2013
Article published
March 2013
Paul Smith. 'Cézanne’s "Primitive" Perspective, or the "View from Everywhere"'. Published in The Art Bulletin, March 2013. Volume 95 (Number 1). pp. 102-119. ISSN 0004-3079.
The perspectival “distortions” commonly observed in Cézanne's paintings can be seen as the expression of “blind” visuomotor experiences as well as conscious visual perceptions. They thus correspond not to actual movements but to “virtual” movements internal to acts of perception of a kind described by Merleau-Ponty, which allow the perceiving subject a fuller sense of the physicality of things. Cézanne conveyed this form of engagement with things, alongside the appearances they present, by using varieties of parallel projection, often in disguise. His repudiation of perspective implies a repudiation of spectacle as the normative form of visual experience in modern life.