Cézanne's vision turns ugly

Cézanne's vision turns ugly
Uproar as painter's timeless landscape is threatened by new housing estate
Paul Webster in Médan
Saturday December 27, 2003
The Guardian

Under a sky full of sleet above a dull, brown stretch of the Seine, an effort of imagination is needed to link the hillside above this village west of Paris with some of the most colourful works of the impressionist painter Paul Cézanne.

From next year, it could be even more difficult to make the connection after a move by the local council to remove rows of chestnut trees and build 78 houses on a skyline that the Aix-en-Provence painter immortalised in his Le Coteau de Médan - the steeply rising riverbank above the village, which attracts thousands of art lovers.

While it is an exaggeration to claim, as some locals do, that the low, curving hill on the road to Claude Monet's Giverny is the Ile de France's answer to Aix's Mont Sainte-Victoire, views of the village are as recognisable today from the opposite bank of the Seine as they were when Cézanne visited his childhood friend Emile Zola 120 years ago.

Zola, like his fellow novelist Victor Hugo, was an obsessive photographer and left behind his own shots of Médan from the spot on the right bank where Cézanne placed his easel during regular visits.

Zola's house, with its statue of the creator of the Rougon-Macquart dynasty, is the most visited site in a village of 1,480 people which has preserved the tranquil atmosphere treasured by the impressionists, most of whose works were painted along the Seine as far away as Rouen and Le Havre, although an increasing amount of tourist river traffic stops offshore from Médan to admire Cézanne's perspectives. Inevitably, the plan to build upmarket housing has caused a national row unlikely to end whatever the conclusions of a public inquiry which finished on Christmas Eve. Those against include Pierre Bergé, the co-founder of Yves Saint-Laurent's fashion empire, who heads an association dedicated to Zola's works.

He has promised to use his fortune to oust the rightwing mayor, Serge Goblet, if permission is given to change the skyline, and has strong support in the village led by Jean-Pierre Aubin de Malicorne, who heads an association called the real friends of Médan.

"This site is as precious to us as Sainte-Victoire is to the people of Aix," he said, recalling that the picturesque reputation had attracted many writers and artists including the Nobel prizewinner Maurice Maeterlinck, who settled there.

"It is a wonderful viewpoint to admire the Seine and the colourful barge traffic heading to and from Paris.

"The river cruise traffic is growing rapidly and will one day be as important as that on the Rhine. Those houses are going to take away the charm from an internationally known landscape."

Defenders of the Cézanne legacy include a Canadian airline pilot, Silvère Le Blond, Zola's great-great grandson, but if the municipal elections of two years ago are anything to go by nearly two-thirds of the village backs the mayor and wants the new houses to generate more revenue through taxes and to boost local traders.

Mayor Goblet said he would make no comment until the public inquiry made its report to the environment ministry, which will decide whether the Coteau de Médan merits permanent protection. But in the past, he has said that, despite claims of "cultural sabotage", it was impractical to list every site painted by the impressionists because their mark can be found in any number of communes situated among the forests and hills bordering the Seine.