DOCSLIB.ORG

Nathalia Brodskaïa

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Nathalia Brodskaïa Nathalia Brodskaïa LesLes FauvesFauves Auteur : Nathalia Brodskaïa Mise en page : Baseline Co. Ltd 61A-63A Vo Van Tan Street 4e étage District 3, Hô-Chi-Minh-Ville Vietnam © Confidential Concepts, worldwide, USA © Parkstone Press International, New York, USA © Auguste Chabaud, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris © Othon Friesz, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris © Henri Manguin, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris © André Derain, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris © Louis Valtat, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris © Georges Rouault, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris © Kees van Dongen, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris © Albert Marquet, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris © Maurice de Vlaminck, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris © Raoul Dufy, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris © Jean Puy, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris © René Seyssaud, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris © Succession H. Matisse, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York © Henri Le Fauconnier, tous droits réservés Tous droits d’adaptation et de reproduction, réservés pour tous pays. Sauf mentions contraires, le copyright des œuvres reproduites appartient aux photographes, aux artistes qui en sont les auteurs ou à leurs ayants droit. En dépit de nos recherches, il nous a été impossible d’établir les droits d’auteur dans certains cas. En cas de réclamation, nous vous prions de bien vouloir vous adresser à la maison d’édition. eISBN : 978-1-78042-784-3 Nathalia Brodskaïa LES FAUVES SOMMAIRE L’Art des fauves 7 Henri Matisse 67 Maurice de Vlaminck 85 André Derain 95 Albert Marquet 105 Raoul Dufy 117 Othon Friesz 125 Henri Manguin 137 Kees Van Dongen 145 Georges Rouault 153 Jean Puy 159 Louis Valtat 167 Henri Le Fauconnier 175 René Seyssaud 181 Auguste Chabaud Georges Dupuis Henri Lebasque Pierre Girieud 185 Notes 192 Liste des illustrations 196 6 L’ART DES FAUVES es décennies entières s’écoulent les unes après les autres, ternissant ce qui autrefois paraissait briller avec éclat. Mais tout ne dépend pas du temps dans D une égale mesure. À cet égard, l’art des fauves garde toute sa splendeur. Formé au sein de la peinture française à la charnière des XIXe et XXe siècles, le Fauvisme attira immédiatement l’attention du public. Le scandale qu’il provoqua au fameux Salon d’automne de 1905 prouvait qu’un nouveau courant à force explosive était né. Le Fauvisme (tel fut le nom qui lui fut donné par la suite) représentait un véritable danger pour l’art académique, qui répondait aux goûts de la société de consommation, ainsi que pour tous les peintres reconnus par cette société qui prenaient bien soin de ne pas choquer les convenances de la bourgeoisie avec des tableaux trop audacieux. Moins de trois années s’avérèrent suffisantes pour que se formât autour des peintres fauves sinon un cercle étroit de spectateurs constants, du moins un groupe d’admirateurs et de marchands. Leurs détracteurs n’arrivaient pourtant pas à les empêcher de rivaliser avec les autres tendances artistiques. Chacun de ces peintres eut son propre destin, conforme à ses traits caractéristiques, mais aucun d’entre eux ne connut la gêne ou l’impuissance dans sa lutte contre l’art officiel. Pas un ne laissa après sa mort un atelier rempli d’œuvres inappréciées, se distinguant totalement en cela de Gauguin, Van Gogh ou Toulouse-Lautrec. Les fauves virent de leur vivant leurs œuvres accrochées aux murs des plus célèbres collectionneurs, et même plus tard des musées. Ils étaient l’objet d’une attention particulière de la part de la presse et jouissaient d’une grande estime de la part de leurs contemporains. Ils furent considérés maîtres éminents bien avant d’avoir atteint l’âge mûr, lorsque souvent les cheveux blancs remplacent le talent. On pourrait penser que l’habitude a affaibli l’acuité des premières impressions ; mais elles gardent toujours leur éclat initial. Les peintres fauves sont depuis longtemps morts, mais leurs œuvres, tout aussi vivantes, produisent sur le visiteur le même choc qu’au début du siècle. Le terme de « fauve » a été employé pour la première fois par un critique en 1905 pour marquer sa désapprobation devant ces tableaux aux couleurs hurlantes tous rassemblés dans une salle du fameux Salon d’automne. En effet, dans son article consacré à l’œuvre des quelques dix coloristes qui s’étaient manifestés pour la première fois publiquement et en commun, article publié dans la revue Gil Blas, Louis Vauxcelles écrivait : « Au centre de la salle VII un torse d’enfant d’Albert Marque. La candeur de ce buste surprend au milieu de l’orgie des tons purs : Donatello chez les fauves. » 1 Ce terme si inattendu pour un critique d’art – fauves, bêtes sauvages – se trouva être tellement précis qu’il fit très rapidement fortune et se généralisa la même Henri Matisse, année. Le critique Jean Aubry notait déjà dans son article concernant la même Les Poissons rouges, 1911. exposition et daté du mois de novembre 1905 : « Enfin, voici ceux que je ne sais plus Huile sur toile, 147 x 98 cm. qui a appelé les jeunes fauves. » 2 Ainsi, l’origine du terme est très simple et due en Musée Pouchkine, Moscou. 7 8 Henri Matisse, Pot bleu et citron, 1897. Huile sur toile, 39 x 46,5 cm. Musée de l’Ermitage, Saint-Pétersbourg. 9 grande partie à un simple hasard. Dès lors, Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck, Van Dongen, Camoin, Puy, Marquet, Manguin, Rouault, Dufy, Friesz, Valtat, ainsi que certains autres peintres se trouvèrent liés au « Fauvisme ». La simple apparition du terme démontre sans aucun doute que le courant nouvellement né avait déjà acquis des traits spécifiques. Néanmoins, personne, pas même Vauxcelles, ne pouvait encore ni désigner ses limites, ni prévoir son importance. Il faudra près d’un demi-siècle pour que le public revienne au Salon de 1905 et prenne conscience de ce qui s’y était alors passé. Vers la seconde moitié du XXe siècle, les souvenirs et l’appréciation des contemporains cédèrent la place à une étude scientifique beaucoup plus approfondie. Toutefois, les critiques d’art se heurtèrent à une particularité étonnante : approuvé par le temps, le Fauvisme, de par sa chronologie et ses particularités, échappe à toute classification. La parution de nouveaux ouvrages tels que L’Histoire du Fauvisme revue et corrigée,ou encore Fauvism Reexamined 3 n’est donc pas un hasard, même si de nombreuses publications existent déjà sur le sujet. Les expositions se succèdent les unes aux autres, témoignant d’un intérêt international envers l’art des fauves. On le compare aux autres tendances artistiques qui lui étaient contemporaines, revenant encore et encore à ces toiles exposées pour la première fois en 1905. Cette attention suivie est probablement due aux faits suivants : premièrement, le temps révèle toujours de nouveaux aspects du tournant qu’effectua la peinture au début du XXe siècle, et, deuxièmement, ce qui n’est pas moins important, tous les « jeunes fauves », sans aucune exception, constituèrent la gloire de la peinture française. Le Fauvisme, cette communauté artistique qui réunit des personnalités incontestables, a permis de mettre en évidence les capacités de chacun au lieu de les uniformiser. De tout temps, les Salons officiels de Paris jouirent d’une grande renommée grâce au grand nombre d’œuvres exposées ainsi que de participants. Ils bénéficiaient en effet du soutien de l’État et la critique leur prêtait une attention toute particulière, influençant ainsi sensiblement le marché artistique. Cette suprématie des Salons officiels, véritables remparts de l’art académique, fut respectée jusqu’à la fin du XIXe siècle et rien ne présageait un tel retournement de situation. Il suffit de se rappeler que de nombreux impressionnistes se prononçaient certes contre l’école académique mais rêvaient néanmoins d’y exposer leurs œuvres, espérant ainsi sinon les vendre, du moins Henri Matisse, Nature morte avec cafetière et fruits, acquérir une certaine notoriété dans le monde artistique. vers 1898. Cette situation changea brusquement vers la fin du XIXe siècle lorsque de Huile sur toile, 38,5 x 46,5 cm. nombreux peintres tournèrent le dos aux Salons. L’avenir de la jeune génération ne Musée de l’Ermitage, Saint-Pétersbourg. dépendait plus aussi étroitement qu’avant de ses succès dans ces Salons prisés du public et de la critique. Les peintres s’entouraient de leurs propres marchands qui les André Derain, aidaient à réaliser leurs œuvres. Pourtant, il serait injuste d’affirmer que les Salons Nature morte au pichet, torchon et aux fruits, vers 1912. officiels n’eussent pas du tout changé, mais ces changements ne touchèrent pas du Huile sur toile, 61 x 50 cm. tout l’essence même de leur activité : tout comme avant, des revues des éditions Musée de l’Ermitage, Saint-Pétersbourg. Goupil leur étaient consacrées (notamment à celui de 1905), des articles étaient (p. 12) publiés dans la Gazette des Beaux-Arts, L’Art et les artistes et d’autres revues tout aussi importantes. Mais face au conservatisme de l’académisme, la somptuosité et le André Derain, caractère démesuré des Salons devinrent souvent la cause d’une ironie non dissimulée Table et chaises, vers 1912. Huile sur toile, 88 x 86,5 cm. de la part des critiques et la moindre divergence artistique susceptible de troubler la Musée de l’Ermitage, Saint-Pétersbourg. bienséance de ces Salons, aussi minime soit-elle, sembla alors sauvage. Même les (p. 13) impressionnistes ou les peintres du groupe des nabis (Vuillard, Bonnard, Denis, etc.), 10 11 13 Henri Matisse, Portrait de la famille du peintre, 1911. Huile sur toile, 143 x 194 cm.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Jean METZINGER (Nantes 1883 - Paris 1956)
    Jean METZINGER (Nantes 1883 - Paris 1956) The Yellow Feather (La Plume Jaune) Pencil on paper. Signed and dated Metzinger 12 in pencil at the lower left. 315 x 231 mm. (12 3/8 x 9 1/8 in.) The present sheet is closely related to Jean Metzinger’s large painting The Yellow Feather, a seminal Cubist canvas of 1912, which is today in an American private collection. The painting was one of twelve works by Metzinger included in the Cubist exhibition at the Salon de La Section d’Or in 1912. One of the few paintings of this period to be dated by the artist, The Yellow Feather is regarded by scholars as a touchstone of Metzinger’s early Cubist period. Drawn with a precise yet sensitive handling of fine graphite on paper, the drawing repeats the multifaceted, fragmented planes of the face in the painting, along with the single staring eye, drawn as a simple curlicue. The Yellow Feather was one of several Cubist paintings depicting women in fashionable clothes, and with ostrich feathers in their hats, which were painted by Metzinger in 1912 and 1913. Provenance: alerie Hopkins-Thomas, Paris Private collection, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, until 2011. Literature: Jean-Paul Monery, Les chemins de cubisme, exhibition catalogue, Saint-Tropez, 1999, illustrated pp.134-135; Anisabelle Berès and Michel Arveiller, Au temps des Cubistes, 1910-1920, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 2006, pp.428-429, no.180. Artist description: Trained in the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Nantes, Jean Metzinger sent three paintings to the Salon des Indépendants in 1903 and, having sold them, soon thereafter settled in Paris.
    [Show full text]
  • HARD FACTS and SOFT SPECULATION Thierry De Duve
    THE STORY OF FOUNTAIN: HARD FACTS AND SOFT SPECULATION Thierry de Duve ABSTRACT Thierry de Duve’s essay is anchored to the one and perhaps only hard fact that we possess regarding the story of Fountain: its photo in The Blind Man No. 2, triply captioned “Fountain by R. Mutt,” “Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz,” and “THE EXHIBIT REFUSED BY THE INDEPENDENTS,” and the editorial on the facing page, titled “The Richard Mutt Case.” He examines what kind of agency is involved in that triple “by,” and revisits Duchamp’s intentions and motivations when he created the fictitious R. Mutt, manipulated Stieglitz, and set a trap to the Independents. De Duve concludes with an invitation to art historians to abandon the “by” questions (attribution, etc.) and to focus on the “from” questions that arise when Fountain is not seen as a work of art so much as the bearer of the news that the art world has radically changed. KEYWORDS, Readymade, Fountain, Independents, Stieglitz, Sanitary pottery Then the smell of wet glue! Mentally I was not spelling art with a capital A. — Beatrice Wood1 No doubt, Marcel Duchamp’s best known and most controversial readymade is a men’s urinal tipped on its side, signed R. Mutt, dated 1917, and titled Fountain. The 2017 centennial of Fountain brought us a harvest of new books and articles on the famous or infamous urinal. I read most of them in the hope of gleaning enough newly verified facts to curtail my natural tendency to speculate. But newly verified facts are few and far between.
    [Show full text]
  • A Stylistic and Contextual Analysis of Juan Gris' Cityscape Imagery, 1911-1912 Geoffrey David Schwartz University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
    University of Wisconsin Milwaukee UWM Digital Commons Theses and Dissertations December 2014 The ubiC st's View of Montmartre: A Stylistic and Contextual Analysis of Juan Gris' Cityscape Imagery, 1911-1912 Geoffrey David Schwartz University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.uwm.edu/etd Part of the History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons Recommended Citation Schwartz, Geoffrey David, "The ubC ist's View of Montmartre: A Stylistic and Contextual Analysis of Juan Gris' Cityscape Imagery, 1911-1912" (2014). Theses and Dissertations. 584. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/584 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by UWM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UWM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE CUBIST’S VIEW OF MONTMARTRE: A STYISTIC AND CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF JUAN GRIS’ CITYSCAPE IMAGERY, 1911-1912. by Geoffrey David Schwartz A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Art History at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee December 2014 ABSTRACT THE CUBIST’S VIEW OF MONTMARTE: A STYLISTIC AND CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF JUAN GRIS’ CITYSCAPE IMAGERY, 1911-1912 by Geoffrey David Schwartz The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2014 Under the Supervision of Professor Kenneth Bendiner This thesis examines the stylistic and contextual significance of five Cubist cityscape pictures by Juan Gris from 1911 to 1912. These drawn and painted cityscapes depict specific views near Gris’ Bateau-Lavoir residence in Place Ravignan. Place Ravignan was a small square located off of rue Ravignan that became a central gathering space for local artists and laborers living in neighboring tenements.
    [Show full text]
  • CUBISM and ABSTRACTION Background
    015_Cubism_Abstraction.doc READINGS: CUBISM AND ABSTRACTION Background: Apollinaire, On Painting Apollinaire, Various Poems Background: Magdalena Dabrowski, "Kandinsky: Compositions" Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art Background: Serial Music Background: Eugen Weber, CUBISM, Movements, Currents, Trends, p. 254. As part of the great campaign to break through to reality and express essentials, Paul Cezanne had developed a technique of painting in almost geometrical terms and concluded that the painter "must see in nature the cylinder, the sphere, the cone:" At the same time, the influence of African sculpture on a group of young painters and poets living in Montmartre - Picasso, Braque, Max Jacob, Apollinaire, Derain, and Andre Salmon - suggested the possibilities of simplification or schematization as a means of pointing out essential features at the expense of insignificant ones. Both Cezanne and the Africans indicated the possibility of abstracting certain qualities of the subject, using lines and planes for the purpose of emphasis. But if a subject could be analyzed into a series of significant features, it became possible (and this was the great discovery of Cubist painters) to leave the laws of perspective behind and rearrange these features in order to gain a fuller, more thorough, view of the subject. The painter could view the subject from all sides and attempt to present its various aspects all at the same time, just as they existed-simultaneously. We have here an attempt to capture yet another aspect of reality by fusing time and space in their representation as they are fused in life, but since the medium is still flat the Cubists introduced what they called a new dimension-movement.
    [Show full text]
  • Courses of Instruction
    Courses of Instruction 64 Courses and Academic Programs Course Enrollment Courses numbered 200-299 are sometimes open to qualified undergraduate students who have received permission of the instructor and the director of graduate studies. Undergraduate students are not permitted in any courses above 300. Double numbers separated by a hyphen indicate that credit is contingent upon completion of both courses. Double numbers separated by a comma indicate that although the course is a year-long course, credit may be received for either course or both courses. The following symbols, suffixed to course numbers, identify the small group learning experiences: S, seminar; P, preceptorial; T, tutorial; D, discussion section. The L suffix indicates that the course includes laboratory experience. C-L: denotes a course that is cross-listed or a program under which a course is listed. African and African-American Studies (AAAS) Professor Payne, Director (201 Franklin Center); Professors H. Baker, Gaspar, Holloway, McClain and Powell; Associate Professors L. Baker, Lubiano and Piot; Assistant Professors Glymph and Wallace The African and African-American Studies Program (AAASP) offers a certificate in African and African-American studies. Students enrolled in doctoral programs and in the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) program are eligible and may work concurrently with their departments to satisfy the requirements for a certificate in African and African- American studies. The curricular format is a trifold course of study that includes coursework, teaching, and research. The award of a graduate certificate is carried on the student’s official transcript upon completion of the program. Students enrolled in the graduate program are eligible to apply for AAASP-sponsored teaching assistantships for an undergraduate course in their department or for the program’s introductory course for undergraduates.
    [Show full text]
  • GCE Mark Scheme June 06
    Version 1.0: 1106 abc General Certificate of Education History of Art 6251 HOA6 Historical Study 2 Mark Scheme 2006 examination - June series Mark schemes are prepared by the Principal Examiner and considered, together with the relevant questions, by a panel of subject teachers. This mark scheme includes any amendments made at the standardisation meeting attended by all examiners and is the scheme which was used by them in this examination. The standardisation meeting ensures that the mark scheme covers the candidates’ responses to questions and that every examiner understands and applies it in the same correct way. As preparation for the standardisation meeting each examiner analyses a number of candidates’ scripts: alternative answers not already covered by the mark scheme are discussed at the meeting and legislated for. If, after this meeting, examiners encounter unusual answers which have not been discussed at the meeting they are required to refer these to the Principal Examiner. It must be stressed that a mark scheme is a working document, in many cases further developed and expanded on the basis of candidates’ reactions to a particular paper. Assumptions about future mark schemes on the basis of one year’s document should be avoided; whilst the guiding principles of assessment remain constant, details will change, depending on the content of a particular examination paper. Copyright © 2006 AQA and its licensors. All rights reserved. HOA6 – AQA GCE Mark Scheme, 2006 June series HOA6-Historical Study 2 Maximum mark: 20 Band 5 17-20 marks Either A fully developed answer with a secure knowledge and understanding of artefacts, their context and, if required, their presentation.
    [Show full text]
  • 2014-2015 and Is Accurate and Current, to the Greatest Extent Possible, As of June 2014
    Cover Cover 1 University’s Mission Statement James B. Duke’s founding Indenture of Duke University directed the members of the University to “provide real leadership in the educational world” by choosing individuals of “outstanding character, ability and vision” to serve as its officers, trustees and faculty; by carefully selecting students of “character, determination and application;” and by pursuing those areas of teaching and scholarship that would “most help to develop our resources, increase our wisdom and promote human happiness.” To these ends, the mission of Duke University is to provide a superior liberal education to undergraduate students, attending not only to their intellectual growth but also to their development as adults committed to high ethical standards and full participation as leaders in their communities; to prepare future members of the learned professions for lives of skilled and ethical service by providing excellent graduate and professional education; to advance the frontiers of knowledge and contribute boldly to the international community of scholarship; to promote an intellectual environment built on a commitment to free and open inquiry; to help those who suffer, cure disease and promote health, through sophisticated medical research and thoughtful patient care; to provide wide ranging educational opportunities, on and beyond our campuses, for traditional students, active professionals and life-long learners using the power of information technologies; and to promote a deep appreciation for the range of human difference and potential, a sense of the obligations and rewards of citizenship, and a commitment to learning, freedom and truth. By pursuing these objectives with vision and integrity, Duke University seeks to engage the mind, elevate the spirit, and stimulate the best effort of all who are associated with the University; to contribute in diverse ways to the local community, the state, the nation and the world; and to attain and maintain a place of real leadership in all that we do.
    [Show full text]
  • Copyright by Douglas Clifton Cushing 2014
    Copyright by Douglas Clifton Cushing 2014 The Thesis Committee for Douglas Clifton Cushing Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: Resonances: Marcel Duchamp and the Comte de Lautréamont APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Supervisor: Linda Dalrymple Henderson Richard Shiff Resonances: Marcel Duchamp and the Comte de Lautréamont by Douglas Clifton Cushing, B.F.A. Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin August 2014 Dedication In memory of Roger Cushing Jr., Madeline Cushing and Mary Lou Cavicchi, whose love, support, generosity, and encouragement led me to this place. Acknowledgements For her loving support, inspiration, and the endless conversations on the subject of Duchamp and Lautréamont that she endured, I would first like to thank my fiancée, Nicole Maloof. I would also like to thank my mother, Christine Favaloro, her husband, Joe Favaloro, and my stepfather, Leslie Cavicchi, for their confidence in me. To my advisor, Linda Dalrymple Henderson, I owe an immeasurable wealth of gratitude. Her encouragement, support, patience, and direction have been invaluable, and as a mentor she has been extraordinary. Moreover, it was in her seminar that this project began. I also offer my thanks to Richard Shiff and the other members of my thesis colloquium committee, John R. Clarke, Louis Waldman, and Alexandra Wettlaufer, for their suggestions and criticism. Thanks to Claire Howard for her additions to the research underlying this thesis, and to Willard Bohn for his help with the question of Apollinaire’s knowledge of Lautréamont.
    [Show full text]
  • Cubism Was One of the First Truly Modern Movements to Emerge in Art
    QUICK VIEW: Synopsis Cubism was one of the first truly modern movements to emerge in art. It evolved during a period of heroic and rapid innovation between Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. The movement has been described as having two stages: 'Analytic' Cubism, in which forms seem to be 'analyzed' and fragmented; and 'Synthetic' Cubism, in which newspaper and other foreign materials such as chair caning and wood veneer, are collaged to the surface of the canvas as 'synthetic' signs for depicted objects. The style was significantly developed by Fernand Léger and Juan Gris, but it attracted a host of adherents, both in Paris and abroad, and it would go on to influence the Abstract Expressionists, particularly Willem de Kooning. Key Points • Analytic Cubism staged modern art's most radical break with traditional models of representation. It abandoned perspective, which artists had used to order space since the Renaissance. And it turned away from the realistic modeling of figures and towards a system of representing bodies in space that employed small, tilted planes, set in a shallow space. Over time, Picasso and Braque also moved towards open form - they pierced the bodies of their figures, let the space flow through them, and blended background into foreground. Some historians have argued that its innovations represent a response to the changing experience of space, movement, and time in the modern world. • Synthetic Cubism proved equally important and influential for later artists. Instead of relying on depicted shapes and forms to represent objects, Picasso and Braque began to explore the use of foreign objects as abstract signs.
    [Show full text]
  • Media Release Basel, November 8, 2018 the Cubist Cosmos from Picasso to Léger March 30
    Media release Basel, November 8, 2018 The Cubist Cosmos From Picasso to Léger March 30 – August 4, 2019, Kunstmuseum Basel | Neubau Curator: Eva Reifert When Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque pioneered Cubism in the early years of the twentieth century, they set off a revolution in visual art. The new style’s fragmented forms signal a fundamental change in how painting relates to the visible world. The Cubists rank as one of the most influential movements in art history; their works are adventures for the eyes even today, challenging our habits of perception. Produced in cooperation with the Centre Pompidou, the exhibition The Cubist Cosmos. From Picasso to Léger is the first to unite both museums’ Cubist masterworks for a reconstruction of the wider context in which the world-famous treasures bequeathed to the Kunstmuseum Basel by Raoul La Roche were created. Rounded out by masterpieces on loan from international collections, the presentation showcases ca. 130 works to illuminate this seminal chapter in the history of art. The Cubist Cosmos traces Cubism’s evolution from 1908 to the years after World War I, surveying its enormous stylistic range and highlighting the revolutionary energy it imparted to later tendencies in twentieth-century art. Combining chronology with thematic foci, the exhibition opens with a section that throws the growing influence of folk art and archaic sculpture as well as Paul Cézanne’s oeuvre in Picasso’s and Braque’s paintings into relief. Starting in 1908, crystalline and quasi-geometric elements appear on the scene: landscape details and still lifes seem to be molded by an intrinsic organizational principle that is intellectual first and foremost.
    [Show full text]
  • Frank Claustrat
    Nordic Writers ANd Artists iN pAris BeFore, duriNG ANd AFter World WAr i Frank claustrat paris: capital of the Arts hundreds of Nordic artists manifested from a very early stage their openness to the outside world, and to all forms of modernism, par- ticularly in paris, which from 1889 – the year of the universal exhi- bition – until World War ii, was considered to be the centre of all the arts.0 Among the numerous foreign art colonies in paris, the Nor- dic one included a number of celebrities who, thanks to their French connection, also played a decisive role in their own countries.1 in the 1920s, rolf de Maré (1888-1964) and his circle strengthened the Nor- dic avant-garde tradition with the creation of les Ballets suédois, a transgressive dance company, based at théâtre des champs-elysée but undertaking international tours in europe and even in America (de Mare (ed.) 1931). the freedom of expression and the struggle against academicism that these artists found in the French capital led to both an individual and collective sense of fulfilment. Associ- ated with the ideas of cosmopolitanism and universalism, paris be- nefited in return – like never before – from an unexpected explosion of inventive force (cassou 1960-1961). From the Belle Epoque until the end of World War i, a Nordic colony established itself in paris, most tangibly in the district of Montparnasse.2 here, private spaces privileged inter-Nordic contacts. Artists’ studios, such as that of the Franco-swedish/Norwegian cou- ple ida (1853-1927) and William (1862-1936) ericson-Molard on 6 rue Vercingetorix, were important in this respect.
    [Show full text]
  • André Salmon, Pablo Picasso and the History of Cubism
    André Salmon, Pablo Picasso and the History of Cubism André Salmon met Pablo Picasso at the very end of the Spanish artist’s Blue Period (late 1904-early 1905) through their mutual friend the Spanish sculptor Manuel Hugué (known as Manolo). The poet was led to the painter’s studio in a ramshackle building nicknamed the « Bateau Lavoir » at 13 rue Ravignan in Montmartre. The following afternoon Salmon met the poet Max Jacob as they both arrived to pay Picasso a visit. By then Salmon knew the poet Guillaume Apollinaire for almost two years. Apollinaire would meet Picasso shortly afterwards during the winter of 1905. These four men formed the symbiotic relationship known among their peers as « la bande à Picasso ». Salmon and Picasso The significant role these men played in each other lives cannot be overestimated, particularly the friendship between Salmon and Picasso ; for Salmon not only reviewed Picasso’s exhibitions but also inserted incidental references to Picasso’s current activities into his newspaper columns on art. These brief remarks now provide invaluable biographical information which has helped date several of Picasso’s Cubist works. Moreover, from his earliest descriptions of Picasso to his celebrated memoirs, Salmon helped to construct the artist’s reputation as he championed all Picasso’s avant-garde endeavors, regardless of their shockvalue. Most notably, Salmon was the first to praise Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) in his first book on art, La Jeune Peinture française (1912). Although Salmon’s first review of a Picasso exhibition at Ambroise Vollard’s gallery in December 1910 introduces his Paris-Journal readership to the Malaguenian, his short paragraph about a visit to Picasso’s studio at 11 boulevard de Clichy, published on 21 September 1911 tells us more.
    [Show full text]