At the Grand Palais in Paris, Cézanne returns as the protagonist in an ambitious exhibition that tells the story of his influence on modern and contemporary art.
But there is a problem: to really see the works today, it seems almost necessary to survive the public.
Paris has just reopened one of its great stages for art. Since 23 September the Grand Palais has been hosting Cézanne et nous, a major exhibition dedicated to Paul Cézanne and his artistic legacy, conceived as a dialogue between the painter from Aix-en-Provence and the artists who, from the late nineteenth century to today, have looked at his work to reinvent painting.
There are 174 works on display: 69 by Cézanne and 105 by 78 artists, from Paul Gauguin to Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Joan Mitchell, Bridget Riley and Peter Doig.
The curatorial idea is interesting: not only to tell the story of Cézanne, but to tell what happened after Cézanne. How his way of constructing reality through colour, form and perspective opened a path that would lead to Cubism, abstraction and contemporary art.
And yet, after visiting the exhibition, the first question that remains is not about Cézanne. It is about the museum.
The problem is not the paintings. It is everything around them. Cézanne, of course, does not need to be defended.
In front of a Montagne Sainte-Victoire, a still life, a portrait or one of his famous compositions of bathers, it does not make much sense to argue about whether the work is “beautiful” or not. Cézanne is Cézanne. He is one of the artists who helped change the very way Western painting looks at reality.
The problem is something else: how much of his painting are we really able to see when around us there is a public that is constantly moving, taking photos, looking for their own place in front of the painting and occupying every available centimetre?
The feeling during the visit was that of an overcrowded exhibition. And not only crowded in the inevitable sense of a major event that has just opened: at times it seemed impossible to stop in front of a work without having to wait your turn. Queues in front of the paintings. People taking photographs.
Visitors constantly moving to find the best angle. Others who photograph the work, then photograph it again, then photograph the caption. And so what should be a place of contemplation risks turning into a small theatre of digital performance. You no longer go to see a work: you also go to document the fact that you have seen it. It is a subtle but fundamental difference.
The lost poetry of the museum
There is something almost romantic in the idea of standing in front of a painting without doing anything else. Looking at it. Staying there for a few minutes. Going back. Noticing a detail we had not seen before.
Letting a colour, a shape or a brushstroke produce a feeling without having to immediately turn it into a photograph to share. The museum, historically, is also this: a space removed from the noise of the world. In the Cézanne exhibition this dimension is instead often missing.
The spaces are crowded and, in some sections, the number of people almost produces a feeling of claustrophobia. And this is a particularly great pity when the protagonist is Cézanne.
Because his painting requires time. Cézanne is not an artist to be consumed in three seconds in front of a screen. He is an artist in front of whom we must learn to look again. His surfaces seem simple only from a distance; as you get closer, the tensions between colour, form, space and perspective emerge.
But to discover them you need something that a museum should guarantee: mental and physical space.
Limited tickets?
The Grand Palais sells tickets with access in time slots: on paper, therefore, the principle of limiting numbers exists. The exhibition in fact offers timed tickets, as well as a “freedom” ticket that allows access without reservation.
But the question is: what is the maximum number of people who can enter every half hour without compromising the experience of those who are already inside?
Because limiting entry does not simply mean avoiding a queue forming outside. It also means controlling the density of people inside the galleries. A major museum should have the courage to say: this is the maximum number of visitors who can experience this exhibition at the same time.
Even at the cost of selling fewer tickets. Because a 19-euro ticket does not only buy physical access to the galleries. It implicitly buys the possibility of enjoying the works. And if in front of the painting there is a line of people waiting to take a photograph, that possibility is drastically reduced.
Cézanne through others: an interesting, not always immediate idea. It must be said that the structure of the exhibition is, conceptually, much more interesting than a simple retrospective.
Cézanne et nous does not want to build an isolated monument to the artist, but to show his influence through subsequent generations. The route relates Cézanne to Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso, Mondrian, Joan Mitchell, Bridget Riley, Peter Doig and many others.
The comparison can be illuminating. One of the most interesting insights is precisely that of showing how an artist apparently focused on a few subjects — apples, mountains, bathers, portraits — became a sort of permanent laboratory for subsequent generations. The problem is that, during a very crowded visit, part of this curatorial work risks being lost.
When you cannot calmly read a caption, when you have to move because other people want to pass, when you do not have enough space to stop in front of a pair of works and compare them, the dialogue envisaged by the curator becomes much more difficult to follow.
And at some points the exhibition requires exactly that time for comparison. It is not enough to place two works next to each other: visitors must be given the possibility to understand why they are next to each other.
And then there is the audio guide. Another element that affects usability is the audio guide.
The Grand Palais offers it for 3 euros and makes it available directly on the visitor’s smartphone, via a QR code. The museum itself explicitly invites visitors to bring their own earphones.
The solution is certainly contemporary and apparently practical. But it is not necessarily inclusive. A young visitor with a smartphone and wireless earphones will not have particular difficulties. An elderly visitor, on the other hand, may find themselves faced with a procedure that is anything but intuitive: purchasing the audio guide, accessing their phone, scanning the QR code, using the device and above all having suitable headphones.
The result, in a crowded room, can be paradoxical: people listening to the audio guide directly from their phone, others trying to understand where the work being described is, still others having to interrupt their visit to get their bearings.
During the visit, moreover, the sequence of the audio guide did not always seem intuitive: at some moments it was not immediately clear which work or room the track referred to. Technology should make the experience more accessible. It should not add an additional layer of complexity.
The Cézanne paradox
And this is precisely the paradox of Cézanne et nous. The exhibition tells the story of an artist who taught subsequent generations to look differently. But to really look at his works today, you first have to overcome a series of contemporary obstacles: overcrowding, smartphones, photographs, audio guides, noise, the search for the “perfect moment” to capture.
Cézanne spent years looking for a new way to represent reality. We risk not even having five minutes to look at him.
The market has no doubts about his weight
If there is one sector in which Cézanne’s centrality continues to be measurable with numbers that are hard to ignore, it is the art market. Cézanne’s absolute auction record belongs to La Montagne Sainte-Victoire from 1888–1890, sold by Christie’s in New York on 9 November 2022 for 137.79 million dollars.
The work was part of the collection of Paul G. Allen and set the artist’s auction record. The economic history of the same painting is also interesting: Allen had purchased it in 2001 for 38.5 million dollars. Twenty-one years later, the canvas was knocked down for 137.79 million. Cézanne’s market, however, is not limited to nine-figure masterpieces.
In 2019 Bouilloire et fruits from 1888–1890 reached 59.295 million dollars, while in 2021 L’Estaque aux toits rouges from 1883–1885 reached 55.32 million, both at Christie’s New York. And the market continues to move even in 2026.
In April, at Christie’s in Paris, Femme assise (Madame Cézanne), a watercolour and pencil on paper from 1902–1904, was sold for 3.964 million euros, setting according to Christie’s a new record in France for a work on paper by Cézanne. In March, at Sotheby’s in London, Route tournante en sous-bois, a watercolour, charcoal and pencil on paper from around 1885–1890, reached 268,800 pounds.
On the same day Paysage avec moulin, an oil on canvas from 1860, reached 166,400 pounds. And in October 2025 Christie’s had sold in London Maison de Bellevue et pigeonnier, around 1890, for 5.54 million pounds. Paysage from 1867 had instead reached 381,000 pounds. These are numbers that tell us something important: the market does not consider Cézanne a closed chapter in the history of art, but an artist still capable of generating demand at the highest levels.
As expert in digital marketing, Amelia began working in the fintech sector in 2014 after writing her thesis on Bitcoin technology. Previously author for several international crypto-related magazines and CMO at Eidoo. She is now the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Cryptonomist and Econique.
She is also a marketing teacher at Digital Coach in Milan and she published a book about NFTs for the Italian publishing house Mondadori, while she is also helping artists and company to entering in the sector. As advisor, Amelia is also involved in metaverse-related project such as The Nemesis and OVER.
