Cezanne and the End of Impressionism

Richard Shiff begins his essay "Cezanne and the End of Impressionism" with a discussion on the categorization of the movement that followed Impressionism. Roger Fry chose to name this movement "postimpressionism", not because it was the most descriptive or accurate but because it was convenient. The end of impressionism, means the beginning of something else, and Fry felt the need to give that "something else" a title. In the process of categorizing art into chronological periods or aesthetically similar genres, we are essentially designing the movement of art history. "Postimpressionism" wasn't a reaction against Impressionism, but allowed for the establishment of "a clear distinction between this new art and the impressionism that had set the stage for it". (Shiff 155)Postimpressionism was essentially created by combining a number of different genres into one that allowed for that first reactionary, revolutionary exhibit. However, Shiff comments that "Impressionism was never itself so simply defined that it could foster a clearly defined reaction". (Shiff 157)I think that this leads to a very important question about the nature of revolution in art. By categorizing art into movements and counter-movements, are we creating genres of art that don't really exist? Are we creating labels like "postimpressionism" to fill in the gap between one style of art to the next? Postimpressionism, expressionism, or symbolism may not be that different or revolutionary, but by creating these labels and framing them as such we lose sight of the nature of the artwork itself. The artwork functions for the label, but the label does not function for the artwork.