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Course: Europe 1800 - 1900 > Unit 5
Lesson 4: Post-Impressionism- Introduction to Neo-Impressionism, Part I
- Introduction to Neo-Impressionism, Part II
- Neo-Impressionist Color Theory
- Seurat, Bathers at Asnières
- Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte
- Seurat, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte – 1884”
- Van Gogh, Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin
- Think you know van Gogh? The Potato Eaters
- Van Gogh, Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear
- Van Gogh, The Bedroom
- Van Gogh's Irises: Getty Conversations
- Van Gogh, The Starry Night
- Van Gogh, The Starry Night
- The Pont-Aven School and Synthetism
- Paul Gauguin, Self-Portrait with Portrait of Émile Bernard (Les misérables)
- Paul Gauguin, Vision after the Sermon, or Jacob Wrestling with the Angel
- Gauguin, Nevermore
- Gauguin, The Red Cow
- Gauguin, Spirit of the Dead Watching
- Gauguin, Oviri
- Gauguin, Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?
- Gauguin and Laval in Martinique
- An introduction to the painting of Paul Cézanne
- Why Is This Woman in the Jungle?
- Cézanne, The Bather
- Cézanne, The Basket of Apples
- Cézanne, Still Life with Plaster Cupid
- Cézanne, Still Life with Plaster Cupid
- Cézanne, The Red Rock
- Cézanne, Still Life with Apples
- Cézanne, Turning Road at Montgeroult
- Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire
- Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire
- Cezanne, Card Players
- Cézanne, Bathers
- Cezanne, The Large Bathers
- Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge
- Post-Impressionism
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Cezanne, The Large Bathers
Paul Cézanne, The Large Bathers, 1906, oil on canvas, 82-7/8 x 98-3/4 inches / 210.5 x 250.8 cm (Philadelphia Museum of Art). In the Google Art Project: http://www.googleartproject.com/collection/philadelphia-museum-of-art/artwork/the-large-bathers-paul-cezanne-french-1839-1906/808050/. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- Do the man and the horse in the background symbolize something? They're in the middle of the painting, but seem to be more of an afterthought. It seems a strange addition.(2 votes)
- I believe they represent what was the current civilization. The distance shows the separation of the civilization and the bathers.(2 votes)
- Is there a term for the use of triangular structures in paintings such as this one? And does this theme of triangles in art date back to religious medieval art, or am I mistaken?(2 votes)
- Yes this does trace back for centuries, mostly to religious art representing the Father the son and the holy spirit. However, this definition is specific to a specific area of religion. You can find loads of information regarding triangles and what they represent. In many forms, the triangle can represent purity. At this point in time it is safe to say that the triangle is merely creating a strong wholesome composition while suggesting that these bathers are referring to something more pure and classical rather than women bathing in modern life.(1 vote)
- The comment made between4:24and4:30that Cezanne represents "painting being about the act of painting" rather than about formal representation puts this all into a nutshell for me. I doubt that I'd be able to do much formal representation, but this comment gives me the impetus to learn "how to paint". Thanks.(2 votes)
- I think it's really important to mention that Cezanne was likely inspired by/took from traditional African sculptures in his abstraction of historical Western representations of the female form. It's also clear in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon that you mention at the end.(1 vote)
- I have read somewhere (I know I can find the source, later, and will reference it later.) that Cezanne did not like the women in this painting. That he did not like what he had done with the nudes in this painting. Is this true?(1 vote)
- Well, that does seem at least strange, though I'd love to hear the quote. It's odd because, "As [Cezanne] disliked working directly from nude models, many of the figures he used were based on drawings from his days as a student, or work from other artistic masters." (http://www.artandcointv.com/blog/2012/06/paul-cezannes-the-bathers/). In other words, he specifically chose these women from a wide range of options; it was not as though he had to stick with a group of hired models.(1 vote)
Video transcript
(piano playing) Voiceover: Since the Renaissance
I think of Michelangelo's David, the body had been sacrosanct, the human
body had been accorded the most attention, the most respect in the history of art. Voiceover: That's right, the body
was a primary vehicle for artists
to convey ideas and emotions. Voiceover: But at the very beginning
of the 20th Century, in the last
years of Paul Cezanne's life, he begins to deconstruct the body. Voiceover: We're looking at Paul
Cezanne's The Large Bathers in
the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The subject of bathers is
one that has a long history, think of paintings of Diana
and Actaeon, by artists like
Titian and Rubens, for example, artists like Degas were grappling with how
to paint the nude in a modern environment. I think Cezanne is also picking
up that challenge of how do
you paint the modern nude. Voiceover: When we think about
Cezanne we think about an artist
who began as an impressionist, who's emphasis might have
been on the modern world. Voiceover: Even though he's worked
on this series of bathers for years the figures are remarkably unfinished, where we see sized canvas
underneath in so many places, where faces and forms of the body are
barely sketched in or barely begun. The figures are being
manipulated and moved and shifted in order to fit in to some
overall composition that he has in mind. Voiceover: Cezanne seems to be
reaching for a kind of classicism, you had mentioned Titian and this
painting seems to be reaching
back to those grand traditions. Voiceover: Right and if you look
at the Titian of Diana and Actaeon, that Cezanne probably just saw a print of, it does seem as though Cezanne
is thinking back to that Titian, to architectural forms, to the
pyramid of the Renaissance, to the way that Titian opened up the
central space of that composition to bring our eye into a deeper
session of the landscape. Voiceover: Titian, the great,
late Renaissance Venetian
is known for his glazing, for his ability to create chiaroscuro,
to create the turn of the body, flesh that has a kind of translucency
and Cezanne's figures seem as
if they're made out of plaster, they almost seem as their fresco,
they are so flat and so unfinished. Voiceover: If we think about Titian we
think about the sensuality of the body, especially the female body and
here we have female figures
who are anything but sensual. They're architectonic, they seem frozen in
their poses, their bodies are elongated, in some cases malformed, in some
cases we seem to see multiple
sides of the body at once, this is anything but a luscious,
sensual Venetian image. Voiceover: Cezanne is also
refusing the mythic context. In the foreground we might be in
a classicized Arcadian landscape, but on the far shore we can see the back
of a horse and a man walking away from us, towards a church, and we realize
that this is modern France. So, there's this very peculiar
pictorial construction that's
offering us in the foreground, at this grand scale, this classicizing
Renaissance subject matter, and then in the distance, something
that might be an excellent [Provance]. Voiceover: And all painted where huge
areas of the canvas are unfinished, outlines of forms are unstable and
repeated and seem to move and shift. Cezanne seems to be modeling the forums
of the bodies with warm and cool colors instead of using traditional
[unintelligible]. He's building on impressionism,
doing something classical, and in a way setting the stage
for the abstraction that will
emerge in the 20th Century. Voiceover: That's the real achievement
of this painting, taking classical forms and making them subservient to
the abstraction of the canvas. Cezanne is not copying the
Titian, he maybe inspired by
it, he maybe referencing it he's not looking at nudes in
his study and being faithful
to the shapes of their bodies. Voiceover: This is not based on optical
experience, this is not based on a scene. Voiceover: That's right, this is opening
form that allows for abstraction. You can see why this kind of
painting, which was shown the
year after Cezanne's death, in the retrospective in Paris,
would have been so important
to Matisse and to Picasso. Voiceover: It was shown in
1907, the very year that Picasso
completes Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, the first painting that begins
to deconstruct space and open up
forum in the early 20th Century. Voiceover: It is the foundation
of how and which cubism is built and so the possibility for
paintings to be about the act of
painting in a very formal sense as opposed to the representation
of nature that had been so much a
characteristic of the 19th Century. (piano playing)