The problem I have with this reading is that it does not align with my experience of Cezanne's paintings. His paintings are not flat in their appearance or material construction, rendering his role in the story above moot. While it is true that Cezanne evades the linear perspective that much Western European painting predating him features, my experience of this evasion is not of flatness but of a hollowing out of linear perspective. The hollowing out recognizes the surface of the painting.
The Cezanne paintings in the MoMA are a good example of this quality. The uncertain, haphazard markings invite the viewer to reckon with the materials. In this way, the space becomes detached from perspective and the surface of the canvas becomes available. Cezanne offers the images of his subject matter to the material limits of painting. As a result, the image can feel tentative and empty but the painting feels revealed and full.
At issue in this description is ultimately a different description of art history. Rather than seeing Cezanne as the progenitor of modernist flatness, I see him as testing a limit in painting. That he tested this limit in such a through and unprecedented way is what makes him worth thinking about, and more importantly, looking at.
