An Attention to Viewpoint: Cubist Inspired Artworks from 1916-1960

Giorgio de Chirico (Italian, 1888-1978) L’amore del mondo 1960, oil on canvas On Loan to the Montana Museum of Art & Culture, Courtesy of Private Collection Italian born, raised partly in An Attention to Viewpoint: Greece, De Chirico studied in Cubist Inspired Artworks from 1916-1960 Athens, Greece and in Munich, Germany with 19th-century Swiss Symbolist Arnold Böcklin. De Chirico lived in Ferrara, Italy, from 1911 to 1918, The Montana Museum of Art & Culture is delighted to the period in which he produced many paintings of empty present these artworks from a private collection which share plazas and deserted cityscapes. In 1915, De Chirico met a common interest in, or reliance upon, Cubism. Cubism is Futurist painter Carlo Carrà, and together they founded the the incorporation of several instances or viewpoints into a magazine pittura metafisica in 1920. single form using a geometric vocabulary of cones, spheres or cubes. Cubism originated in France with Georges Braque and De Chirico’s metaphysical work takes the commonplace out Pablo Picasso at the beginning of the 20th Century and had a of its natural environment. De Chirico uses the vocabulary profound influence on the development of art. of the still life and architectural features drawn from his own life—such as the railway his father helped build which bisects De Chirico’s metaphysical paintings (pittura metafisica), the Greek town of Volos, the 19th century Mole Antonelliana including L’amore del mondo, Cubism’s prevalence in Paris tower, or the deep arcades of the Vittorio Veneto piazza, studios and galleries after 1912. The multiple points of both in Turin, Italy—to suggest a counter reality which perspective found in these paintings are not meant to set communicates with the subconscious mind. Critic Robert the viewer in a secure, measurable space. Rather than one Hughes, notes, “De Chirico’s city has been one of the capitals vanishing point there are often several, none “correct.” They of the modernist imagination. It is a fantasy town, a state of are a means of distortion used to disquiet the eye. These mind, signifying alienation, dreaming and loss. Its elements multiple viewpoints act in a way analogous to Cubism, are so well known by now that they fall into place as soon as disrupting illusionary depth and flattening the picture plane, a they are named, like jigsaw pieces worn by being assembled quintessential modernist strategy. over and over again: the arcades, the tower, the piazza, the De Lempicka, on the other hand, incorporates elements shadows, the statue, the train, the mannequin.” of Futurism as well as Cubism into her paintings. She From 1924 to 1930, De Chirico gave enormous impetus to employs repetitive geometric shapes to reference modernist the surrealist movement, informing the work of Yves Tanguy, architecture. This repetition also recalls Duchamp’s depiction Dalí and Magritte. By 1939 he adopted a neo-Baroque style of motion using successive superimposed images, a visual influenced by Rubens, which never received the same critical device inspired by advances in stroboscopic photography. The praise as his earlier works. He began creating ‘backdated’ appeal of De Lempicka’s work was in large part due to her works to profit from his earlier success, and as an act of ability to reflect contemporary attitudes. revenge—retribution for the critical preference for his early Lipchitz’s Seated Bather is the most direct example of Cubism, work. L’amore del mondo is a reworking of an earlier painting with his sculpture representing a new development in the entitled Le mauvais génie d’un roi of 1914-1915 now in the depiction of three-dimensional freestanding sculpture. collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New Lipchitz uses twisting diagonals and curvilinear forms to York. Depicting almost identical scenes, this work differs only suggest the figure spiraling on an axis—enabling a dynamic from the earlier version in that De Chirico has introduced a view of multiple sides of the figure simultaneously. mannequin, known as the troubadour. The troubadour was a recurring motif in his later compositions and, as De Chirico —Notes by Brandon Reintjes, Curator of Art says, “...is afraid of feeling in his back or his side the piercing arrow of a glance, even a benevolent one.” De Chirico died in Rome on November 20, 1978. Jacques Lipchitz Tamara De Lempicka (French, 1891-1973) (Polish, 1898-1980) Baigneuse assise Portrait du Marquis Sommi (Seated Bather), Conceived in 1925, oil on canvas 1916, cast in the artist’s lifetime, cast bronze Portrait de Madame M. 1932, oil on canvas On Loan to the Montana Museum of Art & Culture, On Loan to the Montana Museum Courtesy of Private Collection of Art & Culture, Courtesy of Private Collection Born Chaim Jacob Lipchitz in Druskininkai, Lithuania, the artist Born Maria Gorska in Warsaw, studied engineering, but moved Poland, De Lempecka was a self- to Paris in 1909 to study at the École des Beaux-Arts and the fashioned entrepreneur who Académie Julian. He soon came into contact with Cubism and ascended the ranks of society readily contributed to its development. and became a millionaire by age twenty-eight. She grew up in St. In the winter of 1916, Lipchitz signed a contract with Léonce Petersburg, Russia, with a wealthy Rosenberg at the Galerie de l’Effort Moderne which provided aunt, but fled to Paris following for his artistic expenses plus an allowance. This arrangement the Russian Revolution in 1917. enabled him to work in marble and bronze. In return, In Paris, De Lempicka forged a Rosenberg received everything Lipchitz produced. Lipchitz’s bold, cosmopolitan figurative style new freedom and self-confidence was reflected in the great that combined elements of Cubism and Neo-Classicism, series of mature Cubist figures that he undertook and which looking to the Italian Mannerists, especially the Quattrocento occupied him until the end of the decade. painters, and contemporary realism trends from Germany. His sculpture, previously limited to completely abstract, She developed a pictorial manner to describe the erotic rigorous architectural interpretations of synthetic Cubism, undercurrents and unrestrained extravagance of the Parisian was mechanical, emphasizing extreme verticality and layered post-war années folles that paralleled the American Jazz Age. rectangular planes. Lipchitz comments, “I had lost the sense In 1925, De Lempicka set out for Italy to study Quattrocento of the subject, of its humanity.” Under this new patronage, painting. During this visit, Count Emmanuele de Castelbarco Lipchitz began making Cubist works drawn from his figural offered her a solo exhibition at the Bottega di Poesia in Milan, studies. where De Lempicka met Marquis Guido di Giralamo Sommi Lipchitz’s sculpture Baigneuse assise initiated this significant Picenardi. A Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in the Knights phase. Musicians became his most important male subject of Malta, he was a trained musician who had studied at the with bathers as his chief female subject. Venice Conservatory. They quickly became lovers and De Lempicka completed two portraits of the Marquis Sommi in Lipchitz writes, “Seated Bather represents again an important 1925. change and development in my cubism. Here I began to abandon that rigid vertical-horizontal aspect that marked By the 1930s, De Lempicka was one of the most sought- the works of the preceding years. It is also true, I think, that after portraitists among wealthy Europeans and Americans. the Seated Bather as a figure takes on a greater human Celebrated as a glamorous hostess and socialite, the presence. While it is still in every way an organization of professional and social aspects of her life were inextricably plastic masses and volumes, the sense of humanity gives it intertwined. De Lempicka completed Portrait de Madame M. a specific personality, a brooding quality emphasized by the for André Morillot in 1931-1932. Morillot, a lawyer for the shadowed face framed in the heavy, hanging locks of the hair. French government with the Cour de Cassation and Conseil In this work I think I clearly achieved the kind of poetry which d’Etat, had commissioned this portrait of his wife Marie- I felt to be essential in the total impact...When I finished the Thérèse, née Morand, as a gift to her following their marriage. Seated Bather, I realized and was excited by the significance Exhibited at the Salon des Tuileries, the painting was one of of the new departure, the new syntax of forms.” the artist’s last big portraits. The economic crisis hit Europe by 1932, making lavish commissions a scarcity. In 1934, De Lempicka, married a wealthy Hungarian, Baron Raoul Kuffner, freeing her from financial worries. .

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