Cubists and Futurists” by Daniel Robbins, 1961
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Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Cubists and Futurists” by Daniel Robbins, 1961 DANIEL ROBBINS [00:00:00] Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the seventh and next-to-last lecture in this series. This afternoon, our subject is so vast and so complex, that I cannot pretend to do justice to it. I think I’ll cover substantially the same material next Thursday. [00:01:00] cubism and futurism have been the keywords of Modern painting for 50 years. cubism certainly the most influential and important movement at the beginning of our century, and futurism, that movement which, with its word and with its several manifestos, successfully captured the imagination of the public. For example, when the post-impressionist paintings and the cubist paintings and the futurist paintings came to America in 1913 for the Great Armory Show, almost the entire exhibition was referred to in flaming front page articles as “futurist work.” It was both a term of derision and a term of praise, depending on what [00:02:00] side of the issues one stood. What I propose to do this afternoon is to give a rather traditional run-through and analysis of cubism. It’s by no means the whole story. I propose to do likewise for futurism, and at the very end of my lecture, to suggest a few of the more complicated points that arise and which I hope I’ll be able to deal with next time. Let’s begin by looking at a kind of work we’ve seen before: a Picasso of 1902. Here, on the left, the Woman with Bangs, very aptly titled. It’s a work of the artist’s Blue period, but more than that, it’s a work as, I’ve remarked in connection with similar works, in which the [00:03:00] influence of the end of the century art nouveau is still very evident. That is, there is a certain curvilinear quality to it and a certain simplicity of the curvilinear shape against a simple, flat background. Now, there are other features that are equally visible and equally important. For one thing, it’s very evident that Picasso, when he was just beginning his career — he was 21 years old when he made this picture — he was shuttling back and forth between Barcelona, where he came from, and Paris, where he wanted to be and would eventually settle. We see in it certain reminiscences of perhaps his Catalonian background; the emphasis on the eyes, the heavy eyelids. We see also a preoccupation with the kind of subject matter that Toulouse-Lautrec had made so popular [00:04:00] among the avant-garde, that is, a kind of sad quality, a kind of lonely quality, and this, as you know, is to be developed by him in the paintings of circus people that he went on to do in the next three and four years. On the right, is his very famous painting of Gertrude Stein, in which so many people see evidence for the beginning of cubism. It’s a very notable advance. I don’t mean “advance” in terms of superior quality, but in terms of what actually did develop over the painting of the lady with the bangs [Woman with Bangs], because she is still somewhat flattened out, and the artist, in the painting of Gertrude Stein, which is in the Metropolitan and I expect you all know it, is obviously concerned with planes and with the structure of the head. Certain distortion appears in the form, distortion of a different sort than the distortion [00:05:00] you see here. Here, a mouth is twisted for obviously expressive and emotional reasons. Same is true of the treatment of the eyes — they’re exaggerated, the shadows are exaggerated, but this planarity that you see underneath the eyebrow, to the eyelid, which is an indication of the artist’s interest in how the eye goes back, how it’s set into the socket, is all the more carefully explored here, sharpened, and the plane of the face going back into space is simple of thought and made more acute, and the relationship of the figure, as it sits with one shoulder high and one shoulder dropped, is Transcript © 2018 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF). All rights reserved. Page 1 of 11 Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Cubists and Futurists” by Daniel Robbins, 1961 explored, as is the hand dropped down and this one resting on the knee. So, perhaps, in a sense, people who see this great interest in the beginning of an investigation and analysis of structure are quite correct. Traditionally, however, the great Demoiselles d’Avignon [00:06:00] of 1907-1908, painting that the Modern Museum is fortunate to possess, is usually considered as the beginning of cubism, the first cubist painting. Whether it’s perhaps futile to really look for the first cubist painting or not is a question that I will leave until next week. At any rate, in analyzing this painting, certain very important things become evident. For one thing, there’s a curious paradox in terms of space. This should be evident to all of us as we look at even the reproduction. That is: does space go back, or are there shapes set against a simple, flat area, which creates a very shallow space in which we saw in many art nouveau examples? [00:07:00] These planes that one reads as being in the background don’t stay put. They don’t describe a flat surface back there, against which these shapes are set. They go back, and they come forward, because they’re modeled. Modeled in the same way as the hands are modeled, or the flesh is modeled. So, there’s this kind of sense of going back, and going forward. It’s a shifty kind of space. It’s a space in which everything that’s located in it seems to come forward and engage us as spectators. Now, as you look at the painting, one becomes conscious of great curiosities in the manner in which the figures are treated. For example, [00:08:00] this figure and this figure and let’s say the bottom part of this figure are treated in a similar fashion; very simplified, very angular, the sharp elbow here, the sharp elbow there, all the features on the face, sharp, although, to be sure, if you look at the eyes — if I can make my arrow sharper — you’ll see the same kind of heavy-lidded people you saw in the portrait of Gertrude Stein and in the lady with bangs before. Yet, the modeling is largely absent, it’s not emphasized. Contrast these two figures with this head over here, and you find something startlingly different. This would seem to be a reminiscence of perhaps Catalonian sculpture, which Picasso had grown up [00:09:00] with, but, this head is in turn different from this head, and this head, and these two bodies are treated in an entirely different way than these three. Look how this nose is simplified into two planes and comes jutting forward. Likewise, here: here, the heavy-lidded eye types are gone, and the whole thing, probably reminiscent to us now as it was to a very few people in 1907 and 1908, a primitive sculpture of African art, which had been very popular among artists, like Matisse and Derain, as early as 1905, and which we know that Picasso was collecting. So, here then are the usual sources of inspiration, sources of inspiration which we have seen and I’ve discussed in previous lectures, in the primitive, in the simple, in the expressive, but now given a [00:10:00] new turn, a turn not exclusively for their expressive purposes, for their emotional impact, but simply because of what they do to form the way they are visually different and exciting and the way form is actually distorted so that you see around it in ways. That is, here there is a nose almost in motion and the mouth that indicates that the face is twisted in that direction, and this is very important. This painting was seen by Georges Braque in Picasso’s studio when he was working on it, and it went through a number of interesting and curious phases, and I’m afraid I haven’t slides to show you how originally it started out as an interior, with a recognizable space going back, a back wall, and how these women who started out to represent the inmates — perhaps that’s not the right word [00:11:00] — of a brothel in Transcript © 2018 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (SRGF). All rights reserved. Page 2 of 11 Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection “Cubists and Futurists” by Daniel Robbins, 1961 Barcelona, were surrounded with other figures, or at least, two other figures were present, one, a sailor, and the other, a kind of allegorical figure, holding the skull that would represent Death. Now, all of this was eliminated as the artist’s very considerable interest in the visual aspects of form became a paramount. Braque, as I said, had seen this painting, and he was very impressed with the sort of thing that it revealed to him, the interest in form as form. He, previously, had been a faux, his color had been brilliant, it had been bright, but, that summer, the summer of 1908, he went to the South of France, to a place called L’Estaque.