03 January 2012

Symbiosis

Paul Cézanne, Bend in a Road in Provence, about 1866 or later, oil on canvas, 92.4 x 72.5 cm, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Adaline Van Horne Bequest

“The painter can do no more than construct an image; he must wait for this image to come to life for other people. When it does, the work of art will have united these separate lives; it will no longer exist in only one of them like a stubborn dream or a persistent delirium, nor will it exist only in space as a colored piece of canvas. It will dwell undivided in several minds, with a claim on every possible mind like a perennial acquisition.”

From “Cézanne’s Doubt” (pdf) by Maurice Merleau-Ponty

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