"Cézanne could not draw, he makes the same drawing mistakes that every one makes in introductory drawing classes." This is not the case. Cézanne could draw exceedingly well. Drawing != photographic representation.
That doesn't make your statement any less false. It might suit your metaphor for that to be the case, but facts are stubborn things dude. Pretty good rendering here http://www.greatmodernpictures.com/drawinggal15lg.jpg
The problem is you can't quite bring yourself to admit that you picked a really bad example. You wanted someone who's technical deficiencies were made up for by their conceptual skill, and you chose someone who could draft their ass off and also had an incredible ability to choose fantastic things to produce.
The color is wonderful, the objects are wonderful, but they are hovering above the table and the fruit on the platter is painted like it's going to roll out. The perspective isn't right either.
Does anyone else feel uneasy if they see a painting with wrong perspective? It totally destroys the beauty for me.
You need to understand that this is entirely a subjective opinion. There are forms of art where accuracy is prized, but in any kind of modern art, any rule can be broken if the result is interesting.
Are you saying you like none of Picasso's later work? Or even Dalí's?
There is no way to judge art other than by subjective opinion.
> There are forms of art where accuracy is prized, but in any kind of modern art, any rule can be broken if the result is interesting.
> Are you saying you like none of Picasso's later work? Or even Dalí's?
I do like Picasso's and Dali's work and also Cezanne's work. I even like the picture I linked to. But this is the key part:
> if the result is interesting.
I don't see how the wrong perspective and tilted platter add to the appeal of the painting. It seems to be an accident.
Certainly for me, a tilted bowl of fruit that defies logic is more interesting than a boring bowl of fruit. It still doesn't fascinate me incredibly, but it at least adds something worth thinking about. I'm not that well-versed in painting, however, so perhaps somebody more enthusiastic than I can explain to both of us what makes Cezanne so awesome?
It certainly shows that he's got a good sense of perspective re: drawing bodies. And that's the suggestion Paul's making, right?, that Cezanne makes stupid goofy mistakes. The sketch here is just a sketch, but it shows he knows his shit.
Sorry, but no. Left arm (right from the observer's POV) is orangoutan-sized, while the other (closer to the viewer) appears too small and thin in comparison, even accounting for perspective. Hip bone goes way too high, and thorax is amorphously portrayed in comparison. Neck starts behind guy's back. Head outline is missing.
The thing that bites guy's ass is ridiculously sized if a lion was intended, and that front leg looks more human than animal (then again, he might be going for some mythological chimera-ish thing).
Overall, the drawing is confusing and I can't make out what many of the lines in the legs/ground area are supposed to represent.
Finally, this is not a casual doodle. Lines were drawn and refined several times over. If he was going for manierism or El Greco-ish stylization, fair enough, but still proves little about his ability to draw. If he was trying to achieve a render true to anatomy and perspective, I call fail.
I don't know whether Cézanne could draw or not, but I don't think this works as evidence that he could.
Right, but saying they're mistakes implies that he drew that way because he couldn't have rendered if he'd wanted to (your "Occam's razor" explanation). I don't know if that was meant to be tongue in cheek, but it seems kind of unlikely to me.
Any camera can do this, "rendering" in the sense of "an objective, accurate, realistic view of the world".
Distortions and imperfections in the artwork convey the artist's subjective view of the world, and you need an artist for that.
Imagine a perfect rendering of what's depicted in Picasso's Guernica. It wouldn't work. And that came from someone who could probably do academic realism in a handstand and blindfolded ;)
