Blue Vase, 61×50 cm, 1885-87, held at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Cézanne did not consider still life too ordinary; rather, it was one of the core themes he explored throughout his life. Like other subjects, all topics served as exercises in perfect balance between pictorial structure, form, and space. The striking Blue Vase is an extraordinary still life, quite complete and flattened overall, with particularly brilliant formal structure. It is constructed within the tight structural organization of plastic painting, revealing close relationships between objects, forms, and colors. In this unparalleled architectural pictorial structure, space appears even more unusual.

This still life clearly points to Cézanne’s lifelong rational inquiry into plastic art. He wrote to his younger contemporary artist friends: "I may have come too early. Although we are painters of the same generation, you are younger and more vigorous than I. There is an impulsive sensibility expressed in your art. I am old; I will not have time to express it like that." Compared to his contemporaries, Cézanne’s exploration was marginal. He was also the first painter to truly examine traditional perspective painting problems, adopting a structured, flat spatial approach. This Blue Vase serves as a perfect case study of his intention to reconstruct space. Ultimately, Cézanne remained close to his Impressionist friends in developing form, color, and space. However, while Impressionist painters captured the fleeting instant of objects, Cézanne went beyond this, demonstrating the possibility of multiple viewpoints.