FOGG REPRODUCTIONS PRAISED BY REVIEWER

The following review of the exhibit of reproductions of certain works of Cezanne, now on display in the print room of the Fogg Art Museum until April 15, was written by a member of the Fogg Museum staff.

The present interesting exhibit of reproductions of certain works of Cezanne, which as in the former exhibitions, are for sale, plunges the spectator more into the problems of late nineteenth and early twentieth century art than have the other exhibitions of reproductions which have been held in the print room of the Fogg Art Museum.

One need not be, however, over-concerned with the historical phase of the matter, with Cezanne's relation to the movement of Impressionism, nor with the more complicated experiments of his technique in the fundamentals of form and light. One can easily find in those works in display much that is Classical, much that shows the influence of Courbet, Tintoretto, Rubens, and Delacroix. But what is most important is the realization of the subjective character of the exhibition and the willingness to 'look again' in an endeavor to penetrate the wall of unphotographic reality which will probably, with the majority of observers, obstruct their view.

Cezanne's paintings develop under the eye almost as a picture takes its shape in the photographers dark room. They are rarely taken at a glance on first acquaintance. The landscape (in a literal sense) unfolds hit by bit, objects take their place in space in the inter space relation within the picture,--the tree in the foreground grows in convincing reality by which we look to the distant hill; suddenly the thing is formed, we see it clearly. The picture remains a picture but just as in actuallity the certainty of the relative fixation of objects is convincing so here within the picture their relation convinces us and the sensation is fundamentally that which is gotten from contact with actuality although the actual appearance is not aped. The picture become the recreation dependent upon those fundamentals beneath the epidermis of appearances.

From the standpoint of the art of reproduction the exhibit maintains the same high order of past exhibitions.