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| Maurice Denis Encounter ca. 1892 oil on cardboard Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Maurice Denis Visitation 1894 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
"It is very important in every case to realize that all I can give is what Popper calls a 'definition from left to right', a definition in which I can say: 'In the following, I shall mean by art this or that'; what I can't say is 'This is art'. In the sciences, as you know, this has become absolutely accepted. Nobody asks 'what is life?' or 'what is electricity?' or 'what is energy?'. They say: 'I shall use the term energy in this or that sense.' In the humanities this Aristotelian tradition, the belief in essences, should also be abolished. It has gone on far too long. It does not get you anywhere. Every word can be given many different meanings. In that sense, I think that the category of art is one which is culturally determined. Professor Hans Belting of Munich University has written a big book on the image, and insists that the idea of art only arises in the Renaissance and that medieval art should not be called art. I don't find this sort of discussion very rewarding. I have no objection to calling it art if we know what we mean. Is haute-couture art? It's simply a matter of convention. There are horribly many books, which I do not read, about Marcel Duchamp, and all this business when he sent a urinal to an exhibition and people said he had 'redefined art' . . . what triviality!"
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| Paul Cézanne Still-life with apples ca. 1890 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Paul Cézanne Still-life with curtain ca. 1895 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
"It is always the element of the unexpected that takes a work of art beyond the ordinary and shocks you into saying, 'This is alive'. If you are used to marble statues being all white and you find one which has its eyes painted, it will look unexpectedly alive. Or if you are used to pictures that do not use perspective, and you suddenly come across one where it is applied, it will look surprisingly real. Every new trick, as it were, becomes a positive – usually positive, but it may be negative – shock, until it is generally accepted and everybody takes it for granted, and then you need a new shock, like Monet's impressionism. . . . Cezanne saw himself as a primitive of a new age."
– from Looking for Answers : Conversations on Art and Science, by Ernst Gombrich with Didier Eribon (Abrams, 1993)
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| Paul Cézanne Great pine near Aix ca. 1896-97 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Paul Cézanne Mont Sainte-Victoire ca. 1897-98 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Paul Cézanne Mont Sainte-Victoire ca. 1897-98 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Paul Cézanne Banks of the Marne ca. 1890-92 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Paul Cézanne Bathers ca. 1890-91 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Paul Signac Large pine, Saint Tropez ca. 1892-93 oil on panel Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Paul Gauguin Taperaa Mahana 1892 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Paul Gauguin Pastorales Tahitiennes 1892 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Paul Gauguin Landscape with two goats 1897 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Paul Gauguin At the foot of a mountain 1892 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |