This volume is an assessment of the life and work of Paul Cezanne that offers insight into his views about an artist's role and his self-doubt about his own capabilities, demonstrating how his beliefs revolutionized the ways subsequent artists would see and depict the world. One of the most influential painters of his time and beyond, Cezanne was the exemplary artist-creator of the modern age who changed the way we see the world. Here the author tells the story of an artist who was originally considered a madman, a barbarian, and a sociopath. Beginning with the unsettled teenager in Aix, the author takes us through the trials of a painter who believed that art must be an expression of temperament but was tormented by self-doubt, who was rejected by the Salon for forty years, who sold nothing outside his immediate circle until his thirties, who had a family that he kept secret from his father until his forties, who had his first exhibition at the age of fifty-six, but who fiercely maintained his revolutionary beliefs. The author shows us how the beliefs Cezanne held and the life he led became the obsession and inspiration of artists, writers, poets, and philosophers from Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso to Samuel Beckett and Allen Ginsberg. A special feature of the book is a series of Cezanne's self-portraits, reproduced in full color. This work is not only the fascinating life of a visionary artist and extraordinary human being but also a searching assessment of his ongoing influence in the artistic imagination of our time. Includes 86 color and 52 black-and-white illustrations.
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