Cezanne: Landscape into Art. - book reviews

The current crop of catalogues-cum-coffee-table-books devoted to Cezanne should prove indispensable. Being multifaceted, they not only summarize previously published material, they also focus attention on crucial works and create a superb context for subsequent studies of the master. They are also well written: Rishel possesses a particularly charming manner of expressing himself. Then, too, all the contributors were writing about great art. The paintings, drawings, and watercolors on exhibit were consistently well chosen and admirably installed. Each venue had its own character and its specific high points.

Anyone who had the opportunity to visit the retrospective in Paris will not soon forget the joy of being surrounded in an almost oval display room by a number of the small oils featuring bathers (the majestic culminating works of this ongoing series closed the show with a flourish). Finding yourself in the center of this suite allowed you to feel that you, too, were a bather, albeit a clothed one. More than any other group of paintings on view in the centennial celebration, this one, perhaps because of its incongruous subjects, drove home how committed Cezanne remained to certain themes throughout his life.

In a manner reminiscent of the way the novelist Emile Zola, Cezanne's schoolboy friend, employed recurring characters in Les Rougon-Maquart series, the artist populated naturalistic, observed settings with a repertory company of imaginary figures. Once you view these works in depth, you can also better appreciate how some of the bathers were based on drawings the artist made after Old Master paintings and antique statues, allowing his figures to be simultaneously invented and representational. And by being able to compare the oils once owned by Matisse, Picasso, and Henry Moore, you could see how Cezanne looked at the past and how the future looked back at Cezanne.

Inviting viewers to consider Cezanne's oeuvre from several equally valid and equally rich directions, the exhibition emphasized that there was no right or wrong way to approach what was on view. In some display areas subject matter predominated; at other moments form was more compelling. In one section you could feel bathed in blue and then be greeted by greens in the next grouping of pictures. Or you could lose yourself among the fruits and vegetables as if you were at Fauchon. Or you might ponder the ways Cezanne portrayed himself. This retrospective admirably achieved what it set out to do: convey Cezanne's essences, all of them.

Throughout his life the artist remained a conservative, more at home in Aix than anywhere else. Once he even complained that gas lamps were now being used to illuminate Marseilles at night. Not only did he not rush his paintings, he appears to have labored over them until they were resolved. It is not difficult to imagine how he would have loved this latest retrospective, especially the way it managed to combine an overview with the display of a few series in depth. And certainly he would have relished having his art hang in the same rooms at the Grand Palais that only the year before had been given over to Poussin.