This comment represents an introduction to the pdf. book: An Introduction to Cezanne.

written, compiled and edited by George T. Thurmond

Since 1900 Cézanne has been accused of every artistic crime imaginable, so people are always surprised to see so many representational works by Cézanne that they did not know existed.  We seem to see the same few paintings reproduced all the time by people promoting him as the father of modern art, promoting him as other than he actually was. They do this because he is the only link these critics and writers can use to legitimize a connection to the flow of art history for the modernists they promote.  Cezanne’s discarded starts and rough drafts have been used to legitimize everything from cubism to minimalism, (just as Monét’s late works were used as supporting evidence of the inevitability of and justification for all the abstraction which followed).  The fact that it is all a specious connection and without any logical or perceptual support does not seem to bother these people at all;  that is the difference between true logic and their dialectic, in logic things must be reasonably proven, in dialectic even the lies are considered true.

In any conversation if the other person has no real understanding or clue about the physical reality of the work or why and how Cézanne did what he did then its going to be a really short conversation. It seems that these experts have never been confronted with reason and logic and physical evidence, but are allowed to say things as they please with no one challenging them on it, this is what academics do and how they are treated.  They would rather write endlessly about their favorite stylistic quirks, or existential and emotional blather about their personal conjectures and irrational fantasies, rather than to touch on the reality or actuality of the original works in question.  Someone needs to argue credibly and confront them on this constant promotion of myth as fact and conjecture as truth.  This brief paper attempts to unravel some of the myths that many of these distorted connections are based upon.