When All Else Fails…Go With What You Know

One might conclude from the history of art that reality in this sense is a will-o’-the-wisp, an actuality we can see but never grasp. Nature, as we say, is one thing, art quite another. But Cézanne, though he was familiar with the “art of the museums” and respected the attempts of his predecessors to come to terms with nature, did not despair of succeeding where they had failed-that is to say, in “realizing” his sensations in the presence of nature.