An Apple a day: the legacy of Cezanne.
Words and photos by @james.l.farnell
The latest art installation at the Tate Modern takes for its subject one of the most influential painters of the modern era, Paul Cézanne. Famed for the vibrant colours and intentionally bold brush strokes of his middle to late period, in particular his still lifes of apples, through paint, pencil and palette the exhibit offers a career spanning survey of his life and career.
When entering the exhibit, you encounter the man himself. In this complex self-portrait Cézanne is dressed in the sombre and drab clothing of his artistic life yet sat before a flamboyant pink background to represent his affluent upbringing.
After being rejected by the official Paris Salon, in 1863 Cézanne displayed his work with a group of defiant painters in the aptly named Salon des Refusés (salon of the rejected). Cézanne was not accepted by the other members. As well as fearing his bold style would endanger the exhibit, it seems clear that they did not like him on a personal level. He was, by all accounts, rude, shy, aggressive, prone to melancholy and generally what the French would refer to as grongnon. He was however one of the only artists to sell a piece at the exhibit.
In this humble piece, ‘Sugar Bowl, Pears and Blue Cup,’ no larger than a postcard we see the dark, heavy, claggy palette knife style that embodied his early work.
Moving to the other end of the room we see a second piece, Still life with Fruit Bowl. Larger, lighter and more vibrantly striking, in this piece we see the change of Cézanne’s style. What took us only a few footsteps took Cézanne 14 years as he transitioned into his Mature period.
The exhibit symbolically ends with this piece, Three Skulls on a Patterned Carpet, painted in 1900 at the end of Cézanne’s Final Period. As both his mental and physical health deteriorated Cézanne, now a widely celebrated artist, became a recluse plagued with paranoia. Much of his later work grew more abstract but returned in some sense to his earlier darker style.
As well as being one of the largest collections of Cézanne’s works under one roof, the exhibit beautifully tells the story of a man who forged his own way, broke away from Impressionism, fathered cubism and painted over 270 still lifes at a time when they were thought wildly unfashionable and how grateful we must be that he did.
Book your ticket here