Cézanne will bask in the intellectual sun, as long as people continue to judge artwork through the Modern Art Theologian's filter of artificially evangelized art history. Until this changes, some people will continue to judge artwork by what they are told to imagine, rather than what they really see in front of them. However, I am sure that some day a rebel critic who is deemed important will want to step outside of the mold and beckon people as I have, to take a close look and compare. He will probably suggest in many more words than I have, that people simply ask themselves, is this artwork deemed a masterpiece, really any better than very under-average?
Cézanne was indeed the chosen founding father of one of the two major directions of Modern Academic Art, namely NO-SKILL-REALISM. Before Cézanne's critical rise to fame all his work would have simply been laughed at. But in the time since Cézanne had been proclaimed a modern master, really good drawing, new ideas, good composition and technical excellence has slowly slipped away from much of anything that hangs in the modern sections of museums.
Ten years after Cézanne's passing the second founding father of Modern Academic Art, Kasimir Malevich appeared on the scene. He was almost the sole inventor of no holds barred, PRACTICALLY-NOTHING-ABSTRACTION.
Those who judge the merit of artwork primarily in terms of who-had-the-idea-first, have certainly not given Malevich much credit. It seems Malevich embarrasses Modern Art Theologians because proper credit here would really change the whole perception of accepted modern abstract art mythology. Even Greenberg, our Fuehrer of Modern Academic Art, pooh-poohed Malevich in favor of that unoriginal latecomer ascetic charlatan, Mondrian.
Malevich's White on White, and the hundreds of works he produced, foreshadowed the whole of practically-nothing-abstraction by a generation. Like Cézanne his work changed the reception such work would have received for the rest of his century. Malevich was also a pioneer of modern Artspeak, an aspect of his inventiveness still mostly forgotten.
Indeed the works of these masters isn't particularly better or worse than what followed, but in all probability it is among the first of its kind and all later Modern Academic Art can be seen as a blended mixture of the work of these two Moderns. Thus any complete critique for or against Modern Academic art must be founded on a critique of these two.
After a close look at a work of either of these artists try closing your eyes for a moment and ask yourself; "if I hadn't constantly been told that this artist produced nothing but masterpieces and what I just saw bore another signature would I really bother to give it a second look?" In fact you might just surprise yourself by asking the same question about most any modern masterpiece.
My points here may give the false impression that the century has produced little more than politically correct Modern Art. However, as much fine artwork has been produced throughout it as any other. It's just that you will rarely find it among what our conformist curators allow into the Modern sections of our museums.
