Still Life in Watercolors

sometimes against the grain of the medium,
oscillating constantly between the spare and
barely there and layered webs of stroke upon
stroke, between the faintest whisper of tint,
exquisite in its restraint, and a full concert
of color, rich in baroque sensuality. And
between the pencil and the palette, for Still
Life with Blue Pot and its companions also
engage the viewer in the duet of color and
line, playing upon and yet undermining the
traditional distinction between the two
while confusing and complicating the linear
sequence from drawn armature to the
fleshing-out of a work in paint that goes with
that distinction.
Recently it has been argued that the
Fauve painter Henri Matisse took the artistic
and philosophical distinction between
the drawn conception and the colored realization
of a work of art and inverted it in
his mature oeuvre: something of the same
may be said of Cezanne's late work in still life
and watercolor. 9 Thus the second half of this
study will involve us in a close examination
and even collaboration in the process of
drawing and painting and the colloquy
between them that Cezanne's watercolors
such as Still Life with Blue Pot increasingly
engage in. And like the story of still life, the
process ofwatercolor will spin a yarn rather
more humanly interesting, and certainly
more subtle, than the legend of Cezanne the
golden calf of modernism.
An exhibition of still lifes in watercolor
and graphite has grown up around Still Life
with Blue Pot. Called Cezanne in the Studio,
the exhibition examines two aspects of
Cezanne's relation to the atelier: first, the
evocation of the studio in the content, composition,
and genre of still life; second,
the artist's process of painting and drawing,
which takes place in the studio. Indeed, it
looks at Cezanne's work in light of the two
meanings of the word studio, of which the
English word study is a variation: study, as in
working space (with all that is found within
it), and study, as in act of working; studying;
producing etudes, sketches, or studies. Thus
this exhibition attempts to show how both
the contents and the procedures of the studio
were confronted in the space of the studio
and how the studio mattered as much to
Cezanne as the plein air motif. It includes
examples from all three periods—early,
middle, and late — of Cezanne's watercolor
career, in order to show how his attitude
toward the objects and processes of the studio
changed, loosened, and fundamentally shifted
over time. At the same time it focuses on
the last, Les Lauves, period of Cezanne's production,
between 7902 and 1906, when his
watercolor output was the richest and his still
lifes in the medium the most numerous, the
most adventurous, and the most "studious,"
according to the double meanings suggested
above. This was also the period when, most
people agree, Cezanne came into his own
in oil and in landscape and achieved, not
a dissolute old-age style, but rather his very
best work, without which he would not have
garnered the status of grand (if peculiar) old
master of modernism that has been granted
him. 10 It is the more poignant, distaff side of
that late labor, the part of it that took place
indoors and in watercolors, and without
regard for posterity, that this exhibition will
put on display. For all of his centrality to the
modernist tradition, Cezanne's project has
always been extraordinarily difficult to characterize:
this study, and the exhibition that
goes with it, will undertake to do so, not from
on high, but from an up-close, interior vantage
point. It will start with and return to its
centerpiece, Still Life with Blue Pot, setting it
in relation to other still lifes and other subjects,
to oils and to watercolors, and working
in and out of it in four close-study campaigns:
first, the biography of objects; second,
the landscape of still life; then, picture
and sketch; and finally, pencil lines and
watercolors. These are its opening lines; we
will end with Cezanne's finishing touches.
5
OPENING LINES