Follows the career of the mid-19th century post-Impressionistic artist, Cezanne, whose work influenced the later Expressionist, Fauvist, and Cubist schools
An inspiring picture book biography of the artist Paul Cezanne, the painter who laid the groundwork for modern art and whom Pablo Picasso declared "the father of us all." All Cezanne wants is to be a great painter like his friends Monet, Pissarro, and Renoir. But when he shows his works, the professors, the critics, and the collectors all dismiss him: "Too flat!" "Too much paint!" "These are rough and unfinished!" Even his own pet parrot, Bisou, can't be brought to say, "Cezanne is a great painter!" And who can blame them? Cezanne doesn't care about tradition, and he doesn't follow the rules. He's painting in a way no one else has done before, creating something completely new--and he's destined to change the world of art forever. Cezanne's Parrot is a spirited celebration of creativity, determination, and perseverance--and the artist who would become known as the father of modern art.
A major biography--the first comprehensive new assessment to be published in decades--of the brilliant work and restless life of Paul Cezanne, the most influential painter of his time, whose vision revolutionized the role of the painter.
In this remarkable book the sculptor and writer Sidney Geist presents a revolutionary interpretation of the art of Cézanne. Geist argues that Cézanne's paintings are fertile with reflections of the artist's private world and passionate concerns. Looking at more than two hundred works, all reproduced in the book, he identifies the symbolism that gives form to a hidden significance in the paintings--concealed allusions to Cézanne himself and to his relations with his wife and mother, his father, his son, and his friend Zola, as well as a circle of colleagues including Pissarro, Frederic Bazille, and Ambroise Vollard. It is a complex pattern of symbols expressed in both secondary visual images and in verbal connections, including rebuses and puns. In reading these paintings for symbolic meaning Geist opens the way to a fuller understanding of Cézanne as well as to new ways of looking at pictures. Interpretation of this kind in its turn explains formal aspects of the paintings with a richness not possible in abstract analysis.