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Edited by Felix Baumann, Evelyn Benesch, Walter Feilchenfeldt, Klaus Albrecht Schroder. Essays by Friedrich Teja Bach, Felix Baumann, Evelyn Benesch, Gottfried Boehm, and Walter Feilchenfeldt.

The story of Cezanne's fame and influence would be incomplete without taking into account the impact of his unfinished paintings. Immediately following his death, these works were already held in high regard both by Matisse and the Fauves and by Picasso and the Cubists. This book looks at these paintings, a crucial aspect of Cezanne's body of work, and thus a signpost in 20th century art that pointed the way to the future, right up to Abstract Expressionism. Cezanne aimed to renew painting on the basis of classicism, and to establish Impressionism so that it would hold a prominent place in museums. But no other artist has created so many seemingly unfinished works. Examining his paintings and watercolors, including the monumental still lifes and the late paintings from Montagne Sainte-Victoire, this book shows clearly that what is 'unfinished' in Cezanne's work is not a sketch, not a preparatory study. Detailed essays that compare finished paintings with so-called unfinished ones provide a completely new insight into the creative process of the father of modernism. ... Read more

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A Bit Thin On Ideas
This book probably deserves 3 1/2 stars but since I've got to go with round numbers I'd say 3 is closer to the truth than 4. I may have been influenced by the fact that I have read an awful lot of stuff on Cezanne, but I don't think so. This book was put out to coincide with an exhibitionthat has "finished/unfinished" as its theme i.e.-when is apainting truly "complete". The idea wears a bit thin after 400pages. The book starts off with essays by about 5-6 people that take up thefirst 120 pages. The last couple of essays are interesting and contain somegood ideas but the first several essays pretty much say the same thing overand over (many of Cezanne's paintings that were not actually finished are"complete" from an artistic standpoint) and if a couple of theseessays had been left out no harm would have been done. The same point ishammered home in too many of the "mini-essays" that accompanyeach painting and sometimes the contributors get a bit carried away inseeing genius and "completion" in even the works that are clearlyfailures not only by Cezanne's own standards but also, I think, by thestandards of the intelligent layperson and probably also of many arthistorians. The book does get high marks, though, for many high qualitycolor reproductions and the Cezanne lover will be sure to find his/herfavorite genre well-represented. You get many portraits as well aslandscapes and those luscious still-lifes (my particular favorite). One ofthe interesting ideas contained in the book is that the reason thestill-life seems to be the category where Cezanne really excelled is thatthe subject was the one best suited to his temperament. He was an extremelyslow worker and did not like changes in the "motif". For example,he did not like it when human sitters would move and he did not likechanges in the weather and in light conditions as the changes would makehim rethink what he was doing and oftimes start over or have to makecorrections. With the still-life Cezanne could arrange things just the wayhe wanted and could use artificial flowers that would not wither as heworked, etc.Also note that the book contains many works in watercolor,which is a medium that Cezanne excelled in. If you are not familiar withhis watercolors I think you will be pleasantly surprised... ... Read more

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CŽzanne revolutionized the way we see and transcribe the essence of the material world. His position is pivotal: his style is part of the canon of early modernism and his iconic images, his still lifes, and landscapes are associated with a unique analytical approach that changed the face of modern art. But how did CŽzanne see and portray himself? His self-portraits are a surprisingly neglected area of study and there has been no extended and in-depth analysis of how CŽzanne's signature style was used to fashion his self-image. Steven Platzman's accessible and richly illustrated book fills this gap by examining the stylistic development of CŽzanne's self-portraits in an effort to understand how the artist saw himself and others, and how he positioned himself in the art world and French society. Platzman's detailed analysis of the paintings offers new explanations and assessments of significant aspects of CŽzanne's career and oeuvre. Abundant and exquisitely reproduced illustrations, including crucial details, make CŽzanne: The Self-Portraits an essential resource for anyone interested in this French master.

Platzman demonstrates that the expectation of a self- portrait from a master artist goes beyond color and structural analysis. He questions whether a CŽzanne self-portrait reveals something of the artist's emotions, or whether it obscures the feelings of the man whose celebrated and groundbreaking style altered the course of the history of art. The author also thoroughly and clearly fleshes out the historical and artistic contexts of mid-nineteenth century France and investigates CŽzanne's complex relationship with the avant-garde in the 1860s and early 1870s. He provides a new explanation for CŽzanne's flirtation with impressionism and his subsequent adoption of a more personal, idiosyncratic style. He also takes a new and radically different view of CŽzanne's so-called "narrative self-portraits," exploring for the first time his relationship with the icon of the femme fatale. Through these close visual analyses, readers will come to a greater understanding of the concerns, ambitions, and relationships that shaped CŽzanne's oeuvre. ... Read more

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With 111 black-and-white, and 82 full color illustrations
Especially acclaimed for his memorable images, still lifes, and landscapes, Paul Cezanne was one of the most influential of the European artists in the early modernism movement. In Cezanne: The Self-Portraits, independent art historian Steven Platzman carefully and meticulously analyzes the stylistic development of Cezanne's self-portraits as a means of understanding how the artist saw himself, how he perceived others, and how he positions himself both in art communities and avant-garde society of mid-nineteenth century France. Platzman provides a new and compelling explanation for Cezanne's experiments with impressionism and the creation of his own far more personal and idiosyncratic style. With Platzman's informative, challenging, accessible text superbly being superbly presented and enhanced with 111 black-and-white, and 82 full color illustrations, Cezanne: The Self-Portraits is a welcome and invaluable contribution to personal, professional, and academic Art History collections in general, and Cezanne enthusiasts in particular. ... Read more

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CEZANNE FOR CHILDREN
One of the most difficult challenges is finding biographies of the great art masters for children. Marie Selliers solves this problem for parents in this compact volume highlighting the major aspects of Cezanne's life and art from A to Z.

Translated from the french, this small book is an ideal introduction about the artist's life for children seven to ten years old. Each chapter is approximately two pages long, illustrated with Cezanne's art work and the story of his life. The titles of the chapters are in french with the appropriate translations.

Your child will enjoy this book of pictures and even adults will find themselves intrigued by his work. The french is ideal in introducing your child to a foreign language through art. Your child will also learn about the one of the great masters in western art. I highly recommend this as a gift book that your child will cherish for years. ... Read more

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This stunning series provides a vivid picture of the lives and works of some of the world's greatest artists and their influence on the world of art. The books include: new editions feature a fresh design and revised text to make the stories and art more accessible to younger readers; examples of the artists' work at various stages of their career; photographs and portraits which illustrate the artists' life story; and, time line with key dates in history linked to the artists' life, which provides further context for the readers. ... Read more

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Although widely regarded in the twentieth century as the great forerunner and prophet of a cerebral and abstract modern art, Paul Cezanne belonged to the generation of the Impressionists, with whom he shared an attachment to picturing nature and an insistence upon personal expression and immediacy of sensation as the foundations for his art. Richard Shiff, director of the Center for the Study of Modernism at the University of Texas at Austin, traces the construction of Cezanne's reputation by early critics and by the symbolist artists who saw in him a precursor of their own tendencies, and explores the multiple meanings of Cezanne's paintings both for his contemporaries and for audiences today.
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Monumental
The monumental effort of many collectors, both public and private, came together in 1989 to show and reproduce this body of work as nearly in its entirety as possible.This is the reason this book gets a 5-Star rating.The book is truly remarkable in the overwhelming quality and quantity of the images, a collection I doubt will be seen in print again.

This said, the fact that this book has never been reviewed in 20 years on this site is puzzling.Two obvious explanations are not only viewers' overwhelming interest in the Impressionist landscape and still life works for which the artist is best known, but also the clear reluctance to deal with the work of Cezanne that was narrative or Symbolist, that is, fiction, the true work space of the figure.

This is a space that is indivisible from self-exposure, and for that reason also a site of courage for the artist, but as such, also a locus of merciless criticism from whomever would present themselves.And criticism it does receive in a large dose from the major essayist of this book, Mary Louise Krumrine.

Cezanne's early work is a definite pre-requisite for the "Bathers" precisely because it is not Impressionist.This period is covered by two books:Mary Tompkins Lewis, Cezanne's Early Imagery ,and Lawrence GowingCezanne: The Early Years 1859-1872.After Cezanne subsumed himself into Pissaro's Impressionist regime, he is concentrated on Nature.But as time wore on he knew he would never gain recognition in the Salon from landscape or still life, but had to present figure work.He viewed the Salon as the great meritocracy of French culture. and worked for his entire life to be admitted next to Puvis or Bouguereau. As it turns out, he wasn't, it wasn't, it was corrupt.His Bathers were is life long attempt in this.

As these themes are reprised by Krumrine in "Bathers" (she was a contributor to Gowing) they take on a gratuitously false model of the artist and his intentions, couched in early feminist critque and resuscitated pseudo-psychological profiling by Rubin (MOMA,on Picasso), that is the foundation of what ultimately becomes a not so subtle attack on Cezanne as a misogynist, a theme which applied to the figurative art and carried to the end of the book.

Ironically, Krumrine partitions herself off from this and sees herself as above liking or disliking, as she is writing art history as Wofflin or Panofsky, self-legimating her endeavor. But I feel every time she sees a woman depicted, she mis-interprets Cezanne's early work, The Modern Olympia, the Eternal Feminine, clearly both satires on Parisian sociology, and failed to see Balzac's novella Le Chef d'Oeuvre Inconnu as both a philosophic work and a satire on the plight of artists.

She does however contribute an interesting picture of Cezanne working from published anthologies of the day which featured many classical paintings.By-passing live models, Cezanne would work with copies of certain figure poses and groupings, which Krumine assiduously catalogs in a Glossary of her own contruction.It is when she assigns functionality to these in the form of labels and content that the essay assumes a monumentality of its own image, becoming self-serving in relation to the work, which is clearly more modestly conceived.

Cezanne was indeed a timid man in some respects, and endowed with limited representational skills, especially figures, both male and female. While he can show academic drawing skills as any student of the period, when confronted with drafting original figures and groups, he, like most of us without further practice, failed.As he was not interested in working as a Naturalist, or projecting themes or appearances of the Salon, or the painting methods of the Salon, Cezanne had to teach himself how to make credible presentations from alla prima methods, just as his other work.

The results are well documented in this book, where, I think, the pictures support that Krumrine's essay is but a footnote to the achievement.
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Two hundred and eighty of Cezanne's most important oil paintings and watercolours fill the pages of this elegant little volume. ... Read more