A beautiful book, a somewhat far-fetched demonstration but a good piece of artwriting

books:


	• Cezanne & Giacometti: Paths of Doubt Donat Rutimann, Inken Freudenberg, ... Hatje Cantz, 2008 - 360 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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A beautiful book, a somewhat far-fetched demonstration but a good piece of artwriting

The catalogue for an exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, this book is a wonderful trove of beautiful reproductions of famous works by both artists. The works have been put together in order to serve the demonstration according to which there would be a mutual influence (albeit improbable since Cézanne never lived to know Giacometti)in the art of both Cézanne and Giacometti. If the latter obviously owes a debt to the master from Aix (who inspired or influenced almost every artist after him), the similarities between both artists, never studied before, also work, according to the authors, the other way around.

It takes some time and patience to understand the aim of this exhibition by reading the sometimes arduous, sometimes exciting text of the catalogue (the part that describes Giacometti's thoughts on Cézanne is particularly interesting and is an English translation of Giacometti's interviews with Georges Charbonnier which were originally held in French). It is of course up to the reader to be convinced (I, for one, was not) but I would eventually say it is worth the reading.

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Though they were born 62 years and hundreds of miles apart, synchronicities between Paul Cezanne and Alberto Giacometti continue to arise. Called "father of us all" by Pablo Picasso, the French Post-Impressionist Cezanne is widely regarded as the artistic bridge between Impressionism and Modernism, and he was highly influential to Giacometti, the Swiss sculptor known for his Surrealistic, elongated human forms of the 1940s, 50s and 60s. The subtitle of this volume, Paths of Doubt, refers in part to both artists' refusal of the movements by which they were embraced: in Cezanne's case, Impressionism, and in Giacometti's, Surrealism. Doubt also alludes to Cezanne's late success. His legendarily bad social skills led him from the artistic hub of 1870s Paris to the French countryside, where he lived as a recluse, only attracting attention for his work when he was in his late fifties. Giacometti, conversely, found early success with the Surrealists but broke off from them in the late 40s when he began making more realistic black figurative sculptures. His doubt surfaced in statements like these: "If I could make a sculpture or a painting (but I'm not sure I want to) in just the way I'd like to, they would have been made long since (but I am incapable of saying what I want). Oh, I see a marvelous and brilliant painting, but I didn't do it, nobody did it. I don't see my sculpture, I see blackness." This unique volume sheds light on Giacometti's stylistic allusions to Cezanne and finds surprising corollaries between the two masters' lives and work.

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