Saving Cezanne's studio: the author recalls his youthful efforts to preserve Cezanne's final studio in Aix-en-Provence, and the disillusion that followed his successful campaign - Memoir

Art in America, July, 2002 by James Lord

Gradually, attention was paid to the fact that there survived in Aix-en-Provence the building where a colossal fortune in works of art had been created, albeit derided at the time. Meanwhile, the site had been desecrated by hideous apartment buildings thrown up all around the studio by unscrupulous developers. The roadway had been widened and paved, and presently received a prestigious name: the Avenue Paul Cezanne. Aix began to be proud of the artist now bringing more fame to the city than its previous favorite son, Honore Mirabeau, the fiery orator and hypocritical revolutionary. And so the studio became a magnetic attraction for visitors to the town, whether or not they knew much about art in general or Cezanne in particular.

Soon the municipality of Aix realized that the formerly obscure, undesirable little building possessed an unforeseen power to attract tourists, a species of traveler gradually beginning to translate into big business and important investment. So the municipal authorities forgot that they had previously spurned the acquisition, and in 1969 told the representatives of the university that they would henceforth assume responsibility for the future maintenance of the studio. Signs appeared in the town providing directions to the Avenue Paul Cezanne. Guide books recommended visits. A large panel on the highway passing Aix advertised "The Landscapes of Cezanne." Buses at the studio gate unloaded herds of tourists so numerous that only a select number for a limited time were allowed to linger in the studio room. On the lower floor a shop sold books, reproductions, postcards, souvenirs. The studio had become a paying proposition, and the municipality turned it over to the tourist office. That was the cruel irony and sad betrayal of the fait accompli.

My final visit to the studio took place on July 22, 1998, almost half a century after the first. It was dispiriting. The chatter of the tourist crowd made meditation on the meaning of the place impossible. I asked the curator how many visitors the studio received per year, and she said about 80,000. And I, in my naive dream, had hoped for a few hundred. How many out of 80,000 could be expected to sense any living rapport with the spirit of the artist amid the crowds of the merely curious, who would understand no more about Cezanne's mastery and grandeur than if they were visiting the cave at Altamira? Saving Cezanne's studio, I thought, had been a thrilling dream that, for a time, seemed to have come true. But then followed the chagrin of awakening to the loss of almost every cultural value which had been the saving sustenance of Cezanne's sublime and invincible aspiration. In his studio, to be sure, remain the objects and implements that served him in the making of masterpieces. But the artist himself, his pure and deathless spirit, is no longer believably present. How could I have guessed half a century ago that saving Cezanne's studio would ultimately entail the loss of so precious and distinctive an aura emanating from that humble source?