Customer Reviews

Pioneering Modern Painting: Cezanne and Pissarro, 1865-1885

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Though this book is a catalogue for an important exhibition traveling to the West Coast after its origin in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, it is so finely produced and contains such important information along with generous examples of the works of two significant artists that it is sure to become a major contribution to the history of art libraries around the world. It is beautiful to peruse, intelligently written and opens a window into one of the more interesting and productive friendships in art history.

Meeting in art school in the 1860's Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) and Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) continued a mutually beneficial camaraderie for twenty years, during which time they produced not only beautiful paintings but also defined an important transitional period in art. While many view Pissarro as the echt-Impressionist, and Cézanne as the pioneering Post-Impressionist, essayist Joachim Pissarro's text questions the significance of these preconceived art history monikers in codifying each artist's stance in the overall view of art history. The true significance in the development of their friendship and dialogues about art, as captured in their painting together in Pontoise and Auvers, France, lead to the development of Modernism in painting.

Wisely and elegantly designed, this book places works by each artist side by side, illuminating the interplay of the two master painters and allowing the viewer to absorb the similarities as well as the disparities that created such a powerful dialogue and relationship and explores how each artist sought new ways to express the visualized scene before him. This is a very fine monograph, vividly encouraging all art lovers to seek attendance at the exhibition wherever possible. Grady Harp, October 05

It's amazing how often painters in the "modernist" tradition have worked together in pairs. For years Monet and Renoir painted together, Gaugin and Van Gogh painted together for a time, and, most famously, Picasso and Braque "pioneered" cubism together, to borrow a verb from William Rubin's "Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism," another account of the pioneering enterprise of a pair of painters. Cézanne and Pissarro worked together often literally side by side for two decades, and "Pioneering Modern Painting," which was written by Pissarro's great-grandson, Joachim Pissarro, is the story of how Pissarro's and Cézanne's styles evolved in tandem and influenced the other's, but it is also more than that: although Cézanne was a year older than Monet, Cézanne's painting embodied a first critique of Impressionism, which Cézanne regarded as amorphous or structureless.

Cézanne's view of Monet is encapsulated in his famous remark about Monet, that "He was only an eye, but what an eye." Cézanne endeavored to go beyond the eye by developing new principles of structure that would discipline the space of the impressionist painting in the same way that the traditional techniques of painting had organized the space of a traditional painting. (Needless to say, Monet did more than rely on the eye--he was not a camera--but it was good impressionist dogma to claim to rely on the eye rather than on tradition, which is to say, convention. [What the Impressionists claimed is that a painting was the product of an eye in its organic mechanical operation and a "temperament," which begs the question of how a temperament is formed in the first place: the Impressionists seemed to regard a temperament as something as organic as an eye.])

Cézanne developed his technique in attempting to impose a new kind of structure on Impressionism, but his conception of technique was a novel one. The techniques that had been taught in the academy and the studios, many of them dating back to the Renaissance, had come to seem artificial and purely conventional, at least to the vanguard artists of the period, so Cézanne attempted to develop what Joachim Pissarro refers to as "a technique of originality," which is certainly a suggestive phrase. The trouble is, it refers to something that can't be pinned down. It has to be adapted to the specific situation at hand at every moment.

Of course, you can discuss Cézanne's technique, you can discover how he applied the paint to the canvas and structured the space of the canvas--and what Cézanne painted most certainly had a tremendous influence on Gauguin, Matisse, Seurat, and everybody else including especially Picasso and Braque when they were pioneering cubism, which is the great vanguard modernist style in painting. But the techniques Cézanne developed weren't a fait accompli for Cézanne when he was painting, and they couldn't be adopted wholesale by other painters as a coordinated package analogous to the ensemble of techniques traditionally taught in the academy or the studios. In pioneering modern painting, that is the fundamental problem that arose. Once the preconceived frame of reference was rejected, a paradoxical "technique of originality" was required.

Wow! This is a book not to be missed for those who love Impressionism and the contrast between two of the greats in a way scarecely ever shown. They were friends - mentor and student - and drew inspiration from each other over the years until the student (Cezanne) finally departed South and became his own (and more famous) man. But oh the beauty of Pizarro's work!

David Fox-Brenton

This lavishly illustrated book sets a high standard for art books. It features large reproductions of uniformly excellent quality. Each chapter is prefaced by full page close-ups of the work of Pizarro and Cezanne so you can get a real feel for their texture and brushwork. The comparisons are often of the same motif (since Pizarro and Cezanne often painted together). The text is informative without detracting from the importance of the art.

I was never able to appreciate Cezanne until I saw his work side by side with Pizarro's. Pizarro is an honest craftsman with charming color and technique but you can clearly see that Cezanne wanted to push the boundaries of painting quite a bit more and his works are energetic, experimental explorations. I came to appreciate both artists more by reading and absorbing the visual information in this beautiful book.

If you are looking for a book with great reproductions of either Pizarro or Cezanne, get this book.