Re:Paul Graham On Two Kinds of Programmers and Painters
by pg on Wednesday December 09, 2009 @07:42PM
(#986996)
Cezanne can't be blamed for the lion. This is a drawing of a statue in the Louvre. The sculptor may have made the lion small intentionally. But the human was pretty anatomically correct as far as I remember.
The thing that bites guy's ass is ridiculously sized if a lion was intended, and that front leg looks more human than animal (then again, he might be going for some mythological chimera-ish thing).
Overall, the drawing is confusing and I can't make out what many of the lines in the legs/ground area are supposed to represent.
Finally, this is not a casual doodle. Lines were drawn and refined several times over. If he was going for manierism or El Greco-ish stylization, fair enough, but still proves little about his ability to draw. If he was trying to achieve a render true to anatomy and perspective, I call fail.
I don't know whether Cézanne could draw or not, but I don't think this works as evidence that he could.