Bathers. Mont Sainte-Victoire in the Background 1902

This is Cézanne’s ‘Bathers. Mont Sainte-Victoire in the Background’, and it's a watercolor. Cézanne is interested in the process of seeing, in how we translate the three-dimensional world into two dimensions, so his brushstrokes are all about that. Notice how he applies these cool blues and greens in small, deliberate touches. The paint is thin, almost transparent, and it’s as if he’s trying to build up form slowly, patiently, through color. Look at the upper left corner, see how the blues and yellows make leafy shapes, but also, just below, that almost-figure, made from only a few strokes? It's as if the whole painting is made of these small moments. In art school, we used to talk about the ‘primacy of touch’, how each mark carries its own weight. Cézanne, like his contemporary Monet, deeply influenced the next generation. I'm thinking particularly of the Fauves and their bold color experiments. Art is a conversation, not a lecture.