Paul Cezanne - Portrait of my world
I have to confess that I wasn't overwhelmed at the thought of an interactive CD-ROM on CΘzanne. A friend
recently returned from a CΘzanne exhibition to say that she had been bored out of her skull, and I tend to
share her sentiments. I enjoy van Gogh's originality, I love Manet's gawkish people (for me, his Bar at the
Folies-BergΦre, a print of which sits by desk, is one of the greatest paintings of all time), I savour Monet's
landscapes, but there is little that gets me excited about CΘzanne's work.
Still, I was prepared to give it a try. After a jolly spoken introduction, you are dropped in the exploration section, the first of several ways to navigate through the rich collection of pictures and information that makes up the disk. Exploration divides CΘzanne's experiences into five spheres of influence: the station, the landscape, the studio, the museum and the cafΘ. Each has a sketchily drawn environment that you can navigate around, peopled with CΘzanne's pictures, and the art, people and objects that influenced his development. This is my favourite way to get around the CD, but if you prefer more structure you can opt for an index of his work, a chronological biography or the QuickMove navigator, which maps the whole disk as a set of tiny squares, arranged to suit your requirements.
The material was presented well, with a good mix of stills and animation. Sometimes a picture will be broken
up, using narrative allegedly written by CΘzanne to describe the context or influence. Some of the links are
predictable but there are nice touches, like the train at the station which links to a LumiΦre film of a real
French train of the period. I was a little irritated by the habit of flashing up sound bites from the narration as if
they were great words of wisdom, but overall the effect was good.
I have had a technical problem with this title. It has twice managed to lock up Windows 95 with problems that seem to suggest it's having trouble with the display driver. This is overcome if you run in 256 colours, as the program recommends, but I expect better of an interactive CD-ROM, especially an art-based title, these days. Even so, this is a good piece of work. I'm not suddenly a fan of CΘzanne - I'm not about to displace Manet from the office wall - but I do appreciate more about the man and his life, and most important of all, I enjoyed exploring it. Even my bored friend might have approved of this one.
Overall - A good introduction to CΘzanne's life and work, with an imaginative enough presentation to interest even those who don't particularly like his paintings. Priced around ú39.99 in the UK. Produced by Corbis.