Cezanne in Philly....

Cezanne painting of Mont-Saint Victoire.
On my recent trip to Philly I managed to get to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to see the show “Cezanne and Beyond.” The show turned out to be a wonderful surprise. I kept reading that it was a great show, but I thought it would be hard for the show to measure up to the hype. I was happy to see how much work was there, and how many of the paintings were really lovely pieces in their own right. The intent of the show is to explore Cezanne’s influences on a wide range of artists, from Matisse to Giacometti to Gorky to Ellsworth Kelly, and 15 others. Some of the connections between Cezanne and those he influenced seemed like a stretch to me, but my interest in the show had less to do with those connections and more to with the quality of the work. I loved a room that focused on the still life, with some paintings by Matisse, Cezanne and Charles Demuth. There were also some great landscapes and figures… but what grabbed me in any of these was not the subject matter as much as the execution of the painting; the spirit of the endeavor to make a painting of an apple and do everything possible to capture the essence of that apple. It’s not about rendering every piece of the subject in perfect detail, but trying to convey what it is about that object that moves them. Some of the paintings were so simple, but had a powerful presence. Some of the works in this show may have been ground breaking when they were made, but I think that the reason they still hold the interest of artists today is that they are capturing something wonderful and moving about the world that we can’t verbalize, but will feel when we look at the painting with open eyes and an open heart. There is a resonance in these works that is so much more important than anything we say when we try to describe our work or justify it in an artist’s statement (something I’m trying to work on these days.) The things we talk about when we describe our work are important and are often great reasons for making the paintings, but they are less interesting to me than that quiet power that an excellent painting can have…some kind of  a deeper beauty. That all comes back to why I was so surprised to get excited about this show. I knew that there was a good chance that the premise of the show would require it’s curator’s to hang some works that fit their idea, but were not necessarily top-tier paintings. There was some of that, but for the most part, I think they did a wonderful jobof putting together a show that gave me pause several times, as I had to stop and lose myself in a Van Gogh landscape, or a Giacometti sculpture, or a Matisse still life, or one of Brice Marden’s large lyrical abstractions, or a small colorful canvas by Gorky. I almost missed the show but I’m glad I snuck it in to my trip.

3 Responses to “Cezanne in Philly.”

1. Mary Sheehan Winn says:

   May 22, 2009 at 10:13 am

   To me, it’s about resonance.
   I am so looking forward to your workshop at NRAS.
2. admin says:

   May 23, 2009 at 11:59 am

   Hi Mary,

   I’ve really appreciated all of your comments on the blog posts. Thanks so much for the feedback and encouragment. I’m glad you’ll be in the workshop and I look forward to working with you.

   And the yellow Mums painting on your blog looks great. Nice work.

   Colin
3. Eric says:

   May 25, 2009 at 1:14 pm

   Hey Colin, Sounds like a great show to catch, some good inspiration; the Philly Museum really has some great exhibitions.

   If you get to Aix en Provence, there are little bronze footprints around the city following Cezanne’s route(s) to his painting locations. I don’t know if the footprints actually go all the way to any location, they may stop in front of a cafe for a drink. Ha ha.