Cezanne

After much comparing and contrasting to the many artist's before and of his time, Paul Cezanne came out of Richard Shiff's essay, "Cezanne and the End of Impressionism," as a man that stood alone not only in the world of art, but in life itself. Cezanne was known for being a very corky and isolated individual. Some of the wordings Shiff uses to describe the artist himself were "odd," "mysteriously incommunicative," "complex," and "diverse" (162). Despite having been rejected for his earlier works, Cezanne emerged basically out of no where for he was "unknown to the public," into the world of appreciated of art, particularly for his unique style of expressing nature and the self (163).
Although Shiff spent much time trying to demonstrate how Cezanne was a legend or founding father of a particular movement, it was almost unnecessary to do such a thing because of the fact that Cezanne was such a unique figure, there was no use dubbing him the "modern Poussin" or anything of the sort. Cezanne's style of painting were certainly not like any other, even though many critics claim that his work is simply just a mere copy of classical works because of his technique used of studying the pieces of late artists. His paintings were awkward, yet intriguing. Other characteristics of his style were bold and single brush strokes, sketchy and unfinished, figures are crudely drawn, contrasting colors positioned right next to each other, and a spirit of symbolism sprinkled all throughout the entire painting (167).
The distinction between Impressionism and Post-Impressionism in the essay was a bit hazy however. There seems to be no clear cut answer as to how are the two dissimilar and therefore, its a bit rough to place Cezanne under any of these categories.