There’s a wacky theory that French artist, Paul Cezanne, had an astigmatism. The edges of hard objects he saw were blurry and his technique and vision, which reimagined form and colours, all looked a bit melty. The theory goes his post-impressionist style was caused by an eye defect which has influenced painters to this day.
As usual, the Gradgrinds of this world always look to some grangrindish “explanation” for a way an artist sees things, blaming a mild disability as a nasty barb.
But it’s not about eyesight. This is much more complex. It’s a mystery how the unconscious kneads and worries the conscious mind, prompting colour and brush stroke choice. I like to think Cezanne stared in a trance through his crazy pupils, and then consciously worked through a way that distilled line and colour – an inspiration for many genius artists that followed, culminating in the Cezanne to Giacometti show at the National Gallery of Australia.
At the entrance of the exhibition there’s a timeline/family tree mural of who begat which style and who begat what next, through inspiration and reinvention, and I’m damn sure it didn’t start with an astigmatism.
In a clear moment of begatting, Cubist Georges Braque channels Cezanne with Houses at L’Estaque 1907. The label has Georges declaring: “I am saying goodbye to the vanishing point…”
I don’t usually write about art and recommend blockbusters (those days are long gone) but the Cezanne to Giacometti exhibition is exceptional. From the collection of German Gallerist, Heinz Berggruen, it’s one of those exhibiitions where there’s very little “padding” with minor masterpieces – the dreaded “bubble-wrap” curation where you pay the big bucks to see about 5 great paintings and a lot of 2nd rate tat.
This is not that kind of exhibition.
Almost every work zings. And European masters are paired with Australian masters – including refugees from Europe who settled here and continued the journey of post-impressionist abstraction including Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack who I’d never heard of but whose images of Australian internment camps are the best.
So Cezanne with his hyper-gaze changed colour and form which begat cubism, where a gallery room moves into Braque and Picasso territory. Then a mass of Paul Klee paintings and drawings begat by both Cubism and his unique and quirky interactions of line and colour on paper.
Klee’s urbanscapes and his layered pyramids (not so cubist as trianglist) are well represented and there’s a bonus side-hustle room into Das Bauhaus (Klee taught at the Bauhaus school) and then you finally flow into rooms with Matisse and Giacometti, with my favourite – a ridiculously thin bronze of a cat.
Cat needs a feed.
The exhibition also gives the NGA an excuse to glory in some of its own post-impressionist masterpieces and of course the Australian inheritors.
But the highlight for me is the one big room filled with paintings by Picasso and the blessed Dora Maar, including a hilarious his-and-hers portrait pairing where she paints Pablo’s eyes like big kalamata olives, while in his portrait of her, Dora is all seeing with her famous fingernails.
I said to my Parisian friend Dominique that when it comes to a Picasso room “… it doesn’t get better than this,” and Dom added: “ … in Australia” and I would subsequently add: “ … until September 21,” because this travelling exhibition winds up its three year circumnavigation of the world and returns to Berlin via Madrid.
If like me, you love this era of art, it’s totes worth the trip to Canberra.
Or Berlin in 2026.
Picasso’s long suffering muses