Cezanne and then some.

Since Monday was a holiday, we decided to hit the Cezanne show at the National Gallery. Unfortunately, my wife twisted her back during all of our travels and was incapacitated, so I packed the two kids up and hit the museum good and early. We'd tried to go on Sunday but didn't get there until 12:30 and couldn't find any parking anywhere. So I got to the museum at 10:20 a.m. (they open at 10:00 a.m. M-Sat), and it was still a struggle to find parking. Still, we found some between the East Wing and the Botanic Gardens.

It turned out to be a bonus, because we entered through the East Wing and found we could go straight to the Dada show that just opened. The Dada show is heavily contextual and my son wouldn't give me the time to read all the context, but he thought the idea of a urinal as a fountain was hilarious. However, he was disturbed by the first room of the exhibit, which consists of photos and a video of the carnage of World War One. He was, in fact, a bit scared.

They've organized the show around the major cities of the Dada movement, and I have to get back sometime without the kids to check out the context better.

The Cezanne show was more crowded although the line didn't extend outside the exhibit. However, it's no fun pushing a stroller through a crowd while trying to keep a very mobile 5 year old close. I certainly didn't get enough time to view the paintings, and I'm thinking of sneaking out of work one day so I can avoid the weekend crowds.

The collection of work is tremendous. They wouldn't let me photograph anything there, so I can't show my favorite part which was three paintings hung side by side of L'Estaque, all painted from different angles. I downloaded the images from the internet, but I'm too lazy to put them together to look nice. At any rate, the show is well-worth seeing and it's so good I'm actually thinking of buying the Exhibition Catalog, which is something I never do.

Cezanne's work changes so incredibly from his early work to his later work, which is really all about shapes and color arrangement. It's amazing to see how his work moves as he experiments with shape. Here are two paintings he did of Mont Saint-Victoire:

This first one, done between 1885 and 1895, has sharp angles defining the houses and the lines are bold. It's abstract, but objects are clearly defined. In the second one, below, done in the last years of his life, Cezanne nearly did away entirely with representation. The houses can still be seen at the bottom, but they are fainter and the bold outlines that distinguish objects in the earlier painting are either fainter or absent. His brushwork takes on more characteristics of patchwork, looking like stiff jabs at the canvas.

I am definitely going back again.