Oct. 17, 2009 Visit to Montclair Art Museum

Cezanne and American Modernism

A recent exhibition at the Montclair Art Museum tried to make connections of Cezanne's art and the American modern art movement. I was fortunate enough to be able to see last Winter, another exhibit about Cezanne at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It had a similar goal of showing Cezanne's influence on modern and contemporary art in general.

The French painter, Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) transitioned from the late nineteenth century impressionism to the twentieth century modern art. Paul Cezanne was friends with several French impressionists, but he mostly worked on his own. Most close to his inspiration was the land in southern France, particularly around Aix-en-Provence.

The painting, "Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from the Bibemus Quarry, 1897" was of particular interest to me. The composition of natural forms and the emotional qualities of color was immediately striking to me. "In the early 1880's Cezanne began his exploration of Mont Sainte-Victoire near Aix with a series of studies and oils that depicted the mountain rising above the immense valley of the Arc River....complex rock formations dominate the foreground, while the distinctive silhouette of the mountain looms large in the distance. The painting appears to have been produced in intense summer light, when the deep orange of the sandstone cliffs contrast greatly with the dark green of the trees and the purple-blue sky. Mont Sainte-Victoire continued to motivate Cezanne until the end of his career, inspiring more than two-hundred compositions by 1906.

by Paul Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from the

Bibemus Quarry, 1897

Marsden Hartley, the American painter-critic, probably never met Paul Cezanne. He may have been first introduced to the works of Cezanne at the Stein's salon in Paris. For Hartley, "who wished to be liberated from the restrictions of their outmoded, academic educations, Cezanne was a challenging beacon of modernity and unhampered self-expression....Cezanne was also a significant model for the synthesis of dualities of form and color, the objective and the subjective, matter and spirit, and abstraction and representation, as he had fused intuition and intellect to achieve the logic of organized sensations."

In September 1926, Hartley, following in the footsteps of Cezanne, moved to the same chateau that Cezanne had lived in when he studied Mont Sainte-Victoire in the late 1880's. He drew and painted the mountain over and over again . Basing his series on Cezanne's depiction of the mountain seen from the Bibemus Quarry, Hartley felt and understood the sense of peace that Cezanne must have experienced. Hartley created a more condensed, highly contrasted image out of rougher, more vibrantly colored brushstrokes, which suggested the impact of more recent modern art developments such as the works of Henri Matisse or Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.

by Marsen Hartley, Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1927

When I look at Hartley's paintings the colors are exciting and vibrant, a little different from the colors used by Cezanne. The yellows were accented by adding other colors on top of it. This made it more dramatic and contrasting in style. He painted the strong Mediterrean light and the sculptural massing of landscape forms. I like what he says, " I belong naturally to the Emerson-Thoreau tradition and I know that too well. It is my native substance." This was Hartley's first and enduring source of inspiration. "Emerson championed direct encounters with verdant nature as the optimal source for spiritual revelation and artistic stimulation. Cezanne also advocated developing oneself and one's art through sustained contact with nature."

by Marsden Hartley, Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1927

"Cezanne was lauded as an iconoclast loner, an artist who focused on a self-defined achievement rather than public acclaim. Cezanne proved to be a very potent source of artistic sustenance for this American modern artist."

Memorable quotes by Cezanne:

"Perhaps I came too soon. I was a painter of your generation more than my own... You are young, you have vitality, you will imbue your art with a force that only those with true feelings can manage. As for me, I'm old. I won't have time to express myself....The reading of a model and its realization are sometimes very slow in coming." I feel that Cezanne is talking directly to me!

"We must again become classicists by way of nature, that is to say, by sensation....I am old, and it is possible I shall die without having attained that great end." I am afraid of this ending, too.

"My age and my health will never allow me to realize the artistic dream I have pursued throughout my entire life. However, I shall always be grateful to the group of intelligent art lovers who have... sensed what I was trying to do to renew my art... one does not replace the past, one only adds a further link to it."