Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Cezanne's Pig

One of the many pleasures of our vacation in the South of France was the opportunity to visit the sites where artists created their paintings, to view and experience the landscapes and light that inspired them and informed their work. Aix-en-Provence is a graceful, elegant city steeped in art history and culture. Its fountains, squares, mansions and museums help Aix retain its architectural heritage.  It is a cosmopolitan city and home to 40,000 university students.  Its central boulevard, the plane-tree-and café-lined Cours Mirabeau, is considered one of the most beautiful in France. 

The Cours Mirabeau, Aix-en-Provence
Aix is the city of Cézanne. He lived and painted here - his studio (Atelier Cézanne) as well as his family estate (the Jas de Bouffan) are both in Aix. We visited these as well as a café that Cézanne frequented with writer Emile Zola and the building that housed his father's hat store before his career change to the banking profession. Unfortunately we did not have time to visit the quarries at Bibemus with its view of Mt. Saint Victoire,
The Atelier, located up a steep hill from the city center, preserves Cézanne's indoor work area where he composed many of his still lifes. There is a peaceful garden surrounding the workshop and you can imagine Cézanne setting up his easel and painting Mt. Sainte Victoire – still visible in the distance.

If you only have time to visit just one of the Cézanne sites, I'd suggest the Jas de Bouffan. Although the family home is now almost completely devoid of furnishings and has none of Cézanne's paintings (long since departed for the museums of Paris, New York, etc.), there is an excellent tour that provides a great introduction to Cézanne and his works. Cézanne's paintings are projected on the walls of the main room. You tour the estate and see the locations where he painted many of his landscapes. The description of the stages of his artistic development and the biographical sketch of the artist are informative and interesting. What my wife Diane christened as “Cézanne's pig” made its appearance during one explanation in the back garden. A black and white baby pig sauntered over to the tour group, sniffed around the tree near which we were standing (looking for truffles?), and then wandered slowly away. I have no idea where the pig came from – perhaps one of the neighboring properties - but I'd like to think of him (or her) as the descendant of one of the pigs that lived at Jas de Bouffan while Cézanne was painting. Alas, I have been unable to find any Cézanne painting featuring a pig.
Jas de Bouffan, the family estate from 1859-1899




Paul Cézanne was born in Aix in 1839. He certainly qualifies as one of the cultural giants of the nineteenth century who paved the way for the revolutionary changes at the turn of the twentieth century. (See the August 3 post, TheTurning of the Centuries). Recognition of his genius came late in life but time has been kind to his reputation and lucrative to those who own his painitngs. Earlier this year, the nation of Qatar paid 250 million dollars to purchase one of his “Card Player” paintings. This was the highest price paid for any painting. Ever.

Cézanne is sometimes classified as a Post-Impressionist but, over the course of his life, he painted in many styles and art historians have identified four stages of his development. His earliest paintings, through 1870, were emotional and expressive – the output of an intense young man. Some had violent or erotic subjects. These paintings were generally composed in dark colors, which led some to name this stage of Cézanne's artistic development the “dark period”.

The paintings of the next stage were influenced by the techniques and colors of the Impressionists. It included many landscapes created in the open air. Cézanne was a slow and exacting artist. One wonders how he kept pace with his Impressionist friend Camille Pissaro, who strongly influenced Cézanne and with whom Cézanne often painted outdoors. Perhaps he did not. In comparing paintings by the two artists of the identical scene (an orchard in Pontoise), Richard Murphy in The World of Cézanne [WOC] contrasts Cézanne's greater interest in the architectural elements – the buildings and walls near the orchard - with Pissaro's emphasis on the light variations and colors around the leaves and the trees. Pissaro's painting shows the orchard in full blossom while Cézanne's has most of the leaves and blossoms gone from the trees and the building and wall more clearly seen. Murphy writes: “...there was quite possibly a purely practical reason for the differences... Cézanne worked so slowly that the blossoms may very well have fallen from the trees before he could complete his picture.”

Beginning about 1878, Cézanne entered what has been called his “Constructive Period.” Cézanne referred to his paintings as “constructions after nature”, built out of “plastic equivalents and color”, and urged that we “see in nature the cylinder, the sphere and the cone”. [WOC] This artistic philosophy seems almost Platonic – looking for an ideal form beyond the immediate visual impression, imbuing meaning beyond that given by our senses. For twenty years, he had spent time painting in both Paris and in Provence. Then in the late 1870's, he moved back to Aix more or less permanently and away from the influence of the Impressionists. Besides landscapes and portraits, he began painting still lifes (more than 200 over the course of his life) - bringing back a genre that had lost favor over the years. A still life lends itself easily to his artistic philosophy – the forms are more distinct and the painting could be “constructed” more easily.

The last stage of his development was “a peiod of synthesis during which his painting, incorporating elements of all the previous styles, became freer and more nearly abstract.” [WOC] His later works laid the groundwork for the abstract painting of the twentieth century. Cézanne died in 1906 at the age of 67, having contracted pneumonia after painting in a downpour for two hours. Both Matisse and Picasso have been credited with the line that “Cézanne is the father of us all”.


Here are several paintings that I think show both the stages of Cézanne's artistic development and the changes in art styles through the nineteenth century.  From top to bottom are examples from his early Expressionist/emotional/"dark" period ( Portrait of Achille Emperaire, Cézanne's friend - c. 1868), his Impressionist period (Jas de Bouffan, 1876), the Constructive period (Still Life with Open Drawer, c. 1879) and the Synthesis Period (Le Mont Sainte Victoire, c.1904).


 





 




 





Attribution
The Time-Life Library of Art series has an excellent summary and analysis of Cézanne, his life, his art, and his times: “The World of Cézanne: 1839-1906” by Richard W. Murphy. If you can get your hands on a copy (it was published/copyrighted in 1968), it would be a great way to explore Cézanne further. The notation [WOC] designates direct quotes from the book.

Links
No blog entry can capture even a small portion of Cézanne's work. The paintings above are simply examples to illustrate the various stages of the development of his art. The web has many images of of his paintings. Here are links to images of ten more of his works along with their current locale.

The Card Players                                                                    Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Bathers                                                                              The National Gallery, London
This YouTube video includes a brief discussion of the work.

The Black Clock                                                                      Private collection

The Railway Cutting                                                                Neue Pinakothek, Munich
At the right of this 1870 painting is Mt. Sainte Victoire.  This is the first time this favorite subject appeared in a Cézanne painting.

Mont-Sainte-Victoire from Bibemus Quarry                            Baltimore Museum of Art
This is a later painting of Mt. Sainte Victoire (1898-1900).  There is a brief discussion of the work at the Baltimore Museum of Art's webpage. Click here to go there.

Mardi Gras (Harlequin andPierrot)                                             Pushkin Museum, Moscow




The Gulf of Marseille Seen from L'Estaque                              Art Institute of Chicago


View of Gardanne                                                                      Brooklyn Museum of Art

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The Turn in the Road atAuvers                                                  Private Collection


Here are two websites with thorough (complete?) collections of the paintings.









 







 









 


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