January 3 is the closing date for Montclair Art Museum’s (MAM) “Cézanne and American Modernism,” the first exhibition to examine fully the influence of Paul Cézanne (1839‱906) upon modern American artists from 1907 to 1930. The exhibition explores the critical function American artists and others played in establishing the reputation of Cézanne, who has been universally acclaimed as the definitive bridge between late Nineteenth Century Impressionism and the Modern art movements of the Twentieth Century.
As the largest, most ambitious exhibition in the 95-year history of the museum, “Cézanne and American Modernism” comprises 131 works, including 18 works by Cézanne and paintings, works on paper, photographs and archival documents representing 34 American artists, as well as critics. Works in the exhibition are drawn from a wide range of museum collections, including MAM’s, and from important private collections.
Cézanne’s transformative effect on the work of American artists is revealed by their adaptations of his stylistic hallmarks and through their serial approach to subject matter †still lifes, landscapes, figurative works and portraits. These themes inform the organization of this exhibition, which opens with groundbreaking comparisons between the work of Cézanne and his American admirers. For the first time, Morgan Russell’s “Three Apples” (1910, Museum of Modern Art) is paired with the painting that directly inspired it, Cézanne’s seminal “Five Apples” (1877‷8, private collection of Eugene Thaw), which was lent to Russell by American collector Leo Stein.
A rare group of black and white photographs by Parisian photographer-gallery owner Eugène Druet of Cézanne’s paintings is exhibited for the first time since they were lent by their owner, the leading American modernist Max Weber, and displayed at Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery 291 in 1910. Cézanne’s first solo show in America at 291 is represented by the October 1911 issue of Stieglitz’s magazine Camera Work , with reprints of reviews. This exhibition and a show at New York’s Montross Gallery in 1916 were composed of watercolors by Cézanne. This first section of the show features examples of Cézanne’s works in this medium, which introduced his art to America.
Works from these shows are juxtaposed with examples by American artists, such as Charles Demuth and Max Weber.
The landmark Armory Show of Modern art in 1913, which first featured Cézanne’s oil paintings, as well as his prints and watercolors, is represented by rare postcards and a relatively unknown but seminal booklet on the artist by Elie Faure that was made available during the exhibition. Furthermore, the first Cézanne ever purchased by an American museum, “View of the Domaine Saint-Joseph” (1888‹0, the Metropolitan Museum of Art), is on view.
Cézanne’s influence upon American photographers of the early Twentieth Century is examined for the first time, in recognition of the exceptional importance that Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Paul Strand and others played in introducing Modernism to America. Still-life subjects suddenly emerge in avant-garde photography, and photographers’ serial approaches to landscape reflect Cézanne’s approach to his subjects.
Sections of the exhibition are devoted to chronological, thematic approaches to Cézanne’s renowned subjects. Still-life compositions by Max Weber, Morgan Russell, Charles Demuth, Arshile Gorky, Man Ray and many others are included, followed by landscapes by several painters, notably Marsden Hartley, one of a number of American artists who traveled to Aix-en-Provence to experience firsthand Cézanne’s native environment.
Others found native counterparts to Cézanne’s landscape motifs in New England, the West and elsewhere. Portraits by Stanton-Macdonald Wright, Alfred Maurer, Weber and others reveal American artists’ admiration for the innovative portraiture of Cézanne. Cézanne’s many variations on the theme of bathers in landscape settings were highly influential as modern incarnations of this classical, idyllic subject.
The traveling exhibition will next be on view at the Baltimore Museum of Art from February 14 through May 23, and will then travel to the Phoenix Art Museum, where it will be on view from July 3 through September 26.
The Montclair Art Museum is at 3 South Mountain Avenue. For information, www.montclairartmuseum.org or 973-746-5555.
