The characteristics of painting include a ground for applying pigment or color using watercolor, acrylics or oil paints, usually with a paint brush as the primary tool. Paintings include such characteristics as still life, portraiture, non-representational designs or images-which can also called abstracts. Modern and contemporary artists may use various techniques and non-traditional media to do their paintings, including throwing paint or painting with a tool besides a paint brush.
The question of Cezanne's role as a modern artists is somewhat unrelated to the question of painting's characteristics. In a simple answer, the best I would say is that Cezanne painted using techniques that the Renaissance and Middle Age or Gothic painters would never use. One of his most famous paintings was The Basket of Apples. He animated the picture plane so that it appeared that the apples would fall off of the table. The painting was not formally in perspective. Cezanne's approach to painting broke with the tradition of perfect perspective and his style was one of the first to celebrate Impressionism, before it was coined as such.
