After Cezanne

Over the holiday weeks, I had the pleasure of seeing two wonderful art exhibits, which have both since closed. "Cezanne and the Modernists" at the Montclair Art Museum was an aggregation of the effect that Cezanne had on his contemporary painters, sculptors and photographers, as well as those that followed him. He was one of the first of the abstractionists, and the major innovators of the abstract modern style. He affected everybody, including Picasso, Braque, and Arshile Gorky.

In fact, the second show I went to was the Arshile Gorky retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Armenian-born American artist came of age after Cezanne's death, but his early work was heavily influenced by his French predecessor. Even though he was dead, Gorky was said to have "dialogued" with Cezanne by studying and painting (I say copying) Cezanne's actual work.

Now it is my turn. I found a cutting board laid out with fruit by my pal Arthur Liebersohn, so I dialogued with Cezanne, too.