THIS joint exhibition with the Art Institute of Chicago reduces its subject to an artist in search of an accent. Left alone, as the Tate exhibition of spring 1996 memorably demonstrated, Paul Cézanne can speak for himself.

Here we are told that omitting the accent from the first syllable of his family name (as the artist himself apparently signed and as his family currently prefer) is “a humble but potent reminder of the ways in which the twenty-first-century viewers can still see the foundational figure of modern art anew”. Really?

I am acutely aware that gallery-goers have many expectations and often come away confounded, but to suggest that philology (any Francophone will hear the difference) plays any part is frankly ridiculous. It would make for an interesting audience survey to establish if the omission improved the experience.

This aim sets the curatorial tone of the whole. The book accompanying the exhibition includes essays by contemporary artists who have reflected on Cézanne, some to more point than others. Although not as crass or as “woke” as the ill-informed rubbish put up as labels to disfigure the 2021/22 winter show “Hogarth and Europe” at Tate Britain, this is an unwelcome direction for any serious museum to espouse, even where the artists themselves have form.

The Belgian Luc Tuymans hints that the still-lifes might have been “an underhanded political statement against the more urban, worldly, and mundane themes in painting of the time” as part of the artist’s “quest for the affirmation of his own eternity, driven by a monumental persistence”. Does this hold true for the still-lifes of Chardin or Zurbarán, or for any of the Golden Age painters from Holland or Spain from previous centuries?

Paris, Musée de l’Orangerie, Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume CollectionPaul Cezanne, Portrait of the Artist’s Son (1881-82)

Phyllida Lloyd, in an oddly formatted piece, makes her mundane essay look like free verse about Mont Sainte-Victoire. Rather more insightful is the essay by Kerry James Marshall, an artist from Alabama, which read well enough for me to want to learn more about his own work, not least as Time 100 listed him in 2017 as one of the most influential people in the world.

A more serious consideration is to be found in a book that Professor T. J. Clark recently published, If These Apples Should Fall: Cézanne and the present, which, to my mind, represents much better value than the catalogue. Clark’s close reading makes much of how disquieting Cézanne’s compositions are and deftly situates his art in a period of change and social transition.

There is always something out of kilter. Tables seem oddly angled with the risk that fruit is always about to slip off the cloth. Nor is it just apples; pears and a lemon are equally at risk in a painting from New York, as is the ginger pot in the 1893-94 still-life from the Getty. In our world, we cannot seek or ensure stability.

And pictures of trees in silent and empty forests have more than one point of perspective that adds to the half-dreamlike feel that such scenes create. Roads run through deserted woods, and Mont Sainte-Victoire is painted in the blazing sunlight of midday, when the fields are empty of labourers.

In 1990, Richard Verdi explored the creative affinity between Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) and Cézanne. This made for a brilliant exhibition in Edinburgh, but the elephant in the room was any consideration of the absence of human life from Cézanne’s countryside scenes, whereas Poussin littered his classical landscapes with figures.

It is not that Cézanne had any difficulty painting the human form. Although London visitors are denied the chance of seeing his self-portraits, we do get to see two of the extraordinary portraits of his wife seated, in both a red (1877) and a yellow (1888-90) chair, works brought in respectively from Boston and Chicago. Cézanne portrayed her 27 times over thirty years, and seeing these alone justifies the entrance-ticket price.

Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift of Helen Tyson Madeira, 1977, 1977-288-1Paul Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire (1902-06)

The artist met the teenager Hortense Fiquet, who was working as a part-time model, in 1869, but did not marry her until 1886, 14 years after the birth of their only son, who figures here in two nursery portraits.

There is nothing in either of the portraits of Hortense which suggests how difficult the marital relationship often was, although some read her self-absorption as a mark of psychological distance. But they share a degree of disturbing imbalance.

In the earlier portrait, the 27-year-old woman wears a skirt that looks like one of Cézanne’s woodland scenes of birches, folded into fabric pleats. But she sits uncomfortably on the edge of the chair that famously appears to be two-dimensional. Her later portrayal in a red dress is more commanding, but again the chair is an unsettling distraction.

The Syrian Greek poet and painter Etel Adnan, drawing attention to one of Cézanne’s last works, Tate’s own The Gardener Vallier, is quoted here to suggest that it is his “ultimate ‘mountain’, his Ecce homo, his real testament. . . Cézanne watching him is overwhelmed.”

“No philosopher’s portrait”, she concludes, “has ever reached the evocative power of this one.” We are privileged to share the artist’s viewpoint.

“Cezanne” is at Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1, until 12 March. Phone 020 7887 8888. www.tate.org.uk