The latest of the excellent Exhibition on Screen series looks at the CEZANNE: PORTRAITS OF A LIFE exhibition that was on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London earlier this year.
As is the usual format the documentary, narrated by Brian Cox, features an intimate insight in to the artist’s environment ( here Cezanne’s house and studio – the film opening with a dizzyingly shot sequence of the studio window leading to the studio today at Les Lauves, Aix-en-Provence ) – and detailed intense close up inspection of the paintings. There are beautifully filmed landscape sequences of both Paris and the countryside of Aix-en-Provence . it also features a specially commissioned score. We see how the exhibition is cleanly, coolly and elegantly designed and beautifully hung and some of the HUGE heavily ornate frames the works have.
The nature of the exhibition ( it is a collaboration between the National Portrait Gallery, the Musée d’Orsay, Paris and the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC ) means that there is intriguing tripartite curatorial input from the British French and Americans as well as Cézanne’s great-grandson Philippe. It is apparently the first time that there has been a specific exhibition analysing Cezanne’s portraits, as distinct from the still lifes and landscapes he is famous for.
Described by Picasso and Matisse as “the father of us all”, Paul Cézanne ( 1839 -1906) is regarded as one of the greatest artists of all time. Cezanne’s unique method of building form with colour and analytical approach to nature influenced the art of the Fauvists, Cubists and the following successive generations of avant-garde artists though to today.
Over his lifetime – a creative life of roughly 45 years- Cezanne painted almost 1,000 paintings of which around 160 are portraits. The exhibition is biographical and arranged chronologically, revealing his artistic life. The documentary explores the particular thematic and pictorial characteristics of his portraiture including his creation of complementary pairs and different versions of the same subject. ( a bit like Monet’s various series). As well the exhibition examines the extent to which particular sitters influenced the development of his work. The paintings on display include for example multiple portraits of himself and numerous portraits of his wife, Hortense Fiquet.
We also see Cézanne’s depictions of his father, his son, and of his Uncle Dominique, (dating from the 1860s ), for example, right through to his final portraits of the gardener Vallier, who helped in his studio at Les Lauves, Aix-en-Provence. We can see how the relationship between artist and subject changed and developed over time. The young Cezanne’s first self portrait in this exhibition is dark, brooding and rather sinister with intense, compelling eyes.
Over the series of his self portraits , we see Cezanne grow and change both in age and in development of artistic style – in some ways like the Rembrandt series of self portraits . And mention must be made of Cezanne’s portraits of art dealer Amboise Vollard and others including his great friend Emile Zola . We also learn about Cezanne’s life from voiceovers of letters written by Cezanne to his son, father, dealers, art critics, and to his friends. Also included are letters from his friends (such a Monet and Pissarro) to one another or to Cézanne.
The exhibition also features work from Cezanne’s transitional period during the 1870s and 80s, when he slowly changed from the use of impressionist-style representation to a more radical method of depicting colours, tones, and planes – as well as the materiality of paint – to capture his vision on canvas ‘flattening’ the surface of many works, breaking down the barrier between background and subject to give both equal attention. We also learn about how Cezanne was extremely demanding of his sitters. Cezanne was not after a depiction of his subject in a photographic realist style, but rather trying to capture the essence of the subject or at times with his use of line, shape and colour veering on abstract.
A most intriguing thoughtful look at one of the perhaps least known Impressionists .
CEZANNE: PORTRAITS OF A LIFE from Exhibition on Screen [Facebook] screens at selected cinemas from 7 October 2018.