Finally, Cézanne’s geometric style seemed to culminate in these forest watercolors in one of his final paintings “Trees Forming an Arch” (c. 1904-1906) in which all aspects of his objectifying style come together to manipulate nature into an architectonic diagram of shapes, layering, and formulated lines. This painting distinctly provides the basis for the infrastructure of the late movement of Cubism. The foreground lays in squares across the canvas both horizontally and vertically. The trees rise out of the ground, creating a rectangle above the foreground the branches and thickly layered blocks of color. These branches create a triangle placed on the rectangle. The branches then recede symmetrically into the forest in a series of triangles until the open square in the middle of the painting. This distinct shape of the painting is more defined than the actual objects from nature thus creating the ultimate architectonic schematization. He again uses the squared blocks of colors not only to just create light and shadows but as a first layer to create shapes then as the second layer to create both shadow and contour. According to Laura Giles, the colors create a “multiplicity of successfully probed sensations,” Cézanne’s ultimate goal (Armstrong and Giles 117). However, while Giles points out the physical evidence of Cézanne’s connections to Cubism she only once even gives reference to that same connection, a fact that, especially in this painting, undoubtedly exists.. As Genevieve Monier states in her article “The Late Watercolors” the “geometrical layouts, modulating certain elements and facets of volumes, pave the way to Cubism,” as seen in “Trees Forming an Arch” (qtd. Donnell). Though unintentionally, Cézanne’s objectification of nature into inanimate geometric shapes created new boundaries and new ideas on which the Cubists based their style of painting.
So why is the connection between Cézanne and Cubism so important? In order to understand Cubism and how and why it came about, we must first understand its origins in Cézanne’s art. Cubism is based on geometric shapes, distortion, and manipulation. Cézanne clearly led the way to Cubism through his geometricization of these forest scenes in his late watercolors. He used the most inanimate forms to represent the animate, pulsating energy and sensations that he derived from the nature scenery. Genevieve Monier states that Cézanne was simply “discovering the basis for Cubism” and was not actually a Cubist because of one key difference: intentions (qtd. Donnell). Cézanne distorted and objectified nature to attempt to capture the passion that he felt and saw in nature whereas the Cubists purposely manipulated the images they painted to convey a specific message about the state of modern French society. As Carol Donnell herself says, “The Cubists reduce Cézanne’s aesthetic to an extreme stylization of reality without representational intentions, whereas Cézanne’s attention was primarily on nature” (Donnell 67). Cézanne’s intention by objectifying nature was to represent the sensations were created the life of the object, not the actual appearance. Moreover, while we can obviously see the connections between Cézanne and Cubism, it is also critical we understand how Cubism itself, according to Donnell, “has completely altered the way in which we see Cézanne” (Donnell 65). Had Cubism never been created, how would we interpret Cézanne’s late work? Would we still see the purest shapes of nature and think Cézanne purposely objectified nature to create a greater sensation? Or would we see him as purely dillusional with failing eyesight? As Charles Harrison states “art speaks to those that can hear” and in Cézanne’s forest watercolors we find, ironically, that the most inanimate forms of geometric shapes were constructed out of sensations induced by the purest animate matter of the forest. In Cézanne’s words, “An airy, colored logic suddenly ousting somber, stubborn geometry… I am seeing. In patches of color. The geological foundation, the preparatory work, the world of the drawing gives way… A new stage begins. The real one!” (qtd. Armstrong and Giles 80). Indeed, Cézanne did create a “new stage.” Through his geometry and obsession with the sensations not only did he completely change how nature itself can be viewed and understood but completely rearranged the way the world viewed art walking us into the movement now known as Cubism.