'With an Apple I Will Astonish Paris’: Cezanne, Starting Revolutions in Unexpected Places

Paul Cezanne - Still Life with Fruit Dish. Museum of Modern Art in New York

Photograph: www.scalarchives.com

I recently attended a fine exhibition of the work of Paul Cezanne. (Tate Modern, London until 12 March, 2023)

'There are two things in the painter, the eye and the mind; each of them should aid the other.’

Cezanne painted intense, almost abstract, landscapes from flat planes of bold colour. He gave us enigmatic portraits that capture the sensation of being in the room with the sitter. He created still lifes that are hypnotically vivid and spatially disorientating. He demonstrated that infinite opportunities can be offered by a narrow range of subjects. He built a bridge between Impressionism and Cubism. And he subverted the traditional hierarchy of art.

'The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.’

Paul Cezanne was born in 1839 in Aix-en-Provence, the son of a milliner and later banker. At the age of 22 he set aside his law studies when his schoolmate Emile Zola encouraged him to join the creative community in Paris.

Cezanne sketched in the capital’s museums and attended classes at the Academie Suisse. The city was a hotbed of social and political unrest. Zola was a republican and Cezanne’s mentor Pissaro was an anarchist. But Cezanne was a shy, introverted fellow, less obviously opinionated.

'The world doesn't understand me and I don't understand the world. That's why I've withdrawn from it.’

Paul Cezanne self-portrait 1875 © RMN-Grand Palais

Cezanne expressed his revolutionary zeal in his art. 

In 1870, in order to avoid conscription in the Franco-Prussian War, Cezanne moved to L’Estaque, a seaside village just west of Marseille. Over a 15 year period he made 40 paintings of the hot dry landscape, endlessly curious for fresh views and perspectives. 

'Here, on the river's verge, I could be busy for months without changing my place, simply leaning a little more to right or left.’

Overlooking an azure sea, the yellow and brown block houses, with their shuttered windows and ochre gable roofs, create jagged, geometric patterns, intersecting with factory chimneys, telegraph poles and the grey viaduct. 

We are witnessing the first steps towards Cubism.

'I believe in the logical development of everything we see and feel through the study of nature.'

Mont Sainte-Victoire, near Aix, featured in over 80 of Cezanne’s works. He painted it from the valley below, from his garden at Jas de Bouffan, from the roof of his studio and from the local quarry. The limestone mountain looms in the distance, a brooding permanent companion, sometimes reduced to just a few blue and white brushstrokes. Whereas the Impressionists had been interested in light, atmosphere and the fleeting moment, Cezanne was fascinated by geology, soil and timeless presence.

'I am a consciousness. The landscape thinks itself through me.'

Paul Cezanne - The Sea at L’Estaque behind Trees

Still life was traditionally considered an unimportant genre. Great painters tended to concern themselves with historical, mythical and religious themes. But for Cezanne everyday objects represented an opportunity for subversion. Rather than precisely depicting an item itself, he would convey his consciousness of it. This was the art of perception.

'People think how a sugar basin has no physiognomy, no soul. But it changes every day.’

Here are oranges, apples and pears; ginger jar, sugar bowl and water jug - arranged against a piece of patterned fabric, l’indienne. Cezanne presents these things in blazing, iridescent colours, in endless permutations. Sometimes his vision seems warped, the bottles, dishes and fruit at risk of tumbling off the table. A plaster Cupid stumbles clumsily onto the scene. The apples shimmer. The oranges quiver. A dazzling white sheet floats across the canvas. 

'Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations.’

Scientists have since observed that Cézanne's woozy imagery corresponds with the way we actually see the world. Our eyes are not static when we look, but are making frequent tiny darting movements, ‘saccades’, between areas of visual interest. 

Cezanne’s portraits are like his still lifes. You get more of a sense of the sitters’ presence than of their personality. Here’s his wife Marie Hortense, whom he painted 29 times over 25 years. She sits in a yellow chair, her lips pursed, her hair parted, her hands clasped on her lap. Here’s his son Paul, a dreamy melancholy soul. And here’s his phlegmatic gardener Vallier, legs crossed, hat pulled over an expressionless face. 

Paul Cezanne - Madame Cézanne in a Yellow Chair (1888-90). Art Institute Chicago

'The truth is in nature, and I shall prove it.’

I was particularly struck by the thought that Cezanne’s revolution began in still life, the field of art with the lowest esteem. When I was a young ad man, everyone wanted to work on beer, cars and jeans. But it’s difficult to make an impression on a category that is already considered cool and creative; that already attracts the attentions of the great and the good. The Planners that made their name in my time did so on the roads less travelled, on difficult brands in unfashionable sectors - detergent and dog food, soup, soap and financial services. The stone that the builders rejected can indeed become the cornerstone.

Cezanne died in 1906 at the age of 67. He had always been admired by his fellow artists. Degas, Gaugin and Monet; Pissarro, Caillebotte and Renoir all kept his work. And Picasso referred to him as ‘the father of us all.’

‘Cezanne cannot put touches of two colours onto a canvas without it being an achievement.’
Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Cezanne taught us to find truth in nature; to reflect on and celebrate sensation; to look and look again - because even if we cannot fully comprehend the world around us, we can at least enjoy our perception of it.

'We live in a rainbow of chaos.’

'I pick my friends like I pick my fruit.
My Granny told me that when I was only a youth.
I don't walk around trying to be what I'm not.
I don't waste my time trying to get what you got.
I work at pleasin’ me,
'Cause I can't please you.
And that's why I do what I do
My soul flies free like a willow tree.
Doo wee, doo wee, doo wee
And if you don't want to be down with me, you don't want to pick from my
Apple tree.’

Erykah Badu, ‘Appletree' (R Bradford / E Badu)

No. 394

Forgotten Revolutions: When the Radical Becomes Routine

Sometimes a revolution can be so successful that its principles and values become a new mainstream. Ironically the force of the original revolutionary impulse can be lost with the passing of the years, because, viewed from the perspective of history and hindsight, it all seems rather obvious. What was once incendiary and anarchic quickly becomes unthreatening and conventional.

Forgotten revolutions are worth revisiting because we may also be forgetting insights and perspectives that could be useful and relevant to the modern day. In remembering what sparked the revolutions of the past, we can challenge our own assumptions about the future.

Consider three great French revolutionary artists of the nineteenth century: Delacroix and the Lumiere brothers, Auguste and Louis.

Delacroix’s Sentimental Revolution

There’s currently an exhibition dedicated to Eugene Delacroix at the National Gallery in London. (Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art runs until 22 May)

Delacroix certainly looks revolutionary. In his self-portraits he sports lustrous dark locks and he stares out at us with poise and a knowing confidence. He was greatly admired by many of the titans of modern art that followed him: Cezanne, Renoir, Van Gogh and Matisse. They copied his work, wrote about his influence, painted bizarre tributes to him.

‘We all use Delacroix’s language now.’
Paul Cezanne

But to today’s eyes Delacroix comes across as rather classical and traditional. He painted landscapes, lion hunts and harems; triumphant heroism from history and sensual scenes from the Bible.

So what was it about Delacroix’s art that his successors so admired? In what sense was he a revolutionary modernist?

We need to understand the context in which Delacroix was working in the first half of the nineteenth century. He was reacting against the stiffness and formality of conventional French Academic painting. He shunned its cold intellectualism, its rigorous adherence to the rules of composition. He abhorred its ‘slavish imitation’ of reality.

‘The first merit of a painting is to be a feast for the eye.’
Eugene Delacroix

Delacroix’s work is vibrant, colourful, sensual. It is energetic, always on the move. He painted at speed, with freedom, vigour and distortion. The artist Odilon Redon said that his was ‘a triumph of sentiment over form.’

Having had it drawn to my attention, I found myself admiring Delacroix’s commitment to sentiment and spontaneity. He is conventionally said to represent the end of romanticism. But now I understood why the exhibition positions him at the beginning of modernism.

Have we in the marketing world, I wonder, slipped back into the easy conservatism of the bourgeois Academy, the slavish commitment to structure, form, accuracy and reality? Would we not benefit from some of Delacroix’s instinct, emotion, energy and immediacy?

And, more importantly perhaps, are we writing a final chapter or a first? Do we represent the culmination of a way of thinking about brands and communication, or the commencement of something new? Are we an end or a beginning?
 

The Lumieres’ Train and the Suspension of Belief

The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station is a modest film. It’s only 50 seconds long, black and white, and silent. It shows a steam train approaching a station; the train stops; men with moustaches and hats jump off and jump on; a husband and wife cross the screen, she in shawl, long skirt and hat, he with his hands in his pockets; guards busy themselves; a dapper young chap with a flat cap and bow tie looks awkward and leaps to get out of the way. That’s all, folks.

And yet, in its own way, The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station is also completely sensational. It was created by the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere and was originally presented to an audience in Paris in January 1896. It was one of the world’s first films.

Not having seen a movie before, the audience was stunned, particularly by the sight of a steam train, heading straight towards them. Hitherto theatre audiences had learned to ‘suspend disbelief’ when they attended a show. Now they had to suspend belief. They had to correct the compelling notion that the train was indeed there in the stalls, speeding directly towards them.

Legend has it that many fled to the back of the auditorium, so convinced were they that the oncoming engine was about to crash in upon them.

Of course, over time we have learned to live with the wonders of film, and today The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station seems rather ordinary. It’s often the case that we are startled, shocked and frightened by the new. But we have a phenomenal ability to come to terms with change; to accommodate it; to see its advantages and opportunities.

How do we recreate an equivalent sense of wonder today? What new technologies can surprise and delight in the way that the Lumieres’ train did one hundred and twenty years ago? Perhaps robots, AI, 3D printing and Oculus Rift can shake us from our scepticism; stimulate our jaded senses; challenge us once again to suspend our belief in what is real and unreal.

Whatever the technology, you have to side with the optimists. You have to imagine that there were a few Parisians glued to their seats at the first showing of the Lumiere brothers’ new film. They may have been a little scared, unsure of what they were witnessing. But they were also thrilled by the possibility of change and the wonders of a revolutionary modern age.

No. 74