Opening Lines / ike many a still life, Paul Cezanne's though it has pencil lines sewn through its L Still Life with Blue Pot (pi. 1) translucent cobalts, reds, ochers, and greens, gets its name from among its inventory of it is a painting at least as much as it is a objects, in this case the blue enamel pot that drawing. forms the summit of the composition. Its As memorable as it is, however, Cezanne's objects are plain and simple, remarkably Still Life with Blue Pot is lowly on two counts: unremarkable when seen in their diminished its genre and its medium. A still life in water- reality in Cezanne's last studio in Aix-en- colors, after all, is hardly the stuff of momen- Provence, where many of them still dwell.l tous art as it is usually conceived. Still life Yet the still life that these simple objects is the category of painterly subject matter compose is a magnificent thing: executed in that occupies the lowest rung on the ladder graphite and watercolor but large in dimen- of the old hierarchy of genres: devoted to sions for its medium, it is of the size and inanimate things and abject matter, thought spaciousness of a landscape, complex in both to be devoid of invention and narrative its arrangement of volumes and patterns import, tied to the humble activities of the and in its layering of watercolor tints and home or the quotidian exercises of the stu- touches, gorgeous in its raiment of stained- dio, it is to history and mythological painting glass effects. Much more than a study, it is a and all subjects based in the human body as full-fledged picture, carefully plotted and guttersnipe is to hero, scullery maid to king. elaborately crafted, as finished as any of the Likewise, watercolor on paper is to oil on painter's late works ever were, and more canvas as holiday gear is to formal wear: sensuously satisfactory than many of his oils. the sketchbook materials of the student, the Indeed, though it resides in the drawings amateur, and the dilettante, of the artist's collection of the J. Paul Cetty Museum, and private note taking, the English hobbyist's 1