Karl, Post-Impressionism, and Cezanne

I will first take a brief moment to express my frustration at the copy center, who removed a segment of pages from the previous article and put it after most of the Cezanne one, then proceeded to print the entirety of the Cezanne article again, which undoubtedly wasted a few dollars of the money spent on the reader.

Now back to the topic of Post-Impressionism. Or maybe Expressionism. Just the contrast of the words "Impressionism" and "Expressionism" makes it seem like Expressionism would be the opposite of Impressionism, and in some ways it is. Via a brief breakdown of the terms, Impressionism uses impressions while Expressionism uses expressions. What exactly this even means, I don't know, but basically Impressionism sought to (excuse the bad choice of words) express in art the feeling in what already exists, while Expressionism simply creates the feelings. Where Impressionism was limited in that it was still rooted to the real world, Expressionism let go of these bounds and simply focused on expression.

So, while Impressionism and Expressionism/Post-Impressionism had the same goal of emphasizing expression, they are opposite in the ways in which they approach this goal. They are simultaneously completely different and exactly the same. Now, to confuse you even more, I will bring into play the artist Cezanne. Cezanne is considered to be in both categories, to be both an Impressionist and a Symbolist (which is yet another synonym for Post-Impressionism). As a critic described him, he is a "fluid mixture of the finder and the maker" (159). Actually, the only reason I bring up Cezanne is that he demonstrates that Impressionism is not a far cry from Post-Impressionism, despite the large differences between them.

The point of all this is that art shouldn't simply be viewed in terms of these "movements". There is no clear distinction between Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. As Cezanne himself puts, "one does not substitute oneself for the past, one just adds a new link" (196). Each movement simply builds upon the previous movement, and no matter what radical new ideas are present in this new movement, there are still elements of the previous movement embedded. Personally, given paintings of each of the two movements, I most likely wouldn't be able to tell which painting belongs to which movement. However, comparing the ideals of each movement, there is definitely progress in a direction, towards greater expression and less realism.

Which just so happens to be the way I think art should be moving. Towards the tire-structures and bear-traps of today!