The Frame | The Card Players – Paul Cézanne
From a five-piece oil painting series in which the French painter Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), known as the 'father of modern painting' , inverts the image of a peasant playing cards in a provincial tavern.
Cézanne's "Card Players" are far removed from noisy emotions, money, and alcohol; they are withdrawn into themselves with a timeless stillness. They seem to have solemnly declared war on the monotony of life and the ticking of the clock.
A deliberate contrast is created between the paleness of the wall and the figures' distinctly colored clothing. This distances the figures from the space and places them at the center of the painting.
The red scarf of the standing figure smoking a pipe and the four pipes hanging on the wall, with the final touches, complete the picture...
The history of Western painting clung tightly to the image of ordinary people drinking, smoking, and playing cards in taverns. From the 17th century onward, paintings of everyday life, drenched in the sauce of "human scenes from my homeland," were quite common in the Netherlands and France.
Of course, with a depiction that points the finger at the common man and plays moralistic: Drunkenness, deceit, chaos, misery.
Cézanne—putting on his characteristically rude and angry face—turned this image on its head in the early 1890s. First, he simplified the tavern by stripping it of its hubbub, then he imbued the tavernkeepers with a seriousness and dignity.
Some critics have described the "Card Players" series as "human still life." Others, noting the attention and seriousness of the people in the painting, have noted "the artist's devotion to his craft."
Storyteller, novelist, and painter Ferit Edgü says, "Cézanne's painting has no place for human drama or comedy ." "He seems to have excluded all emotions, passions, and pain from his paintings."
It's no surprise that the five figures in the painting appear to be sitting alone. Cézanne made hundreds of sketches of each figure in preparation, ultimately combining them into a single painting.
In other words, he measured and considered the emotions of the figures in the painting like a true artist and created them like a patient God.
In 2011, a painting from the "Card Players" series was sold to the Qatari Royal Family for $250 million. No other painting had ever been paid that much before.
Diken
