Paul Cézanne - Lines Quotes

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I had the company of monsieur Gibert. Such people see clearly, but they have the teacher's eye. As the train was taking us past Alexis' place a staggering subject for a picture came into view towards the east: St-Victoire. I said 'What a splendid subject'; he replied, 'The lines are too symmetrical'. Referring to 'L'Assommoir' [a novel of Emile Zola] about which, incidentally, he was the first person to speak to me, he said some very sound things, and praised it, but always from the point of view of technique.

Paul Cézanne
Allow me to repeat what I said when you were here: deal with nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere and the cone, all placed in perspective, so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point. Lines parallel to the horizon give breadth, a section of nature, or if you prefer, of the spectacle spread before our eyes by the 'Pater Omnipotens Aeterne Deus'. Lines perpendicular to that horizon give depth. But for us men, nature has more depth than surface, hence the need to introduce in our vibrations of light, represented by reds and yellows, enough blue tints to give a feeling of air.

Paul Cézanne
Treat nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, and the cone, the whole put into perspective so that each side of an object, or of a plane, leads towards a central point. Lines parallel to the horizon give breadth, whether a sections of nature, or, if you prefer, of the spectacle which Pater omnipotens aeterne Deus unfolds before your eyes. Lines perpendicular to this horizon give depth... Everything I am telling you [to Joachim Gasquet] about - the sphere, the cone, cylinder, concave shadow – on mornings when I'm tired these notions of mine get me going, they stimulate me, I soon forget them once I start using my eyes.

Paul Cézanne
On his painting 'The Bathers':
This will be my picture, the one I shall leave behind... But the center? Where is the center? I can't find the center... Tell me, what shall I group it all around? Ah, Poussin's arabesque! He knew all about that. In the London 'Bacchanal', in the Louvre 'Flora', where does the line of the figures and the landscape begin, where does it finish.... It's all one. There is no center. Personally I would like something like a hole, a ray of light, an invisible sun to keep an eye on my figures, to bathe them, care them, intensify them.... in the middle

Paul Cézanne
Everything we look at disperses and vanishes. doesn't it? Nature is always the same, and yet its appearance is always changing... Painting must give us the flavour of nature's eternity. Everything, you understand. So I join together nature's straying hands.... From all sides, here there and everywhere, I select colours, tones and shades; I set them down, I bring them together.... They make lines, they become objects – rocks, trees – without my thinking about them.... But if there is the slightest distraction, the slightest hitch, above all if I interpret too much one day, if I'm carried away today by a theory which contradicts yesterday's, if I think while I'm painting, if I meddle, then woosh!, everything goes to pieces.

Paul Cézanne