Interpreting Cezanne

Hardcover, 296 pages, English, 260 x 200 mm, dustjacket has some tears but book itself is in fine condition, illustrations in b/w, . ISBN 9780674459557. In this remarkable book the sculptor and writer Sidney Geist presents a revolutionary interpretation of the art of Cezanne. Geist argues that Cezanne'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 Cezanne 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 Cezanne 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.