Washington has a small exhibition with a big, joyful idea. At the National Gallery of Art, Back and Forth: Rozeal., Titian, Cezanne brings together just four major paintings in the West Building, and invites visitors to look slowly and discover how artists talk to each other across six centuries.
The show, on view through January 3, 2027, pairs works from the museum’s permanent collection: afro.died, T. (2011) by contemporary artist Rozeal., Titian’s Venus with a Mirror (about 1555) and Ranuccio Farnese (1541-1542), and Paul Cezanne’s beloved Boy in a Red Waistcoat (1888-1890), pictured here. None of these artists set out to answer the others, and that is exactly the fun of it: the similarities appear when the paintings are placed side by side.
Four simple words guide the visit: Gaze, Space, Pose and Subject. Titian’s Venus and Rozeal.’s figure rethink ideals of beauty, Cezanne and Titian strike strikingly similar poses in their portraits of young men, and Rozeal. and Cezanne both build intimate, slightly disorienting interiors. The phrase ‘back and forth,’ repeated across the background of Rozeal.’s painting, becomes the exhibition’s invitation to keep looking back, and then forward again.
Curated by Molly Donovan, Eve Straussman-Pflanzer and Aaron Wile, the exhibition also offers a guided exhibition tour on Thursday, October 22 at 2:00 p.m. It is a perfect happy stop on the National Mall, Happy City News readers: four paintings, centuries of conversation, and plenty of new ways to see old favorites.
Photo: Paul Cezanne, Boy in a Red Waistcoat (1888-1890), National Gallery of Art, Washington; photograph by Alvesgaspar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
