Paul Cezanne
Cezanne’s Sensations
NonSite
A 1979 article by Éric Michaud recently republished in NonSite. Michaud writes: “It would be wrong, then, to look for a rational convention in Cézanne’s painting. Émile Bernard only wanted to see in it the essence of things; [Lawrence ] Gowing saw only pure signs. But Cézanne’s painting is no more conventional than language is […]
John Elderfield on Cézanne’s Portraits
Brooklyn Rail
Phong Bui interviews John Elderfield, curator of Cézanne Portraits on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. through July 8, 2018. Elderfield comments: “Cézanne records a face without interpreting. Of course, we will find ourselves interpreting. We do so when we look at the face of someone one on the subway. But […]
Cézanne Portraits: Relentless Intimacy
London Review of Books
T.J. Clark reviews Cézanne Portraits on view at the National Portrait Gallery, London (through February 11) and at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. from March 25 – July 1, 2018. Clark writes: “Certainly the idea that Cézanne’s approach to picture-making is essentially technical and ‘objective’, locked in a painter’s preserve … is useless. It offers […]
Cézanne’s Radical Portraiture
Apollo Magazine
John Elderfield writes about Cézanne Portraits, an exhibition he curated, on view at the National Portrait Gallery, London through February 11, 2018. Elderfield writes that “the content of these paintings matters. One reason, I think, why there has never previously been a survey of Cézanne’s portraits is that his reputation, as it developed in the […]
Alan Gouk on Key Modernist Paintings
AbCrit
Alan Gouk presents his thoughts on great modernist paintings by Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse, Bonnard, Gauguin, Monet, and Braque. Gouk remarks: “What painting is about is claiming the surface – making it real to you, palpable, physically present, and tangible almost. At its best it is the expression of one’s involuntary response to surface, but without resorting […]
An Embarrassment of Riches: The Shchukin Collection
ARTnews
Maika Pollack reviews Icons of Modern Art: The Shchukin Collection at The Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, on view through March 5, 2017. Pollack writes: “A single room in which 13 vast Matisse paintings hang is the highlight of the exhibition. These are only a fraction of Shchukin’s 43 Matisses, but each is a knockout: In […]
Madame Cézanne
Charles Kessler blogs about the exhibition Madame Cézanne at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through March 15, 2015. Kessler writes: "I don't think capturing [Madame Cézanne's] personality, or the personality of any other of his sitters for that matter, was Cézanne's concern, any more than capturing the personality of an apple […]
Madame Cézanne @ the Met
Xico Greenwald reviews Madame Cézanne at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on view through March 15, 2015. Greenwald writes: "Though this exhibit is, indeed, marvelous, [curator Dita] Amory’s revisionist history is a distraction. Claiming 'a tender interchange' can be detected in Madame Cézanne’s gaze, museumgoers searching for signs of affection in these portraits […]
Cézanne at the Barnes
Charles Kessler blogs about the exhibition The World Is an Apple: The Still Lifes of Paul Cézanne at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, on view through September 22, 2014. Kessler writes: "Except for Cézanne's early dark, heavily impasto paintings, I don’t see his work as solid, heavy and immobile, the way they're usually described. Just the […]
Cézanne @ The Barnes
Xico Greenwald reviews the exhibition The World Is an Apple: The Still Lifes of Paul Cézanne at The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, on view through September 22, 2014. Greenwald writes that "the artworks in this exhibition contain wildly different compositional arrangements and display varied paint handling, showing Cézanne to be a thoughtful artist engaged in a […]
Paul Cézanne: Site/Non-Site
David Rhodes reviews the recent exhibition Cézanne Site/Non-site at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. Rhodes writes that in the exhibition "two concepts coined by the New York artist Robert Smithson during the 1960s have been used to explore aspects of the landscape and still life paintings of Paul Cézanne. For Smithson 'site' was the outdoors and […]
Cézanne: Modern Impossibility
Julian Bell reviews the exhibition Cézanne and the Modern at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, on view through June 22, 2014. "A tree trunk heads upwards, reaching for light. Cézanne’s pencil follows it. There is a line in nature and now there is a line on the sheet. But no, that won’t do. Stuff buffets the […]
Cézanne And Gauguin: Theoretical Brutality
Donatien Grau considers the very different aesthetic paths followed by Gauguin and Cézanne. Grau writes: "Cézanne and Gauguin made two antagonistic choices—while they had actually started on common ground, both were fascinated with literature very early on… [Cézanne ]strove to become another Poussin, and to change painting from the inside only, to leave aside all […]
Cézanne & Chardin’s Visor
John Elderfield considers the true meaning of Cézanne's interest in the painting Self Portrait or Portrait of Chardin Wearing an Eyeshade, 1775 by Jean-Siméon Chardin. Elderfield writes: "we cannot dismiss the possibility that the unclear sentence in Cézanne’s unquestionably authentic letter on Chardin’s self-portrait is not, in fact, about a physical attribute of the pastel: […]
Cézanne’s Bathers: Built to Disturb
Jack Flam discusses the implications of Cézanne's "de-eroticized" approach to the figure in The Large Bathers (1906), part of the upcoming exhibition Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, on view from June 20, 2012 – September 3, 2012. Flam writes that "…Cézanne’s lack of finish created an extraordinarily suggestive […]
Clyfford Still & Cézanne
Kent Minturn undertakes and in-depth examination of Clyfford Still's thesis on Cézanne and the clues it provides to Still's early and later development as an artist. Minturn notest that "In his thesis Still eloquently emphasizes Cézanne’s 'tactual' application of paint and takes pains to describe the way his predecessor 'feels' his way around his forms. […]
Cézanne and the Modern City
Nicola Homer reviews the exhibtion Cézanne in Paris at the Musée du Luxembourg, on view through February 26, 2012. Homer writes that "The show takes as its starting point the year in which the 21-year-old Cézanne arrived in the city, after a number of letters from Zola encouraging him to escape the confines of Aix. […]
Cézanne’s Black
John Berger shares new thoughts on Cézanne after viewing the exhibition Cézanne and Paris at the Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, on view through February 26, 2012. Berger writes that “after a lifetime’s companionship with him, the show was a revelation. I forgot about impressionism, cubism, 20th-century art history, modernism, postmodernism – and saw only the […]
On the Ground with Cezanne
Kyle Gallup writes about Cézanne's Card Players on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through May 8, 2011. Gallup writes: "Viewing 'Cezanne’s Card Players' exhibit currently at the Metropolitan Museum was like visiting with a dear friend. The show renewed my thinking about Cezanne’s painting, and… I appreciate anew the totality of his vision"