Saturday, December 10, 2011

Looking at Cezanne

On Friday afternoon, EDUCO sent its students to the Cezanne exhibit at the Musee Luxembourg. We had a private guided tour, which was quite a good idea (and, of course, didn't have to pay for anything), because otherwise, the paintings would not have had much significance. Back in September, I visited the Musee d'Orsay and wrote that "I fail[ed] to appreciate [Cezanne], even after having seen his famous Pommes et oranges." I nevertheless looked forward to this visit, hoping that I might gain such an appreciation.

Knowing a bit about his life and times is helpful, or, at the very least, interesting. Born in 1839, Cezanne was the son of a Provencal banker, but, against his father's wishes, he aspired to become a painter. He stayed at Aix-en-Provence under the pretext of studying law, but really studied painting. He eventually made his way to Paris, where he worked at the Academie Suisse, which is a double misnomer: there was nothing Swiss about the academy (it got it's name from its manager, Charles Suisse), nor was it a formal academy, in the sense of instruction; it was a workshop. Despite his bourgeois background, Cezanne never received any formal academic training in painting. He did, however, have an angry, quarrelsome personality, and frequently fought with others; once, when he was staying with Monet, the two had a fight, and Cezanne stomped out, slamming the door, and sent a note to Monet shortly thereafter demanding that he be sent his painting materials, etc. He was nonetheless good friends since a young age with Emile Zola, who became an early spokesman for the Impressionists, writing articles on art criticism, and drawing attention to the school of artists. Later, Zola and Cezanne drifted apart, Zola understanding
Cezanne's artwork less and less.

After arriving in Paris, Cezanne painted very gloomy cityscapes, empty of any human presence. There was a view of Parisian roofs as seen from his apartment's window, and another called "Le Quai des vins," painted in 1872. His one cityscape with human inhabitants is "La Seine a Bercy," which is actually just a copy of a painting by Armand Guillaumin, which the latter gladly lent to him. In all fairness, it wasn't a particularly happy time in France: after a brutal war against Prussia which ended Napoleon III's Second Empire, France had been thrown into civil war, in an incident that has become known as the Paris Commune. 20,000 French people died in the first week alone, and arrests and executions of participants continued throughout the next year: thus was born France's 3rd Republic. In any case, it took Pissaro and an 1874 move from Paris to Auvers-sur-Oise to get Cezanne into putting color in his landscape paintings.

The impressionists are well-known for setting up their easels outside, but I had never realized until now that this was partially possible thanks only to recent advances in chemistry. Before, painters had to be their own chemists, developing their own pigments, and carting around an enormous amount of glass bottles and vials: premixed colors in lead tubes allowed them to considerably lighten their load, and make composition less of a hassle.

Cezanne had a thing for painting naked women outdoors, most famously as bathing. You can actually see something of a progression in this vein. His first such painting was the "Tentation de Saint-Antoine, painted in 1870, which is the only Impressionist painting I know of with a religious theme. The women are rather ugly and unfeminine, and though this changes somewhat by the appearance of later pictures of naked women bathing, the women are never nymphs. No wonder Saint-Antoine didn't succumb!

Cezanne is also known for his still-lives, usually of fruit and bread, most of which doesn't look any good at all. The food, I mean, of course. I've never really understood why Cezannes unappetizing peaches draw such crowds (at least the milk in Vermeer's Milkmaid looks tasty enough to drink), and I'm glad that I had an art historian with me to give me the answer. Cezanne was the first to begin breaking perspective, and to paint in compartments, so to speak. Objects stand unrealistically, and tables and tablecloths bend in ways that they shouldn't. For instance, in one painting, the viewer can see just a little bit into the milk pitcher standing on the table, in a way he shouldn't realistically be able, from the angle at which the painting seems to be taken. This prefigures cubism, with its multiple perspectives, etc., in way which art historians understand much better than I do!

In the end of the day, I'm still not really certain if I enjoy Cezanne. Nick and I were speaking the other day about this, and we both feel that there are just some paintings we enjoy, and others we don't and we can't offer any excuses. Which is exactly why I'm planning on paying a visit to some of my very favorite Dutch painters tomorrow, at the Louvre!

~JD


"
La galère est aussi la règle pour tous les hommes surpris aux cultes interdits, tandis que les femmes sont envoyées dans les prisons ; quant aux responsables de ces réunions, ils risquent la mort" [The galleys were also the rule for those men surprised when at forbidden cults, while women were imprisoned. As to those responsible for such meetings, they risked death] (Robert Mandrou, Histoire des Protestants en France, p. 190).

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