1899 in art

Transcription

Cézanne’s art is reminiscent of the works of El Greco, painter of the Spanish Renaissance. Here we see a self-portrait of Cézanne and a presumed self-portrait of El Greco, both in their late fifties. Both men discarded classicist criteria such as measure and proportion. Characteristic for their work is the interweaving between form and space; a reciprocal relationship unifying the painting surface. The style of both men was met with great puzzlement by their contemporaries. Comparative morphological analyses of works of the two painters revealed their common elements such as the distortion of the human body, the interest in color, their (in appearance only) unworked backgrounds and the similarities in the rendering of space. At the right, El Greco’s portrait of Apostle St James the Greater, painted in 1610 - 1614. Notice the unusual rendering of the hands of both sitters. Indeed, in his younger years, Cézanne has copied works of El Greco. This portrait of his sister Marie, from around 1866 is modeled on the mysterious portrait of “A Lady in a Fur Wrap”, which is attributed to El Greco. However, this portrait is very atypical for his work, and there are weighty arguments for considering it not a work of him. But at the time Cézanne was not aware of this. Cézanne made another version of the foregoing portrait of his sister, an example of his style in his “Dark Period”. It is perhaps this portrait from which the 19th century, American artist James McNeill Whistler has said: “If a 10 year old child had drawn that on his slate, his mother - if she was a good mother - would have whipped him.” El Greco’s portrayal of Saint Peter, dating from circa 1610, is a good example of his dramatic and expressionistic style. His preference for exceptionally tall and slender figures and elongated compositions, is certainly not caused by a vision problem, as was suggested during the early years of the twentieth century, but, in accordance with the principles of Late-Renaissance Mannerism, a period in European arts, it served both his expressive purposes and aesthetic principles. Interestingly, also from Cézanne it is said that he suffered from eye problems. However, it is not unusual for critics to attribute originality in art to some sort of physical disorder. In 1860, at the age of twenty one, Paul Cézanne made a start with a bold juvenile project: the painting - in romantic style of huge allegorical pictures of young women representing the Four Seasons, on the walls of the newly bought house of his father: Jas de Bouffan. Here we see one of the paintings, called: “Autumn”. Although the elongated figure could suggest a Mannerist influence, Cézanne signed each painting with: “INGRES”, the name of the French neoclassical painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and added a false date: 1811, on the bottom left of the panel representing “Winter”. Indeed, an immense canvas of Ingres, made in 1811, was at that time – as it is today – exhibited in Aix-en-Provence. Ingres' subject matter is borrowed from an episode in Homer's Iliad, when the sea nymph Thetis begs Jupiter to intervene and guide the fate of her son Achilles, who was at the time embroiled in the Trojan War. Homer writes: "She sank to the ground beside him, put her left arm round his knees, raised her right hand to touch his chin, and so made her petition to the Royal Son of Cronos." It seems likely that Cézanne signed the Four Seasons with Ingres’ name, to prove in an ironic way to his father, who wanted him to become a lawyer, that he was no worse than the most famous artist of his time. At the bottom left, a mountain is displayed. Could it be an imaginary version of the Mont Sainte-Victoire? It seems not unlikely that the young Cézanne found his inspiration for his Four Seasons in Nicolas Poussin’s rendering of the same subject. In the “Autumn” of this famous 17th century French classical painter, we perceive an impressive mountain … and a woman carrying a basket with fruit on her head. But let us return to Man with Crossed Arms, part of the private, Ronald S. Lauder Collection. Cézanne painted another version, which is on display in the Guggenheim Museum, New York. The “Lauder-Man” at the left, holds a frontal pose with a seven-eights head position. His head is turned slightly away from the beholder, thus a little more of the left side of his face can be seen, his left ear is visible. The “Guggenheim-Man” sits in a three-quarter view, facing also to his right. But according to the nose position and the invisibility of the far left ear, one would expect that the left part of his face should be depicted much narrower as is the case in this three-quarter-view painted, 18th century portrait, facing right. The absence of a difference between both halves of the Guggenheim-man’s face suggests a frontal view with the man having a wry nose. But then the left ear should be visible. It is known that for a portrait Cézanne insisted on over a hundred sittings from his subject, compared to other portraitists, an extremely high number. The American art historian, George Heard Hamilton suggests that Cézanne’s position with regard to his subject might change over time. Over the course of days or weeks, Cézanne would move his easel, painting his subject from different points of view, and each time, he painted what he saw. Could it be that at some stage the left ear of the “Guggenheim-Man” is painted out? Around that spot near the left temple, extends a dark penumbra, evidence of extensive reworking. Perhaps infrared examination could answer our question. The eyes of the Guggenheim-Man do not show the incongruity of the Lauder-Man’s eyes. But each of the portraits seems to include two viewpoints. These viewpoints could stem from successive perceptions as an organic process by which people form a relative image. It seems that Cézanne has tried to visualize such images. He once said: “Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one’s sensations”. To elucidate the supposition of multiple points of view, in his instructional art book: “Cézanne’s Composition”, Erle Loran made use of this diagram, based on the outlines of Cézanne’s portrait. In 1962, the prominent American pop-artist, Roy Lichtenstein, used Loran’s diagram for his reinterpretation of the Man with Crossed Arms, devoid of color, with the man’s form articulated by graphic lines that sit on a ground of painted imitations of Benday dots. Lichtenstein’s portrait is of course far greater than Loran’s book-page size of his diagram. Loran, disputably, called it an act of plagiarism. Lichtenstein considers his work a hand-painted, one-of-a-kind replica of a mass-produced printed reproduction, rendered in a visual language borrowed from popular culture that lends the work the flat sterile quality of printed matter. And this is Picasso’s cubist reinterpretation of the Man with Crossed Arms, dating from 1909. A last example of Cézanne’s portraiture is this painting of Madame Cézanne in a Red Armchair, from 1877. Typically, there is little character in her face. It seems not the sitter but the all-over composition that interested Cézanne. Shadows are suppressed, which creates a flattened depth perspective. When the poet Rainer Maria Rilke saw this portrait, he wrote: “It is the first and ultimate red armchair ever painted… The interior of the picture vibrates, rises, falls back into itself, and does not have a single unmoving part.” Cézanne’s work shows a great diversity of subjects. He also depicted events from everyday life, or genre scenes, like this well-known “Card Players”, of which several versions exist. Notice the symmetrical composition of the painting and its beautiful coloring. Indeed, the head of the card player with the pipe on the left seems too small in comparison with the size of his torso. Accurate proportions between the figures’ heads, bodies, and limbs were not a matter of great concern to the master. We see here the three versions that exist with only two card players. In 2011, the one in the middle is sold for 250 million dollar, the current world record price for a painting. This genre painting shows the artist's mother and his sister, who is playing on the piano Richard Wagner’s Overture to Tannhäuser, the very music score of this video. Needless to say that Cézanne loved Wagner’s music. Cézanne’s paintings had seldom a narrative content. This small painting, 38cm high, forms an exception; it represents Medea, a princess in Greek Mythology, about to murder her two children. It is painted in the time Cézanne abandoned impressionism, The image is in fact a facsimile of a work of Eugène Delacroix, the French Romantic artist. In this study of the female nude Cézanne indeed closely followed Delacroix. Notice in particular the length of the right fore-arm of both Medea’s