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New York Times
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Learning to Love Cézanne in His Picture-Perfect Hometown
Paul Cézanne's artistic muse had sweeping shoulders, an enigmatic face and majestic beauty that loomed over his life's work. But that obsession was a mountain, not a woman. Seduced by the sun's chameleon-like effect on its limestone ridges, Cézanne painted more than 80 versions of Montagne Ste.-Victoire, a granite massif near his hometown, the southern French city of Aix-en-Provence. Aix is where Cézanne (1839-1906) was born and first put brush to palette. It's where he painted many of his masterpieces, and it's where he died. This year, from June to October, the city is honoring that legacy with a series of events linked to the reopening on June 28 of both the renovated Bastide du Jas de Bouffan, the artist's 18th-century family manor, and the Atelier des Lauves, his last workshop. This celebration, Cézanne 2025, made Aix one of The New York Times 52 Places to Go in 2025 and will bring up to 400,000 more visitors to a city that's already a prime summer destination. Key sites will be open only for guided visits, so reserve ahead. This outpouring of admiration would have never happened a century ago. The Aixois generally derided the painter during his lifetime: The Impressionists aimed to please with their pretty palette. The Post-Impressionist Cézanne shocked with his bold colors and geometric forms. 'It takes time to like Cézanne because he is more complex than you realize,' said Bruno Ely, director of the Musée Granet, which will present the largest collection of Cézanne's work to date as part of Cézanne 2025. Blvd. Aristide Briand Paris France St.-Sauveur Cathedral Aix-en- Provence Rue Mignet Las Galinas Place Richelme Palais de Justice Aix-en-Provence Palais Comtale Bar Le Grillon Rue d'Italie Cours Mirabeau Mazarin District Ave. Victor Hugo Rue cardinale Musée Granet Gallifet Cours Gambetta Maison du Collectionneur Blvd. du Roi René Château de Vauvenargues 2 miles Barrage de Bimont Jardin des Peintres Ste.-Victoire Priory Atelier des Lauves Bastide du Jas de Bouffan Bibemus Quarries Croix de Provence Detail area Montagne Ste.-Victoire A51 France A8 Bastide Bourrelly A52 By The New York Times Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Wall Street Journal
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘Wild Thing' Review: The Sorcery of Paul Gauguin
Sue Prideaux's gruesomely fascinating 'Wild Thing' begins with four teeth in a well. Local inhabitants of Hiva Oa, in French Polynesia, found them in 2000 while restoring the nearby hut in which Paul Gauguin lived. Scientific analysis proved the teeth were indeed the famed painter's. When Gauguin died in 1903, he had been on Hiva Oa for two years. All his life he had been in pursuit of wild things. Born in Paris in 1848, he had spent several childhood years with his maternal family in Lima, Peru. For the rest of his life, he would belligerently call himself 'a savage from Peru.' Gauguin always considered himself an outsider. Even while thriving as a young Parisian stockbroker, his amateur painting defied rules. In early works such as 'The Market Gardens of Vaugirard' (1879), he rejected the tight, smooth realism of Academic art and caught up with the variegated brushwork and unblended colors of his mentor, the Impressionist Camille Pissarro. Several of the core Impressionists incubated the generation after theirs, even though the post-Impressionists were moving rapidly toward distinct and remarkably individual styles. The last of the Impressionist exhibitions, held in 1886 and financed in large part by Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas and Berthe Morisot, launched not only the career of Gauguin but also Georges Seurat, with the latter's monumental 'A Sunday on La Grande Jatte' (1886). Degas would be one of Gauguin's most stalwart collectors for the rest of his life. Post-Impressionism quickly delivered more than its fair share of images that have stayed in our collective imagination. By 1889, Vincent van Gogh, who had attended the 1886 exhibition and tried to become Gauguin's friend, had painted 'The Starry Night.'
