"This man thought only of painting, loved only painting" Monet, a worldlier type, said of Cézanne long after his revered Impressionist confrere was gone. It was, in fact, a common observation, one shared in 1907 from less temporal but more personal distance by Charles Morice, the critic who asked the survey question, "What do you make of Cézanne?" Morice set the significance of the recently deceased artist into the context of modernity: "We hardly dare say that Cézanne lived; he painted...[His is] painting estranged from the course of life, painting with the [sole] aim of painting... [His art constitutes) a tacit protest, a reaction... He put everything in question." How does painting—of a nude, a tree, a mere apple-"put everything in question"?
Richard Shiff, April 2000
Conversations with Cezanne
Intro page 33