Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

“I will astonish Paris with an Apple,” Paul Cézanne said. And, he did.

Ways of seeing and the Art of Drawing are two of my bigger interests in Art. Both are combined in the landmark Cézanne Drawing show which closed this week at MoMA, and was, most likely, a “once in a lifetime” show. I’ve never heard of anything close to the 250 works on paper on view in it by the French master being exhibited anywhere previously. As big a revolution as his daring approach to Art, most widely known to this point through his hugely influential Paintings, his Drawings and works on paper have been seldom exhibited. Possibly their fragility and light-sensitivity has something to do with that, though the pieces on display seemed to be in remarkably good condition. As a result, they are far lesser well-known even 115 years after the newest of them was created. Yet they take things even further, and reveal more of his remarkable & unique vision, than even his remarkable Paintings, in my view.

As a young Musician or Artist, many pupils are taught “Master the rules, first. Then, you can break them.” In Art, the theory is to gain a firm grounding in technique, composition, color, line and form, to have something to build your own style on. In Cézanne Drawing we get to follow his evolution & creative journey over half a century.

Cézanne applied to attend the Ècole de Beaux Arts in Paris, though he was rejected. He proceeded to take lessons at the Atelier Suisse, where they were offered free, a studio Courbet studied at. Early critics, including the great James McNeill Whistler, thought he couldn’t Draw. Evidence of his studies of the classical tradition were on display and show otherwise.

He drew every day for much of the rest of his life. In the next gallery, we are treated to numerous examples of his Sculpture studies. Ah…Drawing Sculpture. Something many students, including this one, get caught up in. Its allure never lessened for Cèzanne.

Per the wall card- “According to a friend…’To the last day of his life, every morning as a priest reads his breviary, he spent an hour drawing Michelangelo’s plaster figure from every angle.”

And here it is-

Soon he was Drawing like this-

He took what he learned, and used it as a jumping off point. He began to loosen up  his approach. Much experimentation followed, as we see as this very large show progresses, until “he had discovered his own personality,” as Cézanne scholar Roger Fry put it ¹.

He developed a style of Drawing the figure that used multiple lines to “hone in” on the form, as seen in the Page of Studies with the Centaur, just shown, and, even more radically, the Bathers, here. He called his style couillarde (ballsy)², indicative of his “attacking” approach to every aspect of his Art. Like his early subjects seen in the first gallery.

Murder, abduction, rape, orgies, Drawn with passion, or Painted in oils at the time with a palette knife, all seemed created to grab the attention, shock and horrify. His whole career can be seen as one long attack on the rules, tradition and the status quo in Art.

Along with all of that, there is that eye, the way he sees things, and that unfailing sense for, and mastery of, color he had all along. Over time, his later Paintings achieve an almost surreal polish and finish, and achieve a complete solidity that is utterly convincing. Meanwhile, his Drawings often seem to delve into other dimensions. Objects are placed on seemingly impossible surfaces, or hang in space. The white of the paper becomes a star, an element the equal of any other in many works. These will seem a complete revelation to those who only know his Paintings, like me when I first walked in.

As he put it all together, a MoMA wall card proved to be a revelation, particularly when thinking about his early training. In learning to draw the human body, one is taught to start by learning anatomy. Cézanne apparently applied this to his landscapes. “In order to paint a landscape well,” he is quoted on a wall card, “I first need to discover its geological structure.” It continues, “Cèzanne explored the relationship between rock and body throughout this series (of Drawings of rocks), in which the slabs take on the appearance of human bones and a cavern resembles the profile of a face.” And in this work, I see just that. The black lines form the “skeleton,” giving the piece a structure. Otherwise, the colors would be hanging in space.

Foliage, 1895, Watercolor and pencil on paper. At first glance it looks like an unfinished jumble of lines and colors with a lot of empty white space. Here, Cezanne is depicting leaves blowing in the wind. in so doing, he’s also blurring the line between representation and abstraction, which was a good decade off. Nearby, a full room of Still Lifes take things to the height of immateriality.

His landscapes and his still lifes, with those famous arrangements of fruit on tables, have rightly garnered much of the attention and acclaim. They might originate from the gift of a basket of apple from his friend, Émile Zola in gratitude for Cèzanne’s rising to his defense against critics³, which would shed an entirely different light on them.

Seeing a large gallery full of them in 2021, they still seem completely fresh. As timeless as they are, Cézanne Drawing shows us there is much more to marvel at. Like his Portraits.

Though there are not many of them here, what is here makes a powerful impression, especially when seen along side, and in context with, his Drawings. Some years ago (in 2014), there was a show at The Met of Cézanne’s Portraits of his wife, Hortense Fiquet, aka Madame Cézanne, which captivated and mystified me at the same time.

The woman we see in those works was inscrutable. Yet the technique and use of color also fascinate, particularly in relation to his other work. I came away finally feeling that his portraits deserve more attention, even though they are “different” from what many expect from a “Portrait,” and not necessarily as accessible as his ever-popular Still Lifes or Landscapes.

Also, regarding Cèzanne’s Portraits, the show touches on the Artist’s use of Photographs, particularly as source material for MoMA’s famous Painting, The Bather.

He was far from alone in doing this at this time, yet he and the work he created using them have entirely escaped any sort of negative connotations for doing so that so many more recent Painters have suffered, including the recently passed Chuck Close. Which makes me wonder why it suddenly matters. It doesn’t! Photographs are, and have been for many Painters, something akin to a sketch. It’s plain to see Cèzanne didn’t slavishly copy the Photograph as much as it became a reference.

While his Paintings are seen as the precursors of Cubism, Abstraction and a number of other “isms” I don’t subscribe to, Cézanne’s remarkable Drawings are impossible to simply characterize. Why are they so different than his Oil Paintings? I wonder if it had something to do with his lifelong disappointments in having work accepted by the Salon, the yearly Paris Art show. One observer noted Cèzanne carrying his canvases on his back like Christ carrying the cross to be seen by the judges². He was rejected by them early and often. So, how would work like these late Watercolors be received by them? Well over 100 years later, they still have yet to have their day, particularly as influences on other Artists. Perhaps, Cèzanne Drawing will turn out to be that day. However, one great Artist has not only already been influenced by these works, he’s put his money into them. No less than 12 of the pieces on view in Cézanne Drawing are somewhat surprisingly labelled “Collection Jasper Johns”! Extraordinarily astute acquisitions that add yet another dimension to our appreciation of this legendary Painter who will be receiving his (covid-delayed) 90th Birthday Retrospective at The Whitney Museum shortly.

Now that they’ve seen the light of day, perhaps Cézanne Drawing will inspire some to build on the Drawing’s ahead-of-their-time innovations and help them achieve some of the wide-spread influence on Art his Paintings have had. Their time has come.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “I Remember The Sun” by XTC from The Big Express, 1984.

“Squinting at the sun through eyes
Screwed up by a fireball
Tarmac on the road is soft
Chaff burns in a smoke wall
Yes, I’m weeping, a teardrop attack
I give emotion at the drop of a hat
When I remember days at school
I remember many things
But most of all, I remember the sun
Most of all, I remember the sun
Most of all, I remember the sun
Sun that worked on overtime
Fueled our bodies, kindled fire in our minds”*

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Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

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