Merleau-Ponty's doubt: Cézanne and the problem of artistic biography

• Published in: Word & image (London. 1985) Vol. 20; no. 3; pp. 219 - 227
• Main Author: Rutherglen, Susannah
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 01.07.2004
• ISSN: 0266-6286; 1943-2178
• DOI: 10.1080/02666286.2004.10444018

'Cézanne's Doubt,' the essay of phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, is the philosophical wellspring of Cézanne interpretation, the first and most penetrating study of the deep perceptual signilicance of the artist's paintings. Art historians today regularly speak of Cézanne in terms that Merleau-Ponty first made explicit: the primordial quality of the artist's vision, his attempt to get to the core truths of perceptual experience, his quest for the 'lived perspective' which precedes the traditions and systems of academic painting. The essay, along with Merleau-Ponty's later work on Cézanne's phenomenology, 'Eye and Mind,' has figured in almost every subsequent account we have of the artist; and it has served also as a concise illustration of the tenets of Merleau-Ponty's own philosophy, as a persuasive instance of his arguments about the nature of human visual experience.