Further Reflections on Cézanne at MOMAAuthor(s): William RubinSource: Art Journal, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Winter, 1978-1979), pp. 119-120Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/776421 .

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Further Reflections on Cezanne at

MOMA

WILLIAM RUBIN Dear Ms. Editor:

Eunice Lipton's polemic, "Some Reflections on the Cezanne Events at The Museum of Modern Art" (summer issue), disseminates such fanciful "disinformation" regarding MOMA's exhibition CQzanne: The Late Work, the scholarly program that accompanied it, and my own role therein that it requires a response.

"Why," Ms. Lipton asks, "a late Cezanne show in the fall of 1977, and why the intensity of its celebration?" (her word for the program of lectures and symposia). The only answer she proposes is "political necessity, the need to defend a faltering position.... Conceptual art and the revival of interest in realism have made late Cezanne problems and Cubism less relevant.* ... Could it be that MOMA, the bastion of everything 'modernism' means, is frightened? Was their late C6zanne show, with its attendant symposia, a gauge of that fear? Was it their desperate attempt to keep everything just exactly as it was?" MOMA's "intention" in mounting the exhibition, as divined by Ms. Lipton, was to "entrench" a "vision" of art history which is "rigid, formalist, Francophile and ahistorical."

As the person who conceived the exhibition many years ago and subsequently helped realize it, I feel competent to speak of the intentions behind it. In their light, I can only view the motivations attributed to me and my colleagues by Ms. Lipton as an instance of politics in the service of

paranoia. Your readers should know the facts of the matter as they relate to the history of the endeavor, thus better to judge Ms. Lipton's answer to her own repeated question, "Why this Cezanne show-his last years-and why now?" This history is laid out in detail in the introduction to the Cezanne catalog; Ms. Lipton either failed to read it or chose to disbelieve it.

I first perceived the need for an in-depth look at Cezanne's late work in 1952, while doing research for a doctoral seminar held by Meyer Schapiro at Columbia University. Neither the latest C6zanne retrospective, mounted that same year at the Metropolitan Museum, nor the catalogs of (or articles in- spired by) earlier exhibitions provided much information on C6zanne's late work. Unlike that of 1870-95, it had never been shown in sufficient depth for its character, style, and historical role to be studied; the art historical literature on it was almost nonexistent. From the time I began working at The Museum of Modern Art in 1968-before the very exist- ence of "conceptual art and the revival of interest in real- ism," the advent of which Ms. Lipton identifies as the propellant for the enterprise-I proposed the exhibition. We first wanted to have the show in 1970, but the projected budget-the insurance costs especially- made it impossible. The real answer to Lipton's "and why now?" has nothing to do with the devious political ends she adduces; it has to do with the creation of the U. S. Government indemnity (which covered much of the insurance cost), the formation of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which co-financed it, and the development in the intervening eight or so years of corporate financing of art exhibitions (IBM was co-spon- sor).

As for the program of lectures and symposia-the "inten-

* Apropos of relevance, may I quote from one of many letters we received from contemporary artists, this one from one of America's great Minimalist sculptors. In appreciation of a special evening for artists, he wrote, "It was my privilege last night to view the incomparable CUzanne exhibition at my leisure and in sparse company. Never have I seen so many artists rapt in selfless devotion-the hush of awe and wonder was palpable ..."

WINTER 1978/79 119

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sity" of which "celebration" troubles Ms. Lipton - I observe the following: The Museum has always had such programs. The more extensive one in the case of Cezanne followed from our desire in this important instance to bring together museum curators and university scholars; it also responded to increased expectations regarding educational programs on the part of the National Endowment for the Humanities which (rather than the N.E.A.) exceptionally helped finance the exhibition. The program of four evening lectures and four symposia specifically directed toward the scholarly com- munity (other lectures were oriented toward the member- ship and general public) did not much exceed the scholarly. program devised for the Duchamp retrospective (six lec- tures). The symposia did not in fact turn out as well as we had hoped. We made some mistakes in format, and some participants did not use the occasion as they might have. Ironically, none of the criticisms my colleagues and I would make of the symposia or their content are to be found in Ms. Lipton's text.

In the case of the remarks which Ms. Lipton directs toward me personally, I invite you, Ms. Editor, to listen to the tapes of the proceedings and judge yourself the fairness of the observations. I am portrayed as "doggedly ... representing the formalist position." As moderator I supposedly "re- sponded with evident discomfort" to the efforts of my colleagues to discuss "other possibilities." I am directly quoted as stressing Cezanne's "purely formal" intentions, mentioning forms which "echoed the shape of the painting," the "plasticity" of conception, etc. "Such language," Ms. Lipton asserts, "was not only mystifying, but bullying."

I plead guilty to having spoken - in a discussion of "distor- tions" in Cezanne's paintings as against the photographs of his motifs-of blunted ellipses as "echoing the shape of the painting." Why "such language" is "mystifying" or "bully- ing" eludes me.

As for Ms. Lipton's main premise, the tapes demonstrate the dishonesty-I would even say the malice-of her por- trayal of me as an insistent, indeed simple-minded "formal- ist." Let me start by noting that nowhere in the proceedings or anywhere else did I ever refer to C6zanne's "purely formal" intentions. The words she quotes me as using are hers, not mine. I don't believe Cezanne or any other artist

can have "purely formal" intentions. Let me cite from the taped discussion what I actually did say on this subject:

[The] distinction between formal reasons and non-formal reasons [in the making of a picture] is a totally artificial thing, since no human being can function in one area without simultaneously functioning in [the] other areas. I think this has gotten to be one of the problems of modern critical language ... Ciezanne was functioning as a unity; no decision was ever made because he [had] put on his formal hat [or] then taken it off to put on his subjective [or] expressionist hat ... The richness of any decision in a Cezanne painting is that it really operates on many of these levels at the same time.

I might observe that even as I permitted myself some observations of an analytical order in regard to Cezanne landscapes, I qualified them, saying that "there is much in these works which cannot be explained formally, and [which] depends upon the perception of a man's spiritual response to an ambience, a motif."

As I look back over Ms. Lipton's article, I suppose that I am most saddened by her seeming inability to experience and enjoy painting except insofar as it can be assimilated to or used for her politics. The chance to see a large number of late C6zanne oils, many of which were almost certainly unknown to her, and to see them grouped according to motif along with the watercolors, a once-in-a-lifetime com- parative context, aroused Ms. Lipton's suspicion rather than her enthusiasm. I'm tired of people whose main interest in art is what they can say about it-politically, sociologically or, for that matter, analytically. And when I consider the level of discourse in Ms. Lipton's text, her conspiratorial view of events, fabricated quotation, misrepresentations, oversimplifications, call for "relevance," etc., I am reminded of nothing so much as the old Stalinist attacks on modern art as "bourgeois formalism." Its publication in one of our professional associations' scholarly journals does not en- hance the reputation of the discipline. U

William Rubin is Director of the Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Adjunct Professor, Institute of Fine Arts, New York.

Editor's Note: Other letters to the editor appear on pages 153 and 154.

120 ART JOURNAL, XXXVIII/2

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