Page 65 - Studio International - July-August 1969

Supplement summer 1969 standing-bather motif as evidence of Cezanne's
cats. Reff's provocative interpretation of the
New and recent art books anxieties over masturbation, is related by
Lindsay to the painter's phobia about touch,
le grappin. The foreword quotes Picasso on the
disquiet, the drama of Cezanne, and later in
his text, Lindsay relates this to stylistic fea­
tures in the artist's work:
Tensions Zola-is that he has: 'Thus at every point his definition of objects
'shown more fully than before how strongly
and of natural forms-his realization of
and temperament and intimately bound up were the develop­ them, as he would put it-was linked with
ments of the two men ... ' the inner turmoil of fear and desire, of frus­
Cezanne: his Life and Art by Jack Lindsay. 360 Lindsay quotes extensively from the early tration and release. Emotion always has its
pp, including notes and index, wi�h 4 colour Cezanne-Zola correspondence, and claims ·he physical or organic pattern, its complex of
and 86 monochrome illustrations. Evelyn, is the first to translate into English all tensions and satisfactions in the body; and
Adams & Mackay. 75s. Cezapne's poems. The English edition of the art forms are always, when creatively
Cezanne letters has long been out of print so potent, deeply based in this pattern or com­
After acknowledging the pioneer biographies these long extracts from the exchange of ideas plex.' (p. 195).
of Cezanne by Mack and Rewald, Lindsay and ideals c. 1858-61 make important docu­ The stress placed on Cezanne's sexual prob­
insists in his foreword that despite these and ments once more easily available to English lems does not prevent Lindsay from relating
later publications: readers. Lindsay finds in an early work by the painter's feelings to wider issues. For ex­
'there is no single book which gathers Zola, The Confession of Claude, the key to the ample, Cezanne's interest in Valles is briefly
the available facts and sets them in a criti­ two friends' creative drives: discussed, but Lindsay is mistaken in stating
cal perspective, with regard to both the 'the tension between the familiar romantic that no one 'has bothered to look at Valles'
ceaseless struggle inside the art and the per­ dream and the strangeness of actuality ... ' writings'. In 1932, Zevaes published a mono­
sonal tensions brought out by writers like Elsewhere (pp. 227-8) Lindsay rightly stresses graph to mark the hundredth anniversary of
Reff. It has been in the hope of producing how both Cezanne and Zola Valles' birth. Mack in 1935 was the first to
such a book that I have laboured.' 'looked back passionately to their youthful indicate the Valles-Cezanne relationship, ad­
This reference to Reff is but the first of many days together [in Aix-en-Provence] and mittedly a mere note on his political leanings.
acknowledgements to the American art-his­ drew an important source of moral and Lindsay (pp. 187-90) deserves credit for offer­
torian's articles that explore the erotic content aesthetic strength from them.' ing reasons for �ezanne's admiration for the
of Cezanne's early poetry and painting. Lind­ Over a third of the book is devoted to the first writer. But for Lindsay to state that Valles 'is
say's Bibliography lists eleven entries for Reff ten years of Cezanne's career as a painter and quite ignored by all the histories of literature'
between 1958 and 1963, and this spate of re­ Lindsay discusses the personal problems that is to overlook Jacques Dubois' book: Roman­
search becomes more evident when we see were to obsess Cezanne all his life: for ex­ ciers fraTlfais de l'Instantani au XIXe siecle,
that only Rewald (twenty-three entries, 1936- ample the early antagonism of the painter to Bruxelles 1963, which places Valles firmly in
61) and Bernard ( sixteen between 1891 and his father, coupled with his mother- sister­ the context of contemporaries like the de
1958) have more to their credit. In 1958, Per­ fixations. Cezanne's life-long strained re­ Goncourts, Daudet and Loti, and which sug­
ruchot's biography gathered together the lationships with women are seen to be gests the affinities of the writers' style with the
research that followed Rewald's 1939 mono­ momentarily relieved in a brief sexual har­ technique of the Impressionist painters.
graph. Lindsay now incorporates in his book mony with Hortense Fiquet that resulted in The five parts of Lindsay's text unfold in a
the material published in art-historical jour­ the birth of a son in 1872. The book has many clear chronological sequence: the very oppo­
nals over the past ten years. This wider dis­ analyses of sexual symbolism in Cezanne's site is true of the plates. There are eighty­
semination of controversial interpretations of work: apples, breasts and bottoms constitute three works reproduced in black and white
Cezanne's life and art makes the book a useful one aspect of love; another, love and death, which seems so disposed as to disorient the
compendium for the general public. is related to the skull theme; peaches and reader with their strange juxtapositions on the
Another claim in Lindsay's foreword-con­ vaginal cleft, pear and penis find their place page and their haphazard arrangement
cerning the relationship between Cezanne and alongside the sexual significance of dogs and throughout the book. Neither in time nor sub-

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