Have you seen any of Cézanne's works up close? Granted I was a little biased to begin with, but my wife wasn't. She thought he was a good artist until she saw his work at an show in Atlanta. Then we both
agreed that our youngest child could draw better than Cézanne -- with one arm tied behind her back. He really couldn't draw or paint worth a flip though he does look better in scans and poor reproductions.
As for all those "intelligent" people that sent us to the moon, they were standing on the shoulders of giants. Most of those giants were from the 19th century and would have laughed at Cézanne.
Also, not every intelligent person of the 20th century fell for the false prophets of Modernism, but they tended to be drowned out by the more gullible. You can't fool all the people all the time, but you
can fool some of the people all the time. And, a sucker is born every minute.
On the flip side I would be careful about predicting major historical tides. That was Marx's mistake. History doesn't work that way. It's mostly the accumulated action of a large number of individuals offset
by the willful action of a few over time. There are no inevitabilities in history other than change and human nature, and individuals can and often do force significant change.
