Cezanne at the Tate Modern

 

Mont Ste-Victoire (Philadelphia)

I left this exhibition more confused by Cezanne than when I went in. Here is an artist who, by reputation, is central to the development of modern art. Although born in 1839, Cezanne was revered by several of the most significant painters of the 20th century, including Matisse. I was expecting to be bowled over; but I felt what I was looking at was a handful of great works, alongside a lot of unsatisfactory pieces. 

But I have to say I wouldn’t, on the basis of this show, call Cezanne a master. Throughout his career, he created poor paintings. He did not appear ever to master drawing the human figure, and he never mastered the ability to create a flattering portrait. The images of his family members would not, I think, win him any prizes. Critics call his work classical (for example, Meyer Schapiro), but I see no evidence of classical drawing or composition in his works. When he paints bathers, he includes (for the men) their underpants, which are less than flattering. He was, according to the catalogue, so shy that he never hired any models but painted from photographs and from the antique (although there is little sign of it). For many years, he tried his best not to reveal to his father that he had a long-term partner and child. His very early works are surprising for their amateurish depictions of wild events, looking very much like the fantasies of an adolescent. Most artists would be grateful for such works to be forgotten – yet some of Cezanne’s late works show this wild streak re-emerging.

An early painting, Dejeuner sur l'herbe, no less

The exhibition was thematic rather than chronological, so we were presented with a room full of views of St Estaque, then a room of bathers. Presented in this way, the many treatments of the same theme were not so inspiring. I almost thought that if you try 25 treatments of the same theme, then one or two of them will be successful. It certainly brought out the way that, once Cezanne had fixed on a style, he stuck with it. His palette of strong colours   - a deep orange/red for the land, bright blue for the sea – varied little through his career. 

Example of Cezanne's drawing skills

What is astonishing is how this painter, who couldn’t draw, could create a handful of stunning images where the landscape, and the bodies, appear to become part of the landscape; an uncanny achievement, alongside so many mundane images:

The Bathers (National Gallery)

But for each masterpiece, there are several pictures where the drawing is poor, the composition is poor, and the result is embarrassing. Is this the work of the same painter?

Five Bathers

The bathers bring to mind the example of Picasso: Cezanne has none of the effortless skill of Picasso, who could in a few lines suggest classical form – or cubist analysis, as he chose. 

Of course, if you want to see Cezanne as a precursor of cubism, there are several views of Mt Ste-Victoire, some of them magnificent. Among them are some where the landscape is so familiar that Cezanne seems to say “you know what I am depicting, I only need to suggest it” – and proceeds almost (but not quite) to abandon representation. Nonetheless, none of his works can be called abstract. 

Cezanne the artist is not helped by the critical apparatus around the works on display. The captions read more like hagiography than criticism. One caption described how Cezanne created an outline, and then added the colour “one brushstroke at a time”. It  is difficult to imagine any artist proceeding otherwise. Contemporary artists seem to have been invited to comment on Cezanne’s work, and many of their comments seem utterly irrelevant. One comment, placed alongside a picture of trees in an unmanaged landscape, begins “I wonder what this landscape would have looked like to us without colonisation?” Unfortunately, the curators are equally guilty of attempting to demonstrate Cezanne’s liberal credentials by displaying just three works: “In Scipio we look at the possible influence of abolitionism on Cezanne, while The Eternal Feminine addresses imagery from the popular press, and The Conversation subtly hints at Cezanne’s political views”. It’s all so pat; I would want far more evidence of Cezanne’s attitudes to be convinced by any of this. The curators seem to believe that credibility about the works is demonstrated by the picture having been owned by a later painter: Cezanne is “the artist’s artist”. So captions frequently state “owned by Picasso”, or “owned by Henry Moore”. 

Certainly this was an exhibition worth seeing; but my view remains that Cezanne is a very uneven painter. He might have changed the course of art history, but he was anything but a painter of effortless talent.