Barnes on Cezanne

Liberal lawyers hold that the law flourishes by truing up ever more wisely with new and unblinkable social conditions. Liberal artists conceive the tradition of the fine arts as involving a like growth and adaptation. Occasionally, in each field, progress in interpretation is marked by a commentary so learned as to become a classic. Published last week was a serious book which may well become a sort of Blackstone on Coke to future art students. The subject: The Art of Cezanne* The commentators: Albert C. Barnes and Violette de Mazia. Dr. Albert Coombs (''Argyrol") Barnes of Merion, Pa. got his nickname, his millions, and his great collection of French paintings from the product* he trademarked in 1902 and manufactured until 1930. He got his artistic taste from the sound advice of the late William Glackens (TIME, Dec. 26), from persistent study and from the inquisitive philosophy of his friend John Dewey (see p. 56). White-headed, black-browed Dr. Barnes got his temper, according to his enemies, from the devil himself. Those who have offended him the full-blooded doctor has often publicly kicked in the teeth, with obstreperous rhetoric. In 1937 it was the Pennsylvania Museum, for buying what the doctor considered a fifth-rate Cezanne (TIME, Nov. 29, 1937). Now revealed in more dignified terms (thanks, possibly, to Collaborator de Mazia, an instructor and researcher at the choosey Barnes Foundation) are the Barnes qualifications on that subject.

They are impressive. From the fully assembled data of Cezanne's life, Collaborators Barnes and de Mazia have, for one thing, interpreted his personality with more enlightenment and justice than any pro or con writers have been able to do. His everlasting self-distrust, compensatory self-assertion, slowness and difficulty with his medium they freely concede. But Cezanne's knowledge of painting and the profound calculation and power of his real triumphs they fully establish. Not only the effect of these paintings, which other critics have expressed not quite so well: "Fundamentally they are static, not inert or dead, but active as a tower, a pier or a buttress is active. . . . Composed not only in the usual sense of having their parts disposed in an orderly arrangement, but in the sense in which we speak of a person's 'composure.' . . ." But also, in exhaustive detail and supplemented by analyses of 81 paintings (147 are reproduced), the means by which the effect was attained, e. g., an economy which used the same brush strokes to create volumes, to set them in deep perspective, and to make a decorative, mosaic-like surface pattern.

Though the Barnes-de Mazia book (their fourth in collaboration)/- was not quite on the dot to celebrate the centenary of Paul Cezanne's birth (Jan. 19, 1839), it clarified considerably the reasons for celebration.

*Harcourt, Brace ($5). *Argyrol was the first silver compound found strong enough to kill gonococci without injuring delicate membranes of eyes, nose, throat, bladder. Many hospitals still use it to protect the eyes of newborn babies against blindness caused by gonorrhea. /- Others: The French Primitives & Their Forms, The Art of Henri Matisse, The Art of Renoir.

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