PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

I
T is JUST twenty years ago that Cézanne s Composition was first published, and naturally a change in my ap-
proach to some of the paintings has taken place. Without disturbing the original layout of the book, I have
incorporated a number of revisions that make the present edition more contemporary with my current ideas.
In the past fifteen years, particularly in America, we have seen a development in abstract painting that has
gone so far beyond the clear construction of obvious shapes and forms still dominant in the art of Picasso, for ex-
ample, that it has seemed to represent a radical break with tradition. In my opinion we can find the most illumi-
nating precedents for recent abstract painting in the late works of Cézanne. Cezanne climaxed his career by
shifting flat color planes around so freely that he often left nature far behind, to arrive at an abstract synthesis of
pure color planes. These planes or patches of color were brushed with the most expressive and fascinating stroke
ever seen. The meaning of the stroke and the emphasis on the material of paint and color were all directed to-
ward establishing the surface itself as a structure. This structure of color planes is what appears, more and more,
to be Cézanne's most personal contribution to art. You could take away all the superimposed lines, and the
great lesson for painting would remain. There are not many paintings that reveal this concept, and the nearest
approach originally illustrated in this book is seen in Plate X X V I . However, as I originally insisted, the lines
that we do see make the final statement about forms and space relationships clear. Now, with the publication of
the Third Edition, a new color reproduction offers further explanation of the final phase of his work in Plate
XXXIX.

If Cézanne had actually left out linear definition in these late paintings, the recognition of natural objects
would be lost and we would see a transposition of all the elements into a new kind of abstract space. Such an
abstract space would transcend the effect of gravity and create relationships suggesting movement and depth
without negating the dominant presence of the plane of the surface itself. This would be a form of nonobjective
art, one aspect of which has been familiarly designated in America as Abstract Expressionism. It would appear
that Kandinsky and Analytical Cubism came very close to this aim, but only in the past fifteen years have we
seen the final departure from solid objects which has allowed a suspension of all volume and space into a verti-
cal dominance of interchanging movements that go in and out, up, down, and across the picture plane. No one
to my knowledge has suggested that Cézanne actually achieved this kind of solidity and density of space, but
he certainly anticipated it. Simply take out the line drawing in many of his latest oils and water colors, and it is
all but completely revealed. The new color reproduction, Plate X X X I X , with diagram, should illustrate the
whole concept very clearly.
I realize how many important aspects of Cézanne's art have not been touched upon in the present work al-
though some of them were discussed in the Preface to the Second Edition. Cézanne's early work is bypassed
partly because there were no motif photographs to explain it. All Cézanne's early work is strangely moving even
at its worst. The man's inner turmoil and anxiety are what dominate in the early years; the mature artist so
thoroughly conceals his psychological problems that we can only think of the new and complete world he has
formed. It is a monument in the history of great names and personalities, and yet it goes beyond the personal
and seems to become a whole era or civilization in itself. The Freudian concept of art as the sublimation of our
more primitive urges is clearly illustrated.
Another problem has haunted me ever since the publication of this book: the nature of Cézanne's intellect.
I have gone to great pains to point out and reiterate throughout the text that the ideas about composition ex-
pressed here do not correspond with conscious formulations of Cézanne's which can be verified by statements he
made and letters he wrote. Writers like Leo Larguier who knew Cézanne during the last years of his life con-
firm the impression that Cézanne was intellectually undisciplined and remarkable for making wild self-contra-
dictions. But when we behold the paintings, we are impressed with the thoughtfulness and the logic of every
procedure he followed. It is a work of supreme intelligence, but we must look only at the painting to arrive at
such a conclusion. The intelligence we perceive is like a force or law of nature that is revealed through action
and growth. Like the relentless revolutionary momentum of his art, going like a tide against his personal need
to be understood and accepted, his intelligence too was something that could not be exercised at will. It revealed
itself in the process of work and cannot be measured by ordinary standards.
ERLE LORAN