View of Auvers 1873

Paul Cézanne painted this "View of Auvers" with oil on canvas, sometime in the late 19th century. The dense layering of paint is the key to this work. Cézanne built the image through countless small touches, each one carefully considered. Look at the way he models form, not with smooth gradations, but with a mosaic-like application of pigment. This technique required intense labor, hours spent dabbing paint onto the canvas, building up the image bit by bit. It’s a far cry from the smooth, illusionistic surfaces favored by academic painters of the time. What makes Cézanne so important is precisely his attention to materiality, the very substance of paint. He acknowledges the physical qualities of the medium, its texture, weight, and color. It's easy to overlook the sheer amount of work involved in producing an image like this, but once you understand that, you start to appreciate how radically Cézanne was breaking with tradition. He elevated the process of making to a central place in the viewer’s experience.