Category: Presentations

In another synchronistic event, I learned of a current exhibit on Paul Cezanne and his influence on other artists in the same week that Dick talked about him in art history class (week 7). The Philadelphia Museum of Art has a major show going on through May 31, “Cezanne and Beyond.” Apparently, he was very influential on both his contemporaries and later artists. The New York Times art review says both Picasso and Matisse have been credited with saying “Cézanne is the father of us all.” The reviewer has some quibbles, but says “it’s a deeply satisfying show, with enough spectacular moments to justify the ticket lines and plenty of quieter revelations that will resonate particularly for working artists.”

Dick declared Cezanne “the father of modern art” and credited him with “an entirely different way of seeing.” He said Cezanne was “trying to recognize a reality beyond what we perceive. He wanted to give solidity and form to what had been dissolved by the Impressionists. He didn’t want to have a disintegrated canvas, he was trying to integrate it.” He highlighted some of Cezanne’s work towards the end of his lecture on April 16, which you can see on Slideshare here. The first part of the lecture covered Realism and Impressionism, and is on Slideshare here.

In our fourth class, Dick pointed out “lost edges”, where the artist invites the viewer to participate by filling in missing information, such as the Mona Lisa’s hairline on the right side of the painting, where the area is shadowed, leaving the dividing line indistinct. Coincidentally, he got one of his “Twice-weekly letters” from Robert Genn the same day, making the same point (though using the terms “selective focus”, “hard edges”, and “soft edges”) with work by a contemporary artist and by Titian, who we’d also discussed that day. See Robert Genn’s commentary, and the works he refers to. Dick’s comment, when he forwarded Genn’s letter, was

To all who paid attention in class today, you may find this quite a coincidence.

The slides illustrating Dick’s lecture are here, and the day’s quiz is here.

Dick’s presentations from the last two meetings of the art history group are available now on Slideshare.net. You can view the first one above. Notice that you can also expand it to full screen. The others are also available to view or download (for a limited time). They are PDFs, so you don’t need PowerPoint to view them.