ABOVE: Details from Cézanne’s Louveciennes (1872), left, and Pissarro’s Louveciennes (1871), both showing now at the Museum of Modern Art.

The New Yorker posted this review of the current “Pioneering Modern Painting: Cézanne & Pissarro, 1865-1885” exhibit at MoMA a while ago, but we missed it at the time. It hints rather slyly at what must be some slightly tense personnel issues in the museum’s Department of Painting and Sculpture, where Joachim Pissarro, the titular painter’s great-grandson, currently works as a curator. Pissarro The Younger is apparently put in the awkward position of writing enthusiastically in the catalogue about his ancestor’s work, despite the fact that Pissarro’s paintings are clearly and consistently outgunned by Cézanne’s works throughout the show.

Peter Scheldahl notes the show’s similarity to MoMA’s 1989 exhibit “Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism,” in which Braque, like Pissarro in the current exhibit, was forced to be Bob to Picasso’s Bing. MoMA has put up a good online exhibit of the show, illustrating the various technical and stylistic similarities between the two painters, who were friends and often painted scenes side by side, resulting in some strange but fascinating duplicates. Brings to mind that old laundry detergent commercial: “I can’t tell the difference. Can you tell the difference?”

LINK: The New Yorker > Two Views