Over the weekend I visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art. They are currently exhibiting the Cezanne and Beyond collection. It was incredible.

When I was still studying, I had taken two courses with an artist hiding out in eastern PA. He served in Vietnam and as part of the GI bill, the US government paid his tuition to any school he wanted. This artist chose to go to Oxford. He was trained in the classical methods of the old masters (with a serious dose of the Golden Section). Needless to say, we went over a lot of Paul Cezanne's work and analyzed the dominate horizontals, verticals, and diagonals using the Section.

At the time, I just thought that this particular artist had something for Cezanne. It turns out that many of the most influential modern artists studied Cezanne. This exhibit really opened my eyes to what Cezanne discovered about art, how he helped move art in the direction it did after WW II, and what it means for us today.

I am thinking about writing a tutorial on how to create the Golden Section and all it's ratios, as well as, how to use it in creating pieces. It might take awhile, I just wanted to share what I learned this weekend. If anyone has the opportunity to see the exhibit please do so. At the very least, look for it on-line or buy the print book available at the Museum's website. It'll be worth it.

+Drew