Cézanne’s Card Players & Kandinsky’s Composition IV
Cézanne’s *The Card Players*
Classification
- Title: The Card Players
- Artist: Paul Cézanne
- Timeline: 1890-1895
- Versions: Five versions of the subject
- School/Country: France
- Style: Post-Impressionism
Subject
Figurative portrait of two men playing cards, seated at a table with a bottle of wine.
Description
- Technique: Oil painting
- Support: Canvas
Formal and Compositional Elements
- Light: Artificial
- Coloring: Chromatic contrasts are significant, enhancing the existing confrontation. The player with the pipe is depicted in brown tones, while his jacket and pants have yellowish hues.
- Form: Closed surface. The bottle acts as an apparent axis of symmetry, creating two slightly unequal halves. The left side is larger, showing the player’s whole body.
- Composition: Dividing the scene into two parts intensifies the characters’ confrontation. The tension is in the composition of objects on the table and in the players’ hands.
- Geometry: The player with the pipe is treated as a finished ogive cylinder, with an arm shaped like a cylinder inserted.
Cézanne created five different formats of this subject. Five canvases feature larger figures, and four others depict two figures.
Antecedents, Influences, and Later Impact
Cézanne studied the works of Tintoretto, Caravaggio, El Greco, Zurbarán, Ribera, and Poussin. He is considered a direct predecessor of Cubism due to his spatial deconstruction. His architectural design of painting was revealing to Picasso.
Relationship with Similar Works by the Artist
Unlike Impressionism, Cézanne, beginning with this work, focuses on volume and form over light. He achieves this by using color in its pure state. Thus, he aims to create an art as durable as that exhibited in museums.
Function and Meaning
The work represents further research into technique and painting, deepening the architectural conception of composition.
Interpretations suggest it symbolizes the artist’s struggle with his father to accept his art and lifestyle, figuratively represented by the cards. Another interpretation is that Cézanne was confronting his internal contradictions.
Historical and Artistic Context
The painting depicts everyday life in a village where the artist lived. Card playing was a common activity among the working class at the time.
Kandinsky’s *Composition IV (Battle)*
Classification
- Title: Composition IV (Battle)
- Author: Wassily Kandinsky
- Chronology: 1911
- School/Country: Germany
- Style: Abstract Art
Subject
A battle between knights in a fairyland, or a fight between pictorial elements. The literary source is within the mythological scope. The conflict is between yellow and blue.
Description
- Support: Canvas
- Technique: Oil
Formal and Compositional Elements
- Asymmetry
- Diagonals and curves
- Light: Chiaroscuro
- Chromaticism: Strong use of color
For the author, key elements of drawing were the point and the line. The point is the original cell at rest, and the line is the point when it starts moving.
Background and Later Influences
Kandinsky was inspired by Monet (abstraction), and Wagner’s opera, which he heard for the first time. His first purely abstract painting was First Abstract Watercolor, a very stylized landscape painted in 1910. Afterward, he painted abstract works dominated by dynamism and emotion. In his first stage, Kandinsky was inspired by the works of Van Gogh, the Fauvists, and the art of his homeland, Russia, which created a wonderful mood.
Function and Meaning
In 1911, the Russian painter founded The Blue Rider Expressionist movement. The purpose of this group was to emancipate the artwork from its representational role. The artists no longer wanted to reflect the world in the picture, but sought a pictorial language that allowed the viewer to communicate with art. Kandinsky saw painting as an art of communication, based on music and harmony. The predominance of color as a means of expression did not mean a waiver of significant forms, but he could do without them. The author mixed several styles in his works, which often had recognizable elements.