Modernism has often been described as a rejection of the art of the past, but Cézanne's Shadows makes an eloquent case for precisely the opposite artistic practice.
In this book, Nancy Locke argues that the idea of a modernist forgetting would never have taken hold if the modernist painters themselves, and Cézanne in particular, had not wrestled so fiercely with the work of their predecessors. Cézanne routinely interrupted his work with a model to go back to the Louvre or to consult sketches and studies he did after the old masters. Exploring the importance of Cézanne's involvement with the art of the past in essays devoted to Poussin, Chardin, and Rubens, Locke argues that Cézanne's art cannot be understood without an investigation into what he made of these earlier models and how they continued to haunt even his mature work.
Cézanne's Shadows offers an elegant new model for understanding the relationship between modernist painting and the creative tradition it often feigns to reject. This study of artistic ambitions and an analysis of nineteenth-century art writing will be especially valuable to scholars of modernism and European art history.
"Cézanne's Shadows offers 'slow looking' at its very best--a form of interpretation that unpacks the material immediacy and compositional intelligence of Cézanne's art to its fullest. Locke's delicate prose shines throughout with her many nuanced and novel observations about this key modernist painter's artistic pantheon. A major achievement and an unforgettable read."
--André Dombrowski, author of Cézanne, Murder, and Modern Life
"By conceiving of artistic influence as an unfinished conversation, Locke offers convincing accounts not just of Cézanne's work but also that of the 'source' painters Poussin, Chardin, and Rubens. Allowing paintings to speak to one another across time challenges the conventional understanding of impact as moving in only one direction--forward--and makes clear how much our interpretations of artists are inflected by what came after them."
--Allison Deutsch, author of Consuming Painting: Food and the Feminine in Impressionist Paris