The Easel

22nd June 2021

Want to go deep inside a great artist’s mind? MoMA’s Cézanne exhibition is the one to see this summer

This “staggeringly beautiful” show highlights Cezanne’s “weird” experiments in composition. He wanted a way of using “color and rhythm” to give an image stability and order, qualities he felt the Impressionist’s work lacked. If expressing a “logic of organized sensations” meant sacrificing legibility, then fine. His focus was to “re-create the structure of experience out of the units of that experience”. And the result of these weird, abstract labours … the foundations of modern art.

The Two Frenchmen Behind America’s Leading Symbol

The back story to the Statue of Liberty. An anti-slavery lawyer came up with the idea and a sculptor produced the design. Plans to model the figure on a Delacroix painting were rejected, so the sculptor turned instead to his mother and his girlfriend. At over 100 tons, the serious structural issues were successfully solved by one Alexandre Eiffel, whose ideas were based on bridge pylons. His profile thus enhanced, his next project was a certain tall steel tower.