Paul Cezanne: Finished - Unfinished [Hardcover]

Felix Baumann (Editor), Evelyn Benesch (Editor), Walter Feilchenfeldt (Editor), Paul Cezanne (Author), Klaus Albrecht Schroder (Contributor), Feilchenfeldt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2, 2000

The story of Cezanne's fame and influence would be incomplete without taking into account the impact of his unfinished paintings.... This book is the first to take an extended look at these paintings.... Detailed essays that compare finished paintings with so-called unifinished ones provide a completely new insight into the creative proces of the father of modernism.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), after studying law in Aix, attended the Academie Suisse in Paris. He met the Impressionists through his boyhood friend, Emile Zola, and exhibited with them in 1874 and 1877. For a long time, Cezanne's paintings, which were invariably rejected by the Salon jury, were bought only by a few people. Because of this, from 1881 he lived in seclusion in Aix-en-Provence. After his first big exhibition in Paris in 1895, he slowly gained a reputation among adherents of modern art.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Hatje Cantz Publishers (February 2, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3775708790
• ISBN-13: 978-3775708791
• Product Dimensions: 11.9 x 10.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,705,661 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Bit Thin On Ideas, March 14, 2000

By 

Bruce Loveitt (Ogdensburg, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Paul Cezanne: Finished - Unfinished (Hardcover)

This book probably deserves 3 1/2 stars but since I've got to go with round numbers I'd say 3 is closer to the truth than 4. I may have been influenced by the fact that I have read an awful lot of stuff on Cezanne, but I don't think so. This book was put out to coincide with an exhibition that has "finished/unfinished" as its theme i.e.-when is a painting truly "complete". The idea wears a bit thin after 400 pages. The book starts off with essays by about 5-6 people that take up the first 120 pages. The last couple of essays are interesting and contain some good ideas but the first several essays pretty much say the same thing over and over (many of Cezanne's paintings that were not actually finished are "complete" from an artistic standpoint) and if a couple of these essays had been left out no harm would have been done. The same point is hammered home in too many of the "mini-essays" that accompany each painting and sometimes the contributors get a bit carried away in seeing genius and "completion" in even the works that are clearly failures not only by Cezanne's own standards but also, I think, by the standards of the intelligent layperson and probably also of many art historians. The book does get high marks, though, for many high quality color reproductions and the Cezanne lover will be sure to find his/her favorite genre well-represented. You get many portraits as well as landscapes and those luscious still-lifes (my particular favorite). One of the interesting ideas contained in the book is that the reason the still-life seems to be the category where Cezanne really excelled is that the subject was the one best suited to his temperament. He was an extremely slow worker and did not like changes in the "motif". For example, he did not like it when human sitters would move and he did not like changes in the weather and in light conditions as the changes would make him rethink what he was doing and oftimes start over or have to make corrections. With the still-life Cezanne could arrange things just the way he wanted and could use artificial flowers that would not wither as he worked, etc. Also note that the book contains many works in watercolor, which is a medium that Cezanne excelled in. If you are not familiar with his watercolors I think you will be pleasantly surprised...