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Whether or not it is true that no two people look at things in exactly the same way, it is known that some who have severe scoptophilic conflicts have special ways of looking that may affect all of their visual experiences. Such considerations may be important to the understanding of the art of certain painters, for a painter's style may reflect psychological peculiarities in his visual perception that stem from his emotional conflicts.
Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) was, according to critics, the most original painter of his time and exerted the greatest individual influence on modern art. His originality was not in the choice of unusual subjects, for he often painted very ordinary things, but rather in the way he depicted his subjects. His paintings, according to critics, are the expression of a unique 'personal vision', a new way of looking at the world. His revolutionary technique must be considered, at least in part, as a graphic expression of his exceptional way of seeing the world.
The perception of mass and depth are an integral part of everyone's ordinary visual experience. For this reason, peculiarities in Cézanne's representation of solidity and perspective may give us some clues as to his unique visual perception. The contradictory descriptions of these qualities in his paintings by several well-known art critics reveal how much disagreement is possible about them. For instance, Barnes (1) says, 'Cézanne's space is as notable for its depth as his volumes are for their weight and massiveness'. Greenberg (2), after noting that Cézanne's conscious aim was to depict solidity and the illusion