The first in-depth look at Cézanne's powerful influence in shaping early 20th-century American art Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) is one of the great geniuses in the history of art, and his work has influenced a multitude of artists throughout Europe. Across the Atlantic, Cézanne's paintings had a similarly catalytic effect on artists emerging in the United States during the early 20th century. Cézanne and American Modernism is the first book devoted specifically to his impact on American art and its eager reception there. It shows how American painters and photographers cemented Cézanne's legacy by spreading their respect and admiration for his vision with their own art, writings, and exhibitions. Examining Cézanne's influence on more than a generation of American artists, this handsomely illustrated book features paintings and photography by Paul Strand, Marsden Hartley, Man Ray, Alfred Stieglitz, Charles Demuth, Arshile Gorky, Charles Sheeler, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Maurice Prendergast, Morgan Russell, Max Weber, and many others. Cézanne's far-reaching transformative impact on each artist's aesthetic vision is explored, while extensive essays shed new light on a wide range of subjects from American collectors of his work and his shaping of modernism in the American West to the lasting resonance of his art on Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s. Published in association with The Baltimore Museum of Art Exhibition Schedule: Montclair Art Museum (9/13/09 - 1/3/10) The Baltimore Museum of Art (2/14/10 - 5/23/10) Phoenix Art Museum (6/26/10 - 9/26/10)

This book investigates the possibility of identifying the central features of the modernist movement in order to develop a unified theory of modernism.

This book explores the contemporary modification of traditional relations among the arts. Interpreting Cézanne as a founder of Modernism, it focuses on an aesthetics of the image (with roots in Bergson, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty) of equivalent value across the arts and in literature. The author argues that Cézanne's transformation of traditional pictorial images and invention of radically new types of images resulted in the replacement of the mimetic motivation of the pictorial sign by symbolist, plastic, contemplative, and visionary motivations. These yielded four corresponding types of images all of which can be generally found together in all the great Modernist masters. After surveying the transformation of the image in the psychological theories of the nineteenth century, this investigation focuses on the Bergsonian philosophy of the image as a hermeneutical parallel of Cézanne's pictorial theory and practice. Included are original readings of the most important serial paintings of Cézanne, including the Mont. Ste.-Victoire, the Bathers, and the Cardplayers.

"Cézanne, Murder and Modern Life changes the way we think about—and see—Cézanne’s entire oeuvre. Dombrowski’s arguments are convincing and bold, especially on the theme of murder as a vehicle for representation. Modern Olympia has never before been so satisfactorily analyzed." Susan Sidlauskus, Rutgers University, author of Cezanne's Other: The Portraits of Hortense “Exciting and intelligent, Cézanne, Murder, and Modern Life will be important for modernists, and essential for scholars of Cézanne, early Impressionism, and painting in the 1860s. Dombrowski shows us a Cézanne we did not know.” Nancy Locke, author of Manet and the Family Romance

Drawing on a broad foundation in the history of nineteenth-century French art, Richard Shiff offers an innovative interpretation of Cézanne's painting. He shows how Cézanne's style met the emerging criteria of a "technique of originality" and how it satisfied critics sympathetic to symbolism as well as to impressionism. Expanding his study of the interaction of Cézanne and his critics, Shiff considers the problem of modern art in general. He locates the core of modernism in a dialectic of making (technique) and finding (originality). Ultimately, Shiff provides not only clarifying accounts of impressionism and symbolism but of a modern classicism as well.

Catalog of an exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art, June 26-Sept. 12, 2005, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Oct. 20, 2005-Jan. 16, 2006, and the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, Feb. 27-May 28, 2006.

From banker to painter - Cezanne and the Impressionists - Harmony in parallel with nature - Still lifes - Mont Saint-Victoire - Latter years.