A Blockbuster Duet at the Met

In writing my December and January double-header, I have chosen to review two shows, and to dedicate this column to two of my professors at Columbia and two of my former students. My professors are the late Meyer Schapiro, one of the great art historians of all time, who early sensed the musicality within Cézanne's compositions, and Barbara Novak, who introduced me to 19th-century American painting. My former students, Laura Goldberg and Anna Cholakian, fell so much under the spell of Mary Cassatt that in 1985 they named their all-female string quartet the Cassatt Quartet. Anna, a brilliant young cellist, died tragically in 1996; Laura no longer plays in the quartet, but is now on Juilliard's faculty. The quartet, however, minus these two original members, continues to flourish, and its Web site (cassattquartet.com) explains the origin of their name.

Above: Paul Gauguin: Self-Portrait With Hat (c.1893-94), oil on canvas, Paris, Musée d'Orsay (Photo RMN / © Hervé Lewandowski). Below: Paul Cézanne: Three Bathers (1879-82), oil on canvas, Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris. (Petit Palais © Photothèque es Musées de la Ville de Paris/Pierrain )

The two not-to-be-missed exhibitions currently at the Met are "Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde" and "Americans in Paris, 1860-1900." Do not let the fact that, for some reason, neither has received the kind of attention it merits dissuade you from rushing to see them.

The first show—a revelation—is unique in its focus on the vision of one man. Vollard (1866-1939), a French art dealer, patron, and publisher, had the foresight to collect important works by not only the two artists named in the exhibit's title, but also Bonnard, Degas, Derain, Gauguin, van Gogh, Matisse, and Redon, among others. And he did this long before any of them achieved fame. In fact, it was through his gallery and promotion that many of these artists become renowned and their works saw the light.

The exhibition is dazzling in every way. The Cézannes alone were so compelling that I found it difficult to get past them. Indeed, it was the sight of a Cézanne in the window of his agent, Père Tanguy, that inspired Vollard to become a dealer. By November 1895 he assembled enough works for Cézanne's first solo exhibition. Vollard soon became Cézanne's major dealer; about 680 paintings—two-thirds of the artist's work—passed through his hands.

The Met has borrowed paintings from public collections in Brazil, Paris, Washington, Chicago, Moscow, and Saint Louis, as well as from a number of private collections. One of my favorite paintings in the show (and, coincidentally, the one on the cover of Schapiro's book on Cézanne) is Basket of Apples (1893), from the Art Institute of Chicago, with its sumptuous colors, and the strange cookies (perhaps either madeleines or dents de loup) stacked like blocks on top of each other, resting on a book. The right side of the canvas is strangely balanced by an upended basket of fruit supported by a brick on the other. The impossible angles of the bottle, the table, and the crumpled mass of tablecloth led directly to Picasso's and Braque's Cubist innovations early in the 20th century. Another painting, the almost-clumsy Three Bathers (c. 1879-82), with its triangular composition and woven brushstrokes, looks ahead to Cezanne's own later The Large Bathers (1898-1905), from the Philadelphia Museum of Art—which, in turn, predicts Picasso's infamous 1907 Demoiselles d'Avignon, from the Museum of Modern Art. The still lifes, landscapes, and figure paintings by Cézanne are followed by masterpieces by Gauguin, van Gogh, and Picasso. Be prepared to be overwhelmed by sheer beauty.

Left: James McNeill Whistler: Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl (1862), oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Harris Whittemore Collection (Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art). Below: Childe Hassam: At the Florist (1889), oil on canvas, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va. (Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. )

The other show is not just a great idea and an important theme, as noted by a New York Times reviewer, but an unforgettably stunning and virtuosic display of painting. Here we have the uncommon opportunity to see 11 works by Mary Cassatt. It's ironic that the two exhibitions had simultaneously requested the loan of a certain Cassatt from Washington. This show ended up getting it. It's the one with a little girl reclining in a blue armchair, and her dog curled up in another. These splashily brushed chairs are joined by another one and a loveseat in an imprecise circle that causes the gray background to form its own squiggly negative space.

Cassatt, who lived a long life (1844-1926), confined her subject matter to genteel portraits of family and friends, but contemporary critics have noted her subtle feminism. (She portrays her mother reading a newspaper, for example—which, in her day, was a "manly" thing to do.) Cassatt's skill paralleled that of Degas, who considered her an equal. She was, without doubt, a "modern woman," and one of the few women—and Americans—to be included in Impressionist exhibitions in France.

The premise of this exhibition is that any American artist worth his or her salt went to Paris toward the latter part of the 19th century. As Henry James said in 1887: "It sounds like a paradox, but it is a very simple truth, that when today we look for 'American art' we find it mainly in Paris. When we find it out of Paris, we at least find a great deal of Paris in it." And, indeed, the exhibition ends with art back home in the United States, but the artists treated outdoor scenes in much the same way they did while sojourning in France.

Whistler's Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl (1862), from the National Gallery in Washington, and John Singer Sargent's spectacular Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882), from the Boston Museum of Fine Art, are outstanding among the paintings in the show. The most intriguing of numerous portrayals of musical subjects is Thomas Eakins' The Cellist (1896), from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Other major painters represented include Winslow Homer, Childe Hassam, John White Alexander, Theodore Robinson, and Maurice Prendergast.

Lesser known, but extraordinary, was the African-American Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), as well as several women, such as Cecilia Beaux, Mary Fairchild, and Bessie Potter. Seeing both exhibitions inevitably raises the question: What distinguishes the Americans from the French? Is there any discernibly unique American-ness in art? Barbara Novak has said that Americans rarely dissolve images in the same way the French do. Americans, for the most part, cannot help but retain form and a sense of wholeness, philosophically reflecting their spiritual beliefs.

The exhibitions complement one another, but they are too powerful to see in one day. I recommend dedicating plenty of time to each one.

"Cezanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde" runs through January 7. "Americans in Paris, 1860-1900" is on view through January 28. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is on Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street.

Art historian Greta Berman has been on the liberal arts faculty since 1979.