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Art history professor sheds new light on Cézanne’s later years
In her richly illustrated work “Cézanne and Provence,” the University of Delaware art history professor argues that Cézanne painted in a deliberately naïve style, and in fact used his rustic subject matter and spontaneous brushwork to make strong political statements. “For many years Cézanne was viewed as an artist who painted in direct contact with nature as he saw it, unmediated by academic structures such as perspective and chiaroscuro,” Kallmyer said. “What I’m doing in the book is to revise that view, or rather give that view a more rational explanation. I’m trying to put Cézanne back into the context of the period—the larger timeframe in which he lived in France, and also the background from which he came. He was born and raised in the south of France, and in turn that’s where he produced the majority of his work. At the time when he was active, there were major cultural changes happening, and one of these was the shift in focus from the urban environment, which was seen as oppressive and authoritative, toward a natural environment that was seen as more primitive and untouched,” she said. “Many artists who were active during this time took off altogether. Gaugin went to Tahiti, and Van Gogh went to Arles. “Cézanne went one step further than that,” Kallmyer said. “By leaving Paris and returning to his native land, he not only rejected capitalist values but also affirmed his own primitive culture with its traditions and habits and local politics. His paintings, which appear to be naïve, were deliberately so because he wanted to represent the authenticity of the countryside as opposed to the sophisticated and artificial refinement of Paris.” Kallmyer formed the kernel for her argument in 1996 while attending a roundtable discussion on Cézanne at the National Gallery of Art, but said that it wasn’t until two articles later that she decided to broaden it into a book. “While we were talking about Cézanne, an idea was growing in my mind that wasn’t in total agreement with the tenor of the discussion,” she remembered. “I was building a different view, and eventually I wrote a review that contained the seed of the book.”
“I was trying to put myself in the frame of mind of Cézanne within his culture, and eventually I had all the pieces of the puzzle together,” she said. “In Aix-en-Provence, there was a whole network of knowledgeable people—usually older men who had collections of archived materials from the 19th century. If you scratched the surface, you’d find them, and one would send you to another.” One such man was the noted French historian Maurice Agulhon. Another was a local archivist who maintained a collection of 19th-century postcards so extensive that he had to rent an apartment for storage space. Discoveries at libraries and museums also fueled Kallmyer’s research, as did visits to private homes. During one such visit to Agulhon’s ancestral home in Aix-en-Provence, Kallmyer saw a portrait of Agulhon’s great grandmother who was dressed in the same Provencal costume that Cézanne so frequently painted. The discovery, although incidental, strengthened yet another point of her research. “Cézanne made a point not just with his style but with his subject matter,” she said. “While Parisians painted other Parisians dressed in fashionable clothes, sitting in nice interiors, doing all sorts of refined activities, Cézanne painted humble little houses and local people. His subjects would be dressed in clogs and the local costume, sitting on simple pine chairs, reading the local press. This was a deliberate choice by him, as a way of honoring his culture.” Although “Cézanne and Provence” is targeted primarily to art historians and scholars, Kallmyer said that the book might appeal to a more general audience because of its subject matter and lavish production. In addition to 120 color reproductions, the 323-page hardback contains 102 halftones. “It’s a scholarly work, and not intended for the layman,” Kallmyer explained. “On the other hand, the subject of Provence is quite a favorite with the American public. Every chapter adds a little piece of the puzzle that should allow readers to revise their opinion of Cézanne as a pure painter. He was a painter with a message. He had an ax to grind. He was very polemical and was a fighter to the end. Maybe he never was an official party member of some kind of radical function, but his whole attitude toward culture and art was radical. The two were intertwined in his mind.” Kallmyer is the author of several essays and two other books, including one that examines the relationship between art and politics in 19th-century France—a topic that she credits with being the defining and driving force of her career. She currently is conducting research for a future project that will examine the use of classical Greek and Roman imagery in late 19th-century northern European art. Although not yet certain where that research will lead, Kallmyer said she foresees that it will draw her, once again, to focus on the relationship of art to politics. “I think that’s what scholarship is,” she said. “You start asking questions and then eventually you build a thesis to provide answers.
“There were explicit political ties during that time between England, Germany, France and the countries of the Mediterranean, so the sudden interest in classical imagery may be related. What’s curious is that while some painters, such as the impressionists, were painting contemporary life, others were depicting classical Greeks and Romans. I can’t tell you what the answers are right now, but they are question marks for a book,” Kallmyer said. “Cézanne and Provence: The Painter in His Culture” was published by the University of Chicago Press and is available at the UD Bookstore and through Amazon.com. A member of the UD faculty since 1982, Kallmyer was born and raised in Athens, Greece. She received the Licence-ès-Lettres from the Institut d’ Art et d’Archéologie of the University of Paris (Sorbonne); a doctorate from the School of Philosophy of the University of Thessaloniki (Greece); and a doctoral degree from Princeton University in 1980. She specializes in European 18th- and 19th-century art and teaches both graduate seminars and undergraduate courses at the University of Delaware. Her other books include “French Images from the Greek War of Independence, 1821-1830: Art and Politics under the Restoration” (1989) and “Eugène Delacroix: Prints, Politics and Satire” (1991). During the 2003-04 academic year, Kallmyer is the Visiting Senior Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (C.A.S.V.A.) at the National Gallery during the fall semester and the Stanley Seeger Fellow at Princeton University during the spring semester. She resides in Philadelphia. Article by Becca Hutchinson To learn how to subscribe to UDaily, click here. |
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