“Cezanne replaces light with colour. This shadow is a colour; this light, this half-tones are colours.
“…he substitutes contrasts of colours for contrasts of tone [untangling] the ‘confusions of sensations’.
“…The entire canvas is a tapestry where each colour plays separately and yet blends in resonance into the whole.”
— Maurice Denis, artist and writer, Theories (1907), quoted in Conversations with Cezanne, page 176/7
From a budding philosopher who is not afraid of being beside the point.
If I draw on a white paper a perfect circle and fill it with cadmium lemon yellow, nobody can assertively say that I have suggested light. But if I say that this circle full of yellow is a representation of the zenithal sun at noon, immediately we see light. If I spread ultramarine blue on a white paper, nobody can say that I have suggested light. But if I spread the same color under the yellow circle representating sun mentioned above, and paint a column of thin hatchings of white colors from the upper outline in the axis of the yellow circle, we can guess this blue surface is the sea in full light at noon. If I spread a “light” orange surface on a white paper…./…the luminous beach sand glowing at noon. And what to say if I add a beach umbrella!
The power of art lies in suggestion… point someone in a direction and the brain interprets color…