NEW CEZANNE

ALTHOUGH Paul Cezanne is widely regarded as the father of modern painting, and Manhattan's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is devoted to modern art, the Guggenheim has never owned a Cezanne. When it finally got one, it got one of the best: the Clockmaker (opposite), which will go on view next week along with 34 other recently acquired paintings.

Cezanne (1839-1906) painted pictures that were meticulous approximations of what he saw in nature; most of his contemporary critics thought them clumsy (in fact they were the reverse) and looked on Cezanne as inept or else as something of a wild man. But he had great respect for the classical tradition. Once he said that his goal was to paint something "solid and durable like the art of the museums." In the Clockmaker, painted at the height of his powers, he turned out a picture that is as solid and durable as anything done in the last 100 years. The portrait of a skilled and self-respecting artisan, it has glowing warmth and quiet dignity. In spirit, the picture harks back to Rembrandt; in technique, it points forward to cubism.

The Clockmaker, which came from a private collection in Heidelberg and has never before been shown in the U.S., was bought by the Guggenheim's trustees on the advice of the museum's new director, James Johnson Sweeney, a knowledgeable critic and an energetic man-about-museums (he has arranged exhibitions in Venice, Paris, London and Sao Paulo, served as Director of Painting and Sculpture for Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art). When Sweeney took over the Guggenheim 18 months ago, it was a cultish temple of nonobjective art. Its paintings were mainly second-rate German abstractions which looked like the products of a well-sterilized laboratory. Enclosed in fat, silvered frames, they hung in an atmosphere of pearl-grey carpets and Bach suites dripping from hidden amplifiers. Sweeney changed all that. He found the storerooms filled with first-rate works by modern Europeans from Bonnard to Vuillard, hung them in brilliantly arranged rotating shows. The Guggenheim's walls are now sparkling white; there are few distracting frames and the pictures hang at eye level, have space enough to strike the viewer with maximum effect. With these reforms--and acquisitions such as its new Cezanne--the Guggenheim has become one of the U.S.'s best showcases of modern art.

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