{"id":26375,"date":"2025-07-26T21:31:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T21:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/26375\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T21:31:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T21:31:11","slug":"my-trip-to-cezannes-home-town-he-was-a-cranky-genius-from-the-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/26375\/","title":{"rendered":"My trip to C\u00e9zanne\u2019s home town \u2014 he was a cranky genius from the start"},"content":{"rendered":"

Art has many powers but its superpower, the one that comes closest to magic, is its ability to turn nowhere into somewhere. All over the world, in situation after situation, we have seen it happen.<\/p>\n

Bilbao was one of the least visited cities in Spain until 1997, when the Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, turned it into a must-see art destination. Sleepy Arles in the south of France would be empty all year round if Van Gogh had not lived and suffered there. Even the Louvre in Paris would not be as popular if it did not possess the crowd magnet that is the Mona Lisa. Art can make people come to it in dramatic numbers.<\/p>\n

Which, I presume, is why 2025 has been deemed \u201cC\u00e9zanne Year\u201d by the small but ambitious Proven\u00e7al city of Aix. Paul C\u00e9zanne, painter, game changer, grinch, was born here in 1839, 186 years ago, and died here in 1906, 119 years ago. Neither 186 nor 119 constitutes a meaningful anniversary. There\u2019s no obvious reason to choose now for a celebration \u2014 except the thoroughly 2025 reason that it will bring in the crowds.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, Aix has created an ambitious C\u00e9zanne trail that sends us through the streets and culminates in a hoard of his works at the chief museum, the Mus\u00e9e Granet. It all starts at Jas de Bouffan, a historic bastide on what was once the edge of the city. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A year in Provence: the Bastide du Jas de Bouffan<\/p>\n

MUS\u00c9E GRANET<\/p>\n

Bastides are a cross between a ch\u00e2teau and a farm: posh houses surrounded by fields that in the past produced olive oil and wine. C\u00e9zanne\u2019s father, an Aix entrepreneur who made his first fortune manufacturing hats, and his second owning a bank, bought Jas de Bouffan in 1859. It was where C\u00e9zanne developed, learnt to paint and centred his art.<\/p>\n

The gardens are immediately familiar in their recurring combination of yellow and green. It\u2019s unmistakably a C\u00e9zanne combination, although the local nature found it first. The most exciting stretch of the visit, however, takes you indoors. Until recently the building was a wreck and most traces of C\u00e9zanne\u2019s story here had been lost. But in 1994 it was acquired by the city and a painfully slow restoration commenced. The results are finally on show.<\/p>\n

Upstairs, the tiny studio his father built for him has been decked out with simple props. In his mother\u2019s bedroom you can see the stucco relief of Leda and the Swan that later inspired a creepy response. But the location that quickens your pulse is the Grand Salon, the showy downstairs living room that the young C\u00e9zanne filled with frescoes. Between 1860 and 1870 this was his playground. <\/p>\n

\"Four-panel<\/p>\n

C\u00e9zanne\u2019s frescoes for its Grand Salon<\/p>\n

\u00a9GRAND PALAIS RMN\/AGENCE BULLOZ<\/p>\n

Not much of his original work remains \u2014the subsequent owners hacked it off the walls and sold it in bits. But a clever set of projections shows us exactly what he painted and where. The first scenes were evocations of the seasons, women pretending to be spring, summer, autumn and winter, done in a faux-naive style and signed, weirdly, \u201cIngres\u201d, after the great French neoclassical painter whose work is also on show at the Mus\u00e9e Granet. I can only imagine it was one of C\u00e9zanne\u2019s uncomfortable jokes. <\/p>\n

In the Grand Salon he also painted an ungainly portrait of his father reading a newspaper, now in the National Gallery in London, which was once positioned haughtily between the seasons like a depiction of Jupiter. A grateful son giving his generous father some wobbly thanks, maybe. <\/p>\n

\u2022 James Marriott: My journey through Provence in the footsteps of my favourite artists<\/a><\/p>\n

In truth, it all feels somewhat uncomfortable. The paintings are dark and brooding, where in other stately locations they would be light and charming. Strangely, some angsty religious scenes are added to the mix, with Christ descending into Limbo and an ugly and masculine Mary Magdalene lost in penitential prayer. The very act of filling the walls of the poshest room in the house with sprawling homemade frescoes seems awkward. With C\u00e9zanne, there\u2019s a suspicion that you\u2019re dealing with a painter who was mildly unhinged.<\/p>\n

\"Projected<\/p>\n

A set of projections shows visitors exactly what C\u00e9zanne painted and where<\/p>\n

L.PERREY<\/p>\n

The Jas de Bouffan pilgrimage can be followed by a visit to C\u00e9zanne\u2019s last studio, where he painted some of his finest still-lifes, and where the Mont Sainte-Victoire can be seen looming in the distance. Another exciting stop is the Bib\u00e9mus quarry where he discovered some of his most cubist rock formations. <\/p>\n

\u2022 Read more art reviews, guides and interviews<\/a><\/p>\n

But the culmination to any visit is the show at the Mus\u00e9e Granet, which houses a feast of 130 paintings and watercolours. The dark images from the Grand Salon projections are replaced here by the real things: broody slabs of wall scrawling with zero ambition to be elegant. C\u00e9zanne called this first style his \u201cmani\u00e8re couillarde\u201d, which translates as his \u201cballsy manner\u201d. The more you find out about him, the less cosy his thinking becomes.<\/p>\n

\"Painting<\/p>\n

The Card Players by C\u00e9zanne<\/p>\n

GRAND PALAIS RMN\/HERV\u00c9 LEWANDOWSKI<\/p>\n

All the themes he explored in the 40 years he lived at Jas are reviewed in the Granet show. His portrayals of the gardens are dreamy and calming, as if getting out of the house was a release: just him and the trees. There are many reasons why C\u00e9zanne came to be called the father of modern art but the meditative quality that makes its first appearance in the bastide gardens \u2014 where looking, painting, thinking become one and the same thing \u2014 is high on the list. <\/p>\n

It was also at Jas that he talked the farm workers into posing as his famous card players. His first still-lifes with apples were painted there, too, and his first bathers. A simple country house on the edge of Aix-en-Provence, inhabited by generous parents and a cranky artistic genius, was changing the course of art. <\/p>\n

C\u00e9zanne at Jas de Bouffan and the Mus\u00e9e Granet, Aix-en-Provence, to Oct 12<\/p>\n

What exhibitions have you enjoyed recently? Let us know in the comments below<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Art has many powers but its superpower, the one that comes closest to magic, is its ability to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":["post-26375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}