in Bonheur de vivre Matisse created paintings that could be viewed from different angles or points of view. That was also evident in Les demoiselles.
The other thing was that Cezanne used the space around the object as part of the painting. This means that the natural terrain and environment was used as part of a painting. The trees and the landscape were fused into the paintings. People would not clearly separate the two. There was a fusion there. In Bonheur de vivre the landscape was made part of the painting, as a background. For examples trees that are seen lined at the back as part of the entire painting. These trees looked as part of that painting. There is no distance between trees and paintings of the people. In Les demoiselles the background of terrain is part of the picture.
Cezanne was the first also to use the notion of painting in abstract terms. This was in reference to the use of color as much as creation of three dimensional paintings on two dimensional materials. This flat principle approach was very much appreciated by the cubists. That was applied to both Les demoiselles and Bonheur de vivre. The abstractness was also applied in showing figures not as they would naturally appear in life. For example in Les Demoiselles some figures are shown in disjointed form. The women are shown not in true femininity form. The women are shown as being a bit more menacing than they are in real life. That was a means of trying to bring abstractness in art. In Bonheur de vivre the ladies are depicted in “serpentine arabesque” that is exaggerated, with boldly curvilinear lines
Cezanne applied African art in his paintings. He had an appreciation of African art. In les demoiselles the people in there, two of them are painted in African art style. Cezanne also used simple geometrical form that is accompanied with clear optical specter. Cezanne is know for using shapes such as cubes, spheres, lines and curved lines in his paintings. That was also used by Matisse and Picasso.
The above discussion has shown how Picasso and Matisse managed to learn a lot from Cezanne. They learnt the usage of shapes, they made use of the background as if part of the paintings and they made use of abstractness. In fact Cezanne moved away from the traditional form and style. That departure motivated Picasso and Matisse to do the same.
Reference
http://www.artfactory.com http://www.ibiblio.org http://www.art-world.com