 Hi, and welcome to Barnes Takeout, your daily dose of art from the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. I'm Bill Perthys, Bernard C. Watson, Director of Adult Education, and my colleagues and I in these challenging times are taking a moment to select some of our favorite works from the Barnes Foundation collection and sharing some of our thoughts about them, giving all of us a chance to revisit the collection that we love so much and to share with you some of our observations. For today, I've chosen this picture by Paul Cézanne. It's called Ginger Jar or sometimes called Ginger Jar and Fruit. It's from 1895 and it is a picture that has fascinated me. It's a picture that I've been obsessed with for about 20 years from the time that I first starting started studying at the Foundation and have the great privilege of teaching now for over 18 years. It's an obsession that my students will recognize because it's a picture that I return to over and over again in the classes that I teach in the galleries at the Barnes Foundation. So to give you, to sort of orient you to where the picture is, we're in the main gallery and this is a shot of the north wall of the gallery. It's the largest wall, the largest ensemble in the collection and you'll see our picture here. This ensemble is Barnes called it, the arrangement of the collection is what Barnes called ensembles. This ensemble on the north wall of the main gallery is given over entirely to two artists, two artists really critical and essential to the collection itself and that being our artist of today Paul Cézanne and also Pierre Auguste Renoir, an artist very, very much associated with the Barnes collection. So if we go back to this, to this picture, there are some things that are quite remarkable about this picture but it's certainly not its subject or the objects that Cézanne chose. Those are very simple things. So we have fruit, so apples and pears. We have this cloth, white cloth with a red stripe running through it. We have this object which gives the painting its name, a ginger jar. Ginger jars were very popular decorative objects in 19th century France and it's an object that if you visit Cézanne's studio in the south of France in Exem Provence, even today you'll see in his studio it's an object that he returned to over and over again. There are more than 10 pictures featuring the ginger jar and last but not least is this table. Again, another object that Cézanne returned to over and over again. In fact, there are at least four other versions of this table just in the main gallery at the Barnes Foundation alone and many more elsewhere in our collection as well as elsewhere. So very simple everyday objects, things that we readily identify, things we don't really have to struggle over deciphering. Maybe the ginger jar isn't entirely familiar but we certainly would read it as a jar but it's what Cézanne has chosen to do to and with these things that make the picture really remarkable. As I said it was painted in 1895 and this is when Cézanne who died in 1906 was really at the height of his expressive power. He had gained control over his medium. He had a very specific and forceful use of color in particular and we'll look at that in some detail. And the ideas that he was interested in conveying he had really crystallized. So there were sort of themes that he returned to in his middle and late paintings that are familiar and that's certainly something we see demonstrated in this picture. And what I'd like us to focus on is at least one element in this picture. So if we look here at this object here, what we might identify as an apple, we see the very specific way in which Cézanne has chosen to describe and articulate this. First of all look at the range of colors that Cézanne has chosen from deep reds such as on this on the left hand side to gradations of that red through into a kind of reddish orange then an orange on top, yellow, yellowish green and then tonalities of green. So this very light green hints of a darker green beneath and above this sort of middle intense green, this bluish green and then these sort of middle colors that are combinations of white and red. We get a sense of a violet, a little bit of that down here and then dark color, dark bluish black that articulates the edge of the fruit. The arrangement, the specific selection and arrangement of those colors give the sense of this object being three-dimensional. Now that might seem obvious but keep in mind this is a flat canvas. So any indication of volume or depth of space is through in this case Cézanne's use of his medium of color to convey that information. So you'll notice that he uses red and this dark blackish blue to indicate shadow and then the light whiteish green to convey the sense of light glinting off the rounded surface of the apple as it comes as a bulges towards us. So as it hits the light and the light reflects off of it. In that spot you'll notice it's not just that color but that he's created that patch of color through an alignment of brushstrokes. So each one of these is a single brushstroke that he's very deliberately organized to create this patch of light green color and you'll notice that he's done something similar here. Here the patch has this rugged edge that allows the sort of topish orangey color underneath to peek through elements of it. He's done it here in this deeper red. So as he's literally applying the color he's being very deliberate as to the directionality of his obvious brushstrokes and that helps create the sense of light and shadow and articulate the volume the three-dimensionality of Cézanne's apple. A really lovely touch to this is what happens over here on the right hand side. He returns in this area where he has dark he returns to a light area. A light again greenish-yellow and what does that convey to us? It suggests light now not only striking the surface of it but reflecting off of this cloth this quote white cloth which if you look closely at it is anything but white it's made up of it's essentially the same colors that we find elsewhere in the picture. But he's very delicately describing light as it's reflecting off of that white cloth and hitting the bottom right hand side of Cézanne's apple. So that he gives to this object a sense of not only dimensionality but it has a setness to it that it's planted on the on the surface. He nestles it in the cloth so it sort of is cradled by this by this cloth and not last but not least although there's still plenty more to say about this you'll notice this particular and peculiar line that creates a boundary and then seems to fly off the top of the of the apple and if we think that's a mistake notice he does something similar here here that line encroaches on the apple of the volume of an apple so it's something that's quite deliberate it's a very Cézanne's touch worthy of its of its own discussion so we'll leave it there for now but so he cradles this weighty solid three-dimensional volume in the in the cloth and why because look at what he's done to the to the tabletop this is not the kind of table you would you would buy in a store I read at least three different planes so one plane suggested by this corner a different plane or inclined by this corner and an even steeper plane over here to the left and what's the result of that the result of that is these large solid weighty three-dimensional not just three-dimensional but rounded units set on this now inclined and broken tabletop give to those objects a sense of precariousness or instability we look at the pair on the side here look at how it teeters over the edge and this is in part what Cézanne is trying to convey is the sense of or the anticipation of movement the precariousness the tension of anticipation as we sort of visually wait for those objects to tumble off of that inclined tabletop but it's a painting and so they'll never move and that sense of tension is always held there so Cézanne very cleverly is able to convey that a sense of movement in a still life in something by its very definition is supposed to be still in static so he activates the still life and makes it something visually dynamic and this is the in part the wonder of Cézanne and why modern artists from those that immediately followed him Picasso and Matisse to artists today continue to look to Cézanne endlessly creative endlessly fascinating so I hope you've enjoyed this quick look at this remarkable picture by Cézanne Gingerjar from 1895 and I hope you'll join us again for these daily doses of art in Barnes Takeout again I'm Bill Perthys and thanks for joining me I'm Tom Collins new Bauer family executive director of the Barnes Foundation I hope you enjoyed Barnes Takeout subscribe and make sure your post notifications are on to get daily servings of art thanks for watching and for your support of the Barnes Foundation