C%C3%A9zanne: A Life

Danchev's (On War and Art and Terror) biography of painter Paul C%C3%A9zanne is both exhaustive and occasionally exhausting. The author tries to rein in his elusive subject with details ranging from C%C3%A9zanne's childhood friendship with writer Emile Zola to descriptions of the artist's late-career workdays. The result reveals how difficult it is to sum up an artist whose work has drawn the accolades of everyone from Sir Kenneth Clark to Allen Ginsburg. C%C3%A9zanne was both "a sensitive brute" as an Aix en Provence schoolboy and an aging madman. The art of his most productive years, observed sculptor Alberto Giacometti, "revolutionized the representation of the exterior world," undoing and expanding the perspective that painting had celebrated since the Renaissance. C%C3%A9zanne in some respects was a forerunner of a modern artistic celebrity, whose persona, while tied to his extraordinary productivity, also assumed a life of its own, both in literature and the public imagination. Danchev is deeply versed in C%C3%A9zanne as legend, man, and artist, and this account encompasses all of these. 32p full-color insert. Illus. Agent: Inkwell Management. (Oct.)