Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This book presents a new perspective on Paul Cezanne, one of the towering figures of 19th-century art. Pavel Machotka has photographed the sites of Cezanne's landscape paintings - whenever possibe from the same spot and at the same time of day that Cezanne painted the scenes. Juxtaposing these colour photographs with reproductions of the paintings, he offers a range of evidence to investigate how the painter transformed nature into works of art.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

For most of this century, artists and scholars have been amazed by the richness of Cézanne's work. Painter and photographer Machotka (psychology and art, Univ. of California, Santa Cruz) builds upon past scholarship to illuminate the individual landscape sites and their relationship to Cézanne's paintings through the use of early black-and-white photographs and new color photos that he took himself. He wants to see how Cézanne interpreted what he saw and explores the artist's interest in observing nature and creating a painting using the structure of the flat surface to draw a parallel to nature. Like Cézanne, Machotka observes and uses nature, and he stresses Cézanne's intent as an artist rather than analyzing the elements of his paintings. The 144 illustrations include photographs, color reproductions of the paintings, and full-page details showing brushstrokes, color, and texture. This book about a painter written by a painter will appeal to painters as well as students and scholars of modern art.‘Ellen Bates, New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

If one wonders what another book on Cezanne could possibly contribute to knowledge of this artist, one is pleasantly surprised here. Machotka (psychology and art, Univ. of California, Santa Cruz) is also a painter and photographer, and it is his personal artistic vision that makes this book original. It is filled with beautiful color reproductions of Cezanne's landscape paintings, including many details that reveal the intricacies of texture and the careful layering of pigment. The author compares, fairly systematically, photographs of the sites where Cezanne painted (both those previously published and many taken by the author) with finished paintings. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, Machotka refers to pertinent previous studies (Rewald, Fry, Gowing) and then provides his own perception. Of great interest is the author's focus on the photographs, rather than just the consideration of them as a tool for either the revival of visual memory or the manipulation of spatial concepts. The exploration of the limits of the photographs (framed, narrow views versus the author's experience of the sites) provides richer understanding of Cezanne's work as a unique, artistic interpretation of landscape vistas. Undergraduate; graduate; faculty; general. E. K. Menon Mankato State University