27 THE BIOGRAPHY OF OBJECTS
But what have these to do with still life? A larger, watercolored page from a different, slightly later notebook (mid-i88os), also <strong>in</strong> the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (figs. 11, 12), helps to provide the answer. It has a still life with knife and carafe on the recto of .the page and a bed and bedside table (which looks remarkably like the table Cezanne used <strong>in</strong> his studio) on the verso, so that studio and bedroom are literally flip sides of each other. It is one of many such conjunctions <strong>in</strong> Cezanne's pencil and watercolor notebook work, and it po<strong>in</strong>ts back to the bed and chair backs <strong>in</strong> the sequence of pages just described. Not still life <strong>in</strong> the traditional sense, they are just that <strong>in</strong> the literal mean<strong>in</strong>g of the phrase: <strong>in</strong>animate objects that do not move. They are like the furnish<strong>in</strong>gs <strong>in</strong> some of the still lifes proper, such as <strong>Still</strong> <strong>Life</strong> with Basket; or, The Kitchen Table, and they provide the miss<strong>in</strong>g l<strong>in</strong>k between still life and other spaces of domestic use and human habitation. They are also tied to the render<strong>in</strong>gs of Cezanne's son: awake, perhaps sitt<strong>in</strong>g up <strong>in</strong> a chair <strong>in</strong> one, asleep and immersed <strong>in</strong> a bed <strong>in</strong> the two others, his detached hand <strong>in</strong> a sleep<strong>in</strong>g position that recalls the wak<strong>in</strong>g body language of sitt<strong>in</strong>g at a table and draw<strong>in</strong>g or writ<strong>in</strong>g. And they suggest one of the prime thought processes of the studio, <strong>in</strong> which the genre of still life and the medium of pencil and watercolor on paper participate equally: the note-tak<strong>in</strong>g l<strong>in</strong>kage of disparate spaces and subjects <strong>in</strong> the unconscious logic of notebook sequenc<strong>in</strong>g and recto/verso alternation. Elsewhere Cezanne would tie bodies to apples and oranges on s<strong>in</strong>gle sheets, and <strong>in</strong> this notebook and others he runs through the entire range of subjects that used to make up the old academic hierarchy of genres: history pa<strong>in</strong>t<strong>in</strong>g and the nude, genre imagery, portraiture, landscape, still life. But <strong>in</strong> certa<strong>in</strong> sequences the relationships among the furnish<strong>in</strong>gs of the studio and the house, the space of still life, and human <strong>in</strong>timacy are more direct and poignant. In 1885 Cezanne sketched his wife, as he had done earlier with his son, with her head s<strong>in</strong>k<strong>in</strong>g diagonally <strong>in</strong>to a pillow (upper right), on the same page with a more fully rendered hydrangea blossom (left), aga<strong>in</strong> oriented differently, requir<strong>in</strong>g the turn<strong>in</strong>g of the page (horizontal for Hortense's head, vertical for the flower) or the viewer's head to see each <strong>in</strong> its proper orientation (fig. 13). As <strong>in</strong> the pages on which Paul is shown sleep<strong>in</strong>g, Hortense's head seems to s<strong>in</strong>k sleepily <strong>in</strong>to the paper as if it were a pillow from which she gazes half-awake, not quite at her viewer, with pillow folds, wisps of hair, and crease <strong>in</strong> the neck all caught with a delicate pencil that then produces, as if automatically, a hover<strong>in</strong>g, caress<strong>in</strong>g set of hatch marks, detached from their referent, just barely attach<strong>in</strong>g her to the cream surface of the paper. Unlike the page with the two views of his son's head, and despite the fact that one is filled <strong>in</strong> with watercolor and the other not, the draw<strong>in</strong>gs on this sheet must have been done at the same time, for there is a conscious punn<strong>in</strong>g of names between Hortense and the French word for hydrangea, hortensia, as if the sketch sheet were a natural place for wordplay to jo<strong>in</strong> hands with the work<strong>in</strong>g out of visual ideas, where l<strong>in</strong>guistic play can be tried out as a visual analogy (which is discovered to yield as much difference as similarity). 20 Here there seems little to l<strong>in</strong>k the two sketches but the names of their subject matter—except perhaps the fem<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>e connotations of the flower, not to mention 28 CEZANNE IN THE STUDIO
- Page 6 and 7: CEZANNE IN THE STUDIO Still Life in
- Page 8: Notes to the Reader Objects in the
- Page 12 and 13: Foreword Paul Cezanne's role as the
- Page 14 and 15: Lenders to the Exhibition Our thank
- Page 16 and 17: Opening Lines L/ ike many a still l
- Page 18 and 19: Figure 2 Paul Cezanne Still Life wi
- Page 20 and 21: sometimes against the grain of the
- Page 22: Terrasse, Les acquarelles de Cezann
- Page 25 and 26: Figure 3 Paul Ce~zanne Still Life w
- Page 27 and 28: CEZANNE PAINTED STILL LiFES from th
- Page 29 and 30: palette for the dark density of the
- Page 31 and 32: Figure 8 Paul Cezanne St/7/ Life wi
- Page 33 and 34: went on like this, with sojourns in
- Page 35 and 36: It was also in Paris that the other
- Page 37 and 38: Cezanne and his wife, it became a h
- Page 39 and 40: Plate 2 Paul Cezanne Head of a Chil
- Page 41: Plate 3 Paul Cezanne The Artist's S
- Page 45 and 46: Figure 13 Paul Cezanne Madame Cezan
- Page 47 and 48: Figure 14 Paul Cezanne Curtains, 18
- Page 49 and 50: Plate 5 Paul Cezanne Jacket on a Ch
- Page 51 and 52: Plate 6 Paul Cezanne St/7/ Life wit
- Page 53 and 54: Plate 7 Paul Cezanne Still Life wit
- Page 55 and 56: And then there is the baroque still
- Page 57 and 58: Carol Armstrong (Princeton: Princet
- Page 60 and 61: The landscape of Still seí i/s /oo
- Page 62 and 63: e touched and grasped (detail 3). T
- Page 64 and 65: Detail 5 Figure 17 Paul Cézanne Mo
- Page 66 and 67: JHESE DAYS SOMEONE STILL LEAVES APP
- Page 68 and 69: Three general observations that der
- Page 70 and 71: other, though few of his compositio
- Page 72 and 73: Figure 24 Gustave Courbet (French,
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- Page 76 and 77: surface of the painting itself. In
- Page 78 and 79: Figure 28 Paul Cézanne Young Itali
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- Page 82 and 83: the genre and the animate world of
- Page 84 and 85: Plate 11 Paul Cézanne Geraniums, 1
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- Page 91: Detail 6 > layered surface, whose m
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of exhibitable work: the Impression
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fruits have escaped their container
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Plate 14 Paul Cézanne Apples, Bott
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posy to indicate its existence and
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Plate 16 Paul Cézanne Plaster Cupi
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Figure 36 Paul Cézanne Seated Woma
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Figure 38 Paul Cézanne Ginger Pot
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Plate 17 Paul Cézanne Still Life w
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Figure 40 Paul Cezanne Still Life w
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Plate 19 Paul Cezanne Still Life wi
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NOTES 1. See Peter Galassi, Corot i
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Figure 41 Computer-enhanced infrare
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Saint Marcel les Annonay paper (det
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Detail 11 splatters, and subtle fau
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Detail 14 irresolution while unsett
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Detail 18 horizons that were not es
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Detail 21 visibly definite contour
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Detail 27 > Detail 26 red, one buil
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I F STILL LIFE WITH BLUE POT is UNU
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Plate 20 Paul Cezanne St/7/ Life: F
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Plate 21 Paul Cezanne 7/iree Pears,
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evident, but that process is method
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in my view ; is what Cezanne's late
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water to pigment, and the watercolo
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a fundamental rethinking of the str
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Jinishing Touches 0n the side of th
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is germane to its objects as well a
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Keys to Details Key to details 1-6
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Key to details 14-29 143
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Emperaire, Achilla, 19 esquisses, 7
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landscape of, 45-50; 53, 64 line an