Genius, in the popular conception, is inextricably tied up with precocity—doing something truly creative, we’re inclined to think, requires the freshness and exuberance and energy of youth.
In some creative forms, like lyric poetry, the importance of precocity has hardened into an iron law.
But the freshness, exuberance, and energy of youth did little for Paul Cézanne. He was a late bloomer—and for some reason in our accounting of genius and creativity we have forgotten to make sense of the Cézannes of the world.
