"Forest Path"
In “Forest Path” (c. 1904-1906), another of the watercolor forest series plays with the optical allusions that eventually culminate into the reason why Cubists manipulate and distort their images. While Cézanne in most of his paintings toys with changing viewpoints depth perceptions, he creates a new type of interpreting and viewing a painting. The whole form of the painting “resembles a web” based off a diagonal juxtaposition (Armstrong and Giles, 123). But within the “web” he creates “shifts in depth perception” leading to “adjustments of optical accommodation and binocular convergence.” These “shifts” and “optical” allusions force our eyes to stop repeatedly and move our eyes back and forth across the watercolor attempting to discern exactly at what we are looking (Armstrong and Giles, 40). We slow down and we examine. It was Cézanne’s intention to create this pause because it is only through this prolonged examination that we intensely study the patches of color, one on top of the other, the vitality of the strokes, and the constant movement within nature. It was this concept that led the Cubists into their type of manipulation and distortion. It was their intention as well to slow the view and have us study the painting until we understood the watercolor and the social commentary within the painting.