Cezanne & beyond.

• Position: Museums Today - Philadelphia Museum of Art's exhbition of Paul Cezanne's works

IN 1907, THE FRENCH painter Paul Cezanne's posthumous retrospective astonished younger artists, accelerating the experimentation of European modernism. Cezanne (1839-1906) became for Henri Matisse "a benevolent god of painting" and, for Pablo Picasso, "my one and only master." Cezanne's inclusion in the Armory Show in New York in 1913 also offered American artists a new direction.

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"Cezanne & Beyond" examines the seismic shift provoked by this pivotal figure, examining him as form-giver, catalyst, and touchstone for artists who followed. It surveys the development of an artistic vision that anticipated Cubism and fueled a succession of artistic movements, and juxtaposes Cezanne's achievement with works by many who were inspired directly by him, showing a fluid interchange of form and ideas. It places his work in context with more recent artists such as Ellsworth Kelly, Jasper Johns, and Brice Marden, who, in quite different ways, came to terms with the master of Aix-en-Provence. His profound impact on successive generations endures to the present day. The exhibition presents more than 150 works, including a large group of paintings, watercolors, and drawings by Cezanne, along with those of 18 later artists.

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"The exhibition is about the pleasures of experiencing the interaction of artistic ideas in a creative dialogue across a continuum," says Joseph J. Rishel, curator of European Painting before 1900 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. "The installation juxtaposes works from the past and present, with Cezanne as the generative pivot. Rather than charting a chronology of influence, we are especially interested in examining artistic ideas in motion, extended, reformulated, and transmuted by the hands of different artists. I'd like to think that the viewer will be able to experience it in a completely nonlinear way, always circling around to Cezanne."

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All of the artists in the exhibition have acknowledged Cezanne's profound impact on their work. When Matisse donated his Cezanne painting of "Three Bathers" to the Petit Palais in 1936, he wrote: "In the 37 years I have owned this canvas, I have come to know it quite well, though not entirely, I hope; it has sustained me morally in the critical...