In the Forest 1899

Curator: My first impression? A peaceful hush. It’s a feeling, almost a scent of pine and damp earth rising off the canvas. Editor: We're looking at Paul Cézanne’s "In the Forest," painted in 1899. It's a post-impressionist oil painting, done, rather fittingly, en plein-air. Curator: That's it. Feels like a memory, not quite real. Like squinting into dappled light on a sweltering summer afternoon. Those fractured greens and browns. Makes you feel you're looking up into it through thick glass, yeah? Editor: The composition is striking. Note how Cézanne uses those monumental rocks in the foreground as anchors, pulling our gaze back into the density of the trees. It’s less about accurate representation, and more about the interplay of form and color to suggest depth and volume. See how those blues act like structural vectors to keep our eye traveling back, and up? Curator: Totally, right? The solidity of those rocks contrasted against the way those strokes almost dissolve into light near the top is neat. What if we interpreted these looming crags, as I intuitively want, as representing looming memories? Editor: Tempting, but let’s try to resist overtly psychological interpretations for now. The subject matter is traditional—a forest landscape. The innovation lies in Cézanne's technique. Look closely; those short, parallel brushstrokes, those planes of color defining form, are prefiguring Cubism. And consider the absence of a single, fixed vanishing point... Curator: Fixed anything was the enemy! It wasn’t how the light, and shadows hit those trees, but rather how those elements struck something, some feeling inside him. Some truth in that moment. Editor: But what is that “truth” detached from a systematic formal analysis? Curator: Okay, Mr. "Systematic"! Still, something very powerful in his willingness to paint what he sees and, especially, *feels* and leave some blank canvas! It feels incomplete...which, if you think of it is how one might think of many old beautiful trees; here to stand watch far after us. Editor: I find myself appreciating anew the ways Cézanne's "In the Forest" continues to challenge our notions of perception. Curator: I know right! I will forever hear secrets whispering from this landscape of soul.