Postcard from Cezanne’s show at MoMA

Today’s post is from special guest star Anne Walker. Anne majored in Fine Arts with a focus in painting at Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT in 1989. She started taking classes at the League a couple of years ago. I met her in Fran’s Giant Figures workshop in February 2020 (shortly before our classes went online). I admire Anne’s artwork, as well as her philosophies about art making. She and I have been talking a lot about Cezanne lately, and on a lark, Anne decided to see his show of drawings at MoMA. She sent her thoughts about the show via email, and I appreciated her thoughts so much I asked if I could share her letter. Below is a personal artist’s tour of the Cezanne Drawing show at MoMA.

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Postcard from Anne Walker

I just returned from the Cezanne drawing show at MoMA (through Sept 25).  The reviewers rave about the show – and they are right.  It is revelatory to see the drawings. When you see the full range of drawings across 50 years, it becomes clear that as much as Cezanne was a revolutionary – he was a classicist. He straddled generations.

Cezanne studied classical sculpture, and a few favorite painters- like Delacroix, his whole life. He had plaster copies of classical sculpture – like the Cupid by Pierre Puget (a sculptor I didn’t know) – kicking around his studio. Cezanne drew those objects again and again. He studied how forms (and shapes within a form) connect. He followed the shapes of foot to calf to thigh up the torso through the arm, creating undulating rhythmic volumes. Connected shapes that carry your eye around the picture.

Here’s something else I think Cezanne got from studying sculpture.  In his drawings the foot, the elbow, the hand on a stump will often have an open/broken outline connecting the object to the background – much like how a Michelangelo figure melts into the marble block it’s carved from. Cezanne consistently leaves some part of the edges of objects open so the form never disconnects from the background.

Something I didn’t understand until I saw the drawings and the watercolors – Cezanne was extremely aware of the paper. The lines and bits of shadow serve to sculpt the paper and give it substance and volume. The untouched paper becomes light, space and form connecting and undulating across the surface. Cezanne isn’t just placing dabs of color to represent shadow or drawing multiple lines just because he shifted perspective.  He is using line and color to carve paper into substance. He said, (highly paraphrased) that the center of an object is the focus and the area closest to the eye is left white, with all the lines pushing the center forward. This is harder to see in the paintings, easier to see in the drawings.

Cezanne studied same things again and again from different angles. It was a lifetime study of how forms connect and resonate, striving for harmony/balance. He described studying nature as the ultimate study because of its complexity of forms and the challenge of capturing both the sensation of the experience and the search for structure. By the time he was making his great landscapes later in life, you can see the influence of decades of studying the classical figure.

Another highlight of the show are the casual notebook sketches. Cezanne let fragments of objects collide and combine in imaginative ways that look absolutely contemporary and fresh.  

I’ll leave you with a fun fact. The Three Pears (a stunning watercolor) was shown at auction. Degas and Renoir argued over who got the piece and decided to draw lots.  Degas won. 

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