Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The “distant” landscape is as crisp and clear as close objects, and the slanted lines meant
to suggest depth are crudely done.
Traditionally, the canvas was like a window that you looked “through” to see a slice
of the real world stretching off into the horizon. With Matisse, you look “at” the canvas,
like wallpaper, to appreciate the decorative pattern of colors and shapes.
Though his style is modern, Matisse builds on 19th-century art—the bright colors of
Van Gogh, the primitive figures of Gauguin, the colorful designs of Japanese wood-block
prints, and the Impressionist patches of paint that blend together only at a distance.
Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)
Cézanne brings Impressionism into the 20th century. Whereas Monet uses separate dabs of
different-colored paint to “build” a figure, Cézanne “builds” a man with somewhat larger
slabs of paint, giving him a kind of 3-D chunkiness. It's not hard to see the progression
from Monet's dabs to Cézanne's slabs to Picasso's cubes—Cubism.
