Cézanne @ National Portrait Gallery London

Paul Cezanne, Self Portrait with Bowler Hat, 1885-86

I was surprised to see that the Cezanne exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery was hailed as the exhibition of the decade. It was a small, somewhat conventional exhibition of fascinating paintings, but I didn’t notice anything particularly outstanding   

Paul Cezanne, Artist's Father Reading L'Evénement, 1866

Cezanne’s portraits, in many ways, resemble his better known still lives: the concerns are similar, the composition is the same strange awkward presentation, the figure looking as though he or she is sliding forward, on the verge of falling out of the frame, or ill-at-ease popping its head into the side of the frame. In the same way that the still lives are unforgettable for the dimensionality and the life that Cezanne gives the dead objects, these portraits resonate well beyond the frame and the moment of viewing.

Paul Cezanne, Madame Cezanne in a Yellow Chair, 1888-90

I wondered as I walked around whether Cezanne had some kind of social anxiety disorder. The initial temptation is to compare the paintings to those of Manet in particular – and side by side with Manet’s famous street people— see how Cezanne’s portraits have nothing to do with the world outside of the relationship between the painter and the sitter. There is absolutely no hint of, let alone comment on the same social world that is the context and meaning of all Manet’s portraits, Neither is there any sense of who the sitter is, that is, the portrait as a window to the soul of the sitter. Alternatively, If we think of the portrait as a comment on the person’s social standing through their dress, posture, the objects in their midst, then Cezanne’s portraits give us nothing of this either. Thus, not only does Cezanne do away with the psychological identity of the sitter, but in his very best portraits even the physical characteristics become irrelevant. The figure may be present in the painting, but the body does not seem to carry much meaning. As a result, the newspaper that his father reads, the books surrounding Gustave Geffroy, the room in which his wife sits, and the bodies themselves tell nothing of the personality of the figure or the world in which they are living.

Paul Cezanne, Portrait de Monsieur Ambroise Vollard, 1899

In perhaps the most beautiful of the works on display at the National Portrsit Gallery, the image of Ambroise Vollard shows a man deep in thought, perhaps unable to escape his depressive state. The deep blue of Vollard’s clothes as they merge together with the bench on which he sits evoke the weight of his emotions, and by extension, the weight of the human condition. The beauty of the image comes from the soft light on the side of Vollard’s face allowing the other side of his body to melt into the background while still retaining the distinction between the figure and the seat. All the emotion of the painting is held in the fusion of the two. And all this together with the fact that Vollard the art dealer is usually depicted by artists (such as in Picasso’s cubist portrait) as the wealthy capitalist who exploited the market for his own gains. Why does Cezanne give an inner life to the one man who history tells us was lacking emotional depth?

If Cezanne were to paint Vollard on a different day, he may indeed look like a completely different person. So often the portraits are not about the sitter as we see in the multiple images of his wife. Even when he paints her on the same seat, apparently within days of the last portrait, Cezanne’s wife appears as a completely different woman. With a lesser artist, the variability of the image would be attributed to the authority of the painter. However, it’s unlikely that this is the case with Cezanne. Because what he captures is more like a transient moment as it passes between the artist and the sitter on this one day in time. And thus, even as the figures can appear lifeless, they are always animated by the transience of the painting, and the ethereal traces of a relationship between artist and subject.

 

Paul Cezanne, Uncle Dominique, 1865-67

Next to the portrait of Vollard, my favorites were those early portraits of Cezanne’s uncle. Indeed, Cezanne’s most risky (and today, most fascinating) paintings are created in the intimacy of his relationship with the sitters. Which means that none of the surprises, the moments of radicality seem present in those of people he doesn’t know. And yet, Cezanne uses this intimacy to do something wholly unseen before his time: he abstracts the face, thus erases the subjectivity of the subject. The apparent deformity of the face is so clearly demonstrating Cezanne’s willingness to forego likeness in the interests of exploring skin. The abstraction of the uncle’s skin as it pushes into his features is another of those ineffable moments that captures the radicality of what Cezanne brings to art in the 20^th century. The dissolution of the subject and the belief in realism as it was being applauded in the late 19^th century is Cezanne’s vehicle for his venture toward painted abstraction. This, I believe, makes Cezanne a great painter, and the National Gallery can be applauded for its exhibition of greatness in an age when blockbusters and commercially viable art has taken over London’s museum culture. Perhaps this was what the reviews were celebrating?

Howard Hodgkin, Absent Friends @ National Portrait Gallery

Howard Hodgkin, Absent Friends, 2000-2001

I imagined many visitors to the Howard Hodgkin exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery would be bemused by the claim that the works in display are actually portraits. My favorite piece in the exhibition consisted of two think brushstrokes in two shades of blue on a wooden support. How, I wondered, would that be seen as a portrait? Nothing about it resembled a replication of the human face. But the few people who shared this wonderful exhibition with me were much more art savvy and sympathetic than I had anticipated. All of which is to say, this is not a summer blockbuster. The National Portrait Gallery doesn’t bill it as such, but rather, but it is for the well-trained art viewer.

Howard Hodgkin, The Tilsons, 1965-67

Even though my expectations of the work were not so high, it still took me some time to get into the paintings. The opening image, Absent Friends (2000-2001)) which gives the exhibition its title, consisting of a handful of abstract earth colored brushstrokes, horizontally wavering across the canvas. The painting was contemplative and generous in its reflection on and memory of lost loved ones. But then, with the beginning of the exhibition proper we are taken back to Hodgkin’s early portraits. Like most young painters, the early work is heavily influenced by what is in his environment: most notably, the traces of German expressionism and, a little later, the postwar abstraction of Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud, followed by pop art. As he searches for his own style and visual language, Hodgkin’s work is not yet compelling.

Howard Hodgkin, Going for a Walk with Andrew,  1995-98

When Hodgkin comes into his own around the 1960s, he begins to do something quite unique in painting. Not only does he lead portraiture away from the human figure, to the point where in most of the works, the semblance of a face is nowhere to be found. But perhaps more profoundly, he finds the self and its identity in color and the variations of his visual language. Dots, lines, long brushstrokes become the expression of emotions, and atmosphere. The spatial organization of the image, together with the exciting colors, carry the revelations of identity and character. I don’t know another abstract painter who does this.  

Howard Hodgkin, Waking up in Naples, 1980-84

The colors in the substantial middle period (my categorization) move from psychadelic oranges and blues to muted earth tones. Even though the paintings are given the title of a person’s name, it doesn’t seem as though the physical person matters. What matters to Hodgkin is the memory of the emotions he experienced when he first saw the person. Or, in a painting titled, Waking up in Naples (1980-84), I imagine that the oranges and blues might be the world around the figure – the sea and the brilliant red sun setting on the Mediterranean coast. It could of course also represent the intensity of emotion that Hodgkin experienced when he saw the woman in the morning. However, we interpret them, these are not portraits that give any insight into the sitter. They do of course, reveal much about the artist and his concerns and preoccupations.

Howard Hodgkin, Souvenirs, 1984

One of the most interesting is his ongoing exploration of the object of painting. Throughout the exhibition, we see his use of the frame as a canvas for a vision that cannot be easily contained. Alternatively, layers of paint on Souvenirs, 1984, becomes a series of curtains or masks over the painting itself. It is as though the dots are a veil over the painting, hiding and the recoil from revelation to the world. In this way, painting itself might be said to be the sitter in these works.

Howard Hodgkin, Blue Portrait, 2011

As he gets older, the paint becomes looser, the abstraction becomes more intense, until the most provocative image: Blue Portrait (2011), a few broad blue brushstrokes on wood. The painting is said to catch a fleeting moment in which Selina Fellows appeared at the bar in a blue dress at an opening of his exhibition at the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. To me it captures the abstract, aleatory nature of memory in its often nonsensical play with the world of reality. The small painting is tender and playful, whimsical and melancholic, all at the same time. Such complex expression of emotion, together with bold colors and elusive meaning, make these portraits unique among the work of his British compatriots in the 20^th century.