Apologies in advance for the PDA, but when you have feelings this intense, you have to let them out. Any chance of critical objectivity or calm art historicism has evaporated, because I am in love with Paul Cezanne.
Admittedly, probably not as a person. The nineteenth century French artist was a pretty weird geezer, totally and utterly dedicated to his singular painterly pursuits, and very likely fancied an actual mountain. But as a painter, yes, totally enamoured and heart-eyes emoji’d with Paul.
It’s justified though, because he’s not just the best of the impressionists or post-impressionists, he’s one of the most inventive, radical, experimental, weird, important painters ever.
This major show opens with a bowl of apples and a self-portrait. So far so art-historical-standard. But look at the fractured layers of paint in the apples, the jagged undulations of the tablecloth, the broken, jarring composition; look how the flesh in his portrait seems to have congealed, how he’s part-beard, part-coat, part-wallpaper, how he’s one with the material of his world. This is painting being ripped up and reassembled right in front of you.
It’s the idea of constantly trying to capture the uncapturable, regardless of the results.
The Tate’s big push here is on Cezanne as a political radical. There’s a shocking, rabid image of a brutal murder in the dark, a nude woman with blood red eyes surrounded by a gaggle of leering men, a huge, stunning, fractured painting of a fromer slave’s back. France was in upheaval: late to industrialise, the country was uneasily convulsing into modernism. Cezanne paints the degradation, violence, misogyny and injustice of his times. To an extent. But most of this doesn’t really fit into that curatorial box, especially not his series of bathers. These big, slabby visions of pixelated, blobby bodies are strange things, because Paul – the provincial outsider in his hip Parisian scene – was just a bit of a weird, intense guy, not because he was ultra political. Alongside the pointless inclusion of ‘interpretation’ of Cezanne’s art by contemporary artists, it’s one of the show’s only missteps.
So forget all the politics, because what makes Cezanne special is the ideas. The amazing ‘Nude Woman (Leda?)’ is based on a champagne label, ‘The Conversation’ on a picture from a magazine, and the jaw dropping male bather in his pants on a photograph. Cezanne was stealing source imagery, twisting popular culture, messing with photography, decades before anyone else even thought of it.
And then there’s that incredible mountain. Cezanne painted Mont Sainte Victoire in Provence over and over, from endless angles and viewpoints. It’s hidden behind trees, peeking up over rocks, spied down a valley from miles away, stared at way up close. Its stunted bulk dominates and looms, its face shimmering pink and lilac in the sun, deep blue and hushed grey in the shade. It’s a whole world effervescing, disappearing and melting.
It’s not that all of these images of it are good paintings, it’s the repetition, the obsesion, the desire, the need to paint it over and over again that makes them special. It’s the idea of constantly trying to capture the uncapturable, regardless of the results, that makes this so radical.
The impressionists painted light, but Cezanne – like Gustave Courbet before him – painted ideas. It’s conceptualism long before Duchamp, explosive cubism long before Picasso, pop culture and flesh and weird gloopy paint long before anyone else.
It’s amazing modern art, and if the Tate would have let me I’d have given it all a big kiss.
