This study aimed at the transformative artistic
approach of the renowned French painter Paul Cézanne during his later years,
emphasizing a departure from conventional cognitive conventions in painting.
Cézanne’s shift towards highlighting the
structuring of visual impressions over mere observation aligns with the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s
phenomenology, which places the
embodied subject at the core of perceptual experience. The argument
presented here centres on how embodied subjectivity, as employed in
phenomenological research methods, facilitates a deeper understanding of the
imaginative abstraction in Cézanne’s late paintings. In doing so, this paper
contributes to a deeper comprehension of post-impressionist art and underscores
the significance of the theory of embodied subjectivity in artistic
interpretation. This reciprocal relationship establishes a distinctive approach
to artistic thinking and research grounded in
essential cognition and direct intuition, enriching the understanding of
Cézanne’s late paintings, and advancing the discourse on art perception.
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