Cézanne: A life Paperback – October 3, 2013
by Alex Danchev (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars 100 ratings
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Today we view Cézanne as a monumental figure, but during his lifetime (1839-1906), many did not understand him or his work. With brilliant insight, drawing on a vast range of primary sources, Alex Danchev tells the story of an artist who was never accepted into the official Salon: he was considered a revolutionary at best and a barbarian at worst, whose paintings were unfinished, distorted and strange. His work sold to no one outside his immediate circle until his late thirties, and he maintained that 'to paint from nature is not to copy an object; it is to represent its sensations' - a belief way ahead of his time, with stunning implications that became the obsession of many other artists and writers, from Matisse and Braque to Rilke and Gertrude Stein.
Beginning with the restless teenager from Aix who was best friends with Emile Zola at school, Danchev carries us through the trials of a painter tormented by self-doubt, who always remained an outsider, both of society and the bustle of the art world. Cézanne: A life delivers not only the fascinating days and years of the visionary who would 'astonish Paris with an apple', with interludes analysing his self-portraits, but also a complete assessment of Cézanne's ongoing influence through artistic imaginations in our own time. He is, as this life shows, a cultural icon comparable to Monet or Toulouse.
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Homage to Bird
2.0 out of 5 stars Not for Art Lovers
Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2019
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The late Alex Danchev was a professor of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews. Late in his unfortunately short life (he died just short of his 61st birthday), he took to writing biographies of artists, Braque and this book on Cézanne.
That Danchev was not trained as an art historian is most evident in this book about one of Western art's greatest and most important painters. Danchev read seemingly everything about Cézanne in English and much in French. Consequently, he gives us minute details about the lives of Cézanne and his contemporaries. Yet there is nothing here that follows the stylistic development of Cézanne's paintings, much less explains how Cézanne went from crude paintings of thick impastos applied with a knife to the light, airy works where the subject is as much the relation of strikes of color to one another as anything else. To make up for this lack of insight into the artist and his work, Danchev gives us an overabundance of lengthy quotations: from ancient writers that Danchev imagines Cézanne was thinking of in a particular situation to contemporaries to figures from many decades after Cézanne's death such as Samuel Beckett (not commenting on Cézanne but presenting views on life that Danchev imagines Cézanne had).
Hilary Spurling showed with her outstanding two-volume biography of Matisse that a non-art historian can write incisively about art and an artist, but Danchev proves himself not up to her level.
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Cher Carter
1.0 out of 5 stars This is not a biography
Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2020
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I purchased this book to learn about Cezanne's life, both personal and artistic. This is not a biography. It barely provides any information about Cezanne's life and certainly not in a chronological manner. It does provide many quotes from Zola novels and comments by others, but I gave up 1/3 of the way through, feeling I knew--let alone understood--no more about Cezanne and his development as an artist than I did before I opened the book. A huge disappointment.
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Sharon Knettell
4.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary scholarship, very good read.
Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2013
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As an artist I am often leery of biographies of artists as they tend to glamorize the more salacious aspects of an artists life.-This did not- perhaps because Cezanne was more monk-like in his dedication to his art. I learned a great deal about his extraordinary work methods- his insistence, in trooping out day after day painting and experiencing his landscapes. This is contrary to much current practice of landscape copiers- I can't even call them painters, who snap photos and retire to the studio to finish them up. I was teaching a figurative workshop in Scottsdale, Arizona- a place of breathtaking vistas when I passed a 'landscape class'. The students were all inside, lined up on long tables, while the instructor showed them how to copy the small pictures taped next to their canvasses. Cezanne was one with his landscapes. He felt them and it it extaordinarily evident in the originality of his painting of them- they are not mere renderings.
He painted his apples and portraits with the same intense scrutiny, strangely he painted his nudes from his head or old school drawings.
There are some wonderful descriptions of his methodology and the artist matierials he used. Danchev describes the colors and pigment Cezanne used- useful to any painter. I would have loved a bit more of that.
The only quibble I have with this book is a lay person trying to get inside a head of a painter- Danchev did a fair job, but I wish art writers or critics would like Adam Gopnik take drawing lessons from Jacob Collins just to see what a struggle it is to learn how to draw. Maybe then we would have better art critics and biographers who are more in tune with their subjects.
The picture reference could be better- they are small- but this should impel a visit to a museum so see them- well worth the trip.
All in all it is a wonderful book and a good read. It leads to a greater appreciation and understanding of the enormous impact Cezanne had on art.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars A masterful biography
Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2013
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This is an impressive work: prodigious research, lively presentation, and written from a very compassionate point of view. Working my way through the biography, I felt each chapter giving me a bit more information or another point of view until by the closing chapters I felt I had acquired a satisfying sense of who the man was from his own words, from the events of his life, from contemporary accounts, and from other appreciations (notably for me the wonderfully sensitive and expressive Rilke). But the book is work. It is written beautifully but organized less than helpfully with footnotes all collected at the end and illustration legends at the front. This is a shame, because the illustrations are well discussed and the footnotes are themselves full of fascinating information. But the laborious layout is a minor matter compared to the pleasure of reading this warm and intelligent account.
27 people found this helpful
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Hilary
5.0 out of 5 stars The book is great. I just have to comment that I bought ...
Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2015
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The book is great. I just have to comment that I bought both the kindle and hardcopy edition - so I could actually read an art book in bed! I go between them but do most of the reading on the kindle because the illustrations and footnotes are linked. You can click on them see the reference and click back without flipping through the enormous volume. Since images of Cezanne's work are easily found I recommend the kindle version for this brilliant and, from the viewpoint of a painter, satisfying biography.
5 people found this helpful
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careful
1.0 out of 5 stars A great story made dull and boring
Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2018
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I love Cezanne and like any famous artist had an interesting life but I found myself losing the will to live while reading this. Like wading through syrup.
3 people found this helpful
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PVreader
5.0 out of 5 stars Best biography for Cezanne
Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2014
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The writer looks far beyond the cliches which have accumulated regarding Cezanne's life and career over the years. The illustrations are both pertinent and well produced. Do not mistake this for a 'coffee table' book.
4 people found this helpful
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Sheila La Farge
5.0 out of 5 stars The best book on Cezanne's life
Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2017
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I reordered this as I lost my first copy. The best book on Cezanne's life.
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CGKent
4.0 out of 5 stars Keep going to the end
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 31, 2015
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Not as easy a read as I thought it was going to be. Cezanne's life was not filled with fascinating incident. He lived almost exclusively an inner life, unlike some of those who followed him such as Picasso or Matisse. A biographer is obliged to flesh out the story with the lives of those who meant most to his subject. So what we have is a lot of Emil Zola, Cezanne's great childhood friend, in existential musings. This is not uninteresting but Danchev does draw it out a little too much. Where the author scores heavily is in his writing about Cezanne's progress as a painter and in discussing the paintings themselves. despite the longueurs, this is a worthwhile read.
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Riverman
5.0 out of 5 stars The Cezannian Revolution
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 21, 2013
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At times I seemed to lose my way in this book. That might have been due to my lack of attention, but some sections read like little discrete essays and these sometimes seemed to derail the narrative of Cezanne's life. The section on pages 328 to 330, for example, is like a small essay on Cezanne's relationship with trees. However, this is a small criticism. As W.H. Auden observed, a shilling life will give you the facts and Alex Danchev's marvellous biography will give you far more than that. His motivation for writing the book appears to have been a burning desire to understand Cezanne's genius, and I doubt that there is a better reason for doing so. Towards the end of the book, and following a fascinating account of a meeting between two young artists and Cezanne in 1906, at the end of his life - a meeting that resulted in a remarkable series of photographs of Cezanne painting the Mont Saint-Victoire and which are reproduced in the book - he gets to the heart of the matter:
'At the core of the Cezannian revolution is a decisive shift in the emphasis of observation, from a description of the thing apprehended to the process of apprehension itself. Cezanne insisted that he painted things as they are, for what they are, as he saw them. The issue is what he saw - how he saw.'
Drawing extensively on the reactions of Cezanne's contemporaries and those who have ever since tried to understand his significance, Alex Danchev has, to my mind, written a profound and moving biography, and one that is worthy of its subject.
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