Lessons in Art

As a high school art-history appreciation teacher for the past dozen years, I enjoyed the opportunity to visit the Ingres exhibition this fall in New York. Calendar’s remarkable front-page juxtaposition Dec. 1 of the Ingres and Cezanne portraits--and their accompanying reviews--reminded me of what an education in the arts, at its best, aims to achieve: the sharpening of the “critical eye” so that the viewer may see beyond the surface of the work.

The two portraits are extraordinary firsthand evidence of the half-century of intellectual-aesthetic history that, at once, separates and links the worlds of Ingres and Cezanne. Christopher Knight and Suzanne Muchnic’s articles deepen our understanding of how Ingres’ mid-19th century traditional, neoclassical values would evolve into Cezanne’s world, carefully poised on the brink of a turbulent new era.

DOUG LITTEN

Woodland Hills