MEYER SCHAPIRO 19th and 20th Centuries SELECTED PAPERS PREFACE BY ADRIENNE BAXTER BELL MODERN ART 19th & 20th Centuries 19th & 20th Centuries ·SELECTED PAPERS Meyer Schapiro GEORGE BRAZILLER New York Published in the United States in 1978 by George Braziller, Inc. All rights reserved For information address the publisher: George Brazil1er, Inc. One Park Avenue, New York 10016 The Apples of Cezanne: An Essay on the Meaning of Still-Life, Copyright© 1968 by Meyer Schapiro On A Painting of Van Gogh, Copyright, 1946 by View, Inc. Seurat, Copyright© 1963 by Meyer Schapiro Picasso's Woman With a Fan, © 1976 Verlag Philipp von Zabern Bible-Marc Chagall, © Copyright in France by Verve, Paris, 1956 The Introduction of Modern Art in America: the Armory Show, from America m Crisis, Copyright 1952 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Arshile Gorky, Introduction, by Meyer Schapiro to: Arshile Gorky by Ethel K. Schwabacher (Published for the Whitney Museum of American Art by The Macmillan Company, New York, 1957), © Whitney Museum of Art, 1957. The Liberating Quality of Avant-Garde Art, Copyright © 1957 by Meyer Schapiro On the Humanity of Abstract Painting, Copyright 1960 by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, Publication No. 189. Mondrian, Copyright © 1978 by Meyer Schapiro Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Schapiro, Meyer, 1904- Modern Art. (His Selected papers; v. 2) 1. Art, Modern-19th century. 2. Art, Modern-20th century. 1. Title. N6447.S33 709'.04 78-6831 ISBN 0-8076-0899-8 Printed in the United States of America Rose Printing Company, Inc., Tallahassee, Florida First Printing, 1978 Second Printing, 1979 Third Printing, 1979 Designed by Wanda Lubelska Acknowledgements For their cooperation and, where necessary, permISSIOn to publish, the Author and Publisher wish to express their sincere thanks to all those listed below. Art News Annual, XXXIV, 1968, "The Avant-Garde," (The Apples of Cezanne: An Essay on the Meaning of Still-life"), pp. 34-53. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. IV, 1941, uCourbet and Popular Imagery," pp. 164-191. View, Edited by Charles Henri Ford, Series VII, No. 1, Fall, 1946, "On a Painting of Van Gogh," pp. 8- 13. Art News, Vol. 57, No. 2 April 1958, "New Light on Seurat," pp. 22-24, 44-45, 52; Vol . 56, No. 4, Summer 1957, "The Liberating Quality of Avant-Garde Art," (URecent Abstract Painting"), pp. 36-42. Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Essays in Archaeology and the HU111anities (In �1el11oriaJ11 Otto J. Brendel), Mainz, West Germany, 1976, "Picasso's Woman With a Fan: On Transfornlation and Self-Transformation," pp. 249-254. Verve, Bible-Marc Chagall, Vol. VIII, Paris, 1956. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., Anlerica in Crisis, 19 52, "The Introduction of Modern Art in America: the Arnlory Show," pp. 203-242, 356-3 57. The Whitney Museum of American Art, Arshile Gorhy by Ethel K. Schwabacher, New York, 19 57, "Introduction," pp. 11- 14. A111erican Acadel11Y and Institute of Arts and Letters, 38th Blashfic1d address delivered by Meyer Schapiro at the annual Cerenlonial of the v American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters on May 20, 1959, and first published in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, Second series, No . 10, 1960, "On the Hu manity of Abstract Painting," pp. 316-323. ( Chapter 9.) . Vl Contents CEZANNE I. The Apples of Cezanne: An Essay on the Meaning of Still-life I 2. Cezanne 39 3. Cezanne as a Watercolorist 43 COURBET AND POPULAR IMAGERY 47 ON A PAINTING OF VAN GOGH 87 SEURAT 101 PICASSO'S WOMAN WITH A. FAN III CHAGALL'S ILLUSTRATIONS FOR THE BIBLE 121 INTRODUCTION OF MODERN ART IN AMERICA: THE ARMORY SHOW 135 ARSHILE GORKY 179 ABSTRACT ART 185 1. The Nature of Abstract Art 185 2. Recent Abstract Painting 213 3. On The Hun1anity of Abstract Painting 227 MONDRIAN 233 Index 263 .. Vll List of Color Plates BET\'�E� PAGE 42 A�� 43 I. Cezanne. Still Life "with Plaster Cast of Arnor II. Cezanne, Bacchanal III. Cezanne� Pin et rochers au Chateau_��oir 1\'. \'an Gogh, Crows oYer the \�lheat Field BET\\'EE� P.-\.GE 106 A�1) 107 \T. Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte \71. Seurat, The Three �Iodels \TII. Seurat, Side Show \'Ill. �Iatisse, ?\Tasturtiurns and "The Dance;' II BET\\'EEX PAGE 178 A�� li9 IX. Gorky, Diary of a Seducer X. Rothko, Deep Red on J\Iaroon XI. :�vlondrian, Broadway Boogie-\�1oogie IX Prefatory Note The essays in this volume are a selection from nly writings on the art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I hope to be able to bring out separately several unpublished articles on this art and also books, more comprehensive and ':general, based on my lectures at Columbia University and elsewhere. Having been written over a period of forty years, these selected papers reflectchanges in my views. Certain observations and arguments in the article, "The Nature of Abstract Art" (19 37) , I now regard as inadequate or mistaken. I include it here, nonetheless, because it con­ tains enough that I still hold to. The changes will be evident from the later writings reprinted in this volunle. As in the previous one, correc­ tions are almost entirely of language. In two articles I have replaced the titles which were given by former editors. Like the Selected Papers on Romanesque art, those on modern art were prepared for the press by my wife, Lillian Milgram (M.D.), to whom I'm indebted especially for the index. I wish to thank as well the staffs of George Braziller, Inc., and the various nluseunlS and gal­ leries that have been helpful in providing and documenting the photo­ graphs I have used for illustrations. Xl , THE APPLES OF CEZANNE An Essay on the Meaning of Still-life (1968) iX:0ng Cezanne's mythological paintings there is one that is repeatedly called The Judgment of Paris although the postures of the figures and other details seem incompatible with the Greek myth (Fig. 1).1 The male figure, supposedly Paris, presents an armful of fruit to one of three nude females. How could Cezanne, who was aware of the legendary apple, illustrate the Judgment by an offering of so many apples? Besides, the recipient of the prize is the least conspicuous of the three nudes. A second figure, taller and more mature, stands beside her and touches her shoulder with a friendly protective hand while extending the other hand to the approaching n1ale; a third nude, crouching, turns her back to the others. These are hardly the postures of three goddesses competing for a prize for beauty. A further difficulty is the presence of a fourth woman, partly clothed and standing alone at the right. One might imagine that she is the nymph, Oenone, whom Paris abandoned for Helen; she has also been identifiedas Helen, the reward promised to Paris by the grateful Venus.2 But in a drawing for this composition, all four women are grouped together at the left; two crouch and two stand (Fig. 2). And in another sketch on the same sheet the postures of the three (and perhaps four) nudes, without a male figure and superposed as in Cezanne's pictures of Baigneuses, are no less difficult to explain as those of the rival divinities.3 My naIve impression of the scene has been that it is a fanciful 1 MODERN ART 2 pastoral subject: a pagan figure, a shepherd, makes an offering of fruit to a shy beloved girl. One may suppose a source in the Latin poetry that Cezanne read at school and continued to quote in later years. His letters, especially of his youth, contain many classical allusions.4 As late as 1878 he quotes Horace in writing to Zola5 and signs another letter: "Pictor semper virens."6 Virgil's Eclogues were a familiar read­ ing to the young Cezanne, who had translated, probably into verse, • the second eclogue on Corydon's wooing of Alexis.7 His love of Latin poetry was known among the painters. In a letter of 1885 Gauguin described Cezanne: "A man of the south, he spends days on the mountain-tops reading Virgil and gazing at the sky."8 I have found in Virgil's second eclogue nothing adequate to the picture, but a passage in the third has led me to a more likely source in Propertius. In one of his elegies (Book II, elegy 34, lines 67-71) Pro­ pertius chants the love of a girl won by ten apples. Addressing Virgil, whom he hails as greater than Homer, the poet writes: Tu canis umbrosi subter pin eta Galaesi Thyrsin et adtritis Daphnin arundinibus; U tque decem possent corrumpere mala puellam, Felix, qui viles pomis mercaris amores! (You sing beneath the pines of shady Galaesus Of Thyrsis and Daphnis with the well-worn pipes; And how ten apples can seduce a girl, Happy man, who can buy love cheaply with apples! ) The idea of the verse: Utque decem possent corrumpere mala puellam, was evidently inspired by Virgil's third eclogue, lines 70; 71: Quod potui, puero silvestri ex arbore lecta, Aurea mala decem misi; eras altera mittan1. ( ...te n golden apples, picked from a woodland tree, CEZANNE 3 I sent to my dear boy, and will to-morrow send some more.) In another elegy (lib. III, 13, lines 25 ff. ) Propertius returns to the theme of the pastoral age when fruits and flowers were the young shepherd's riches and offerings of love: Felix agrestum quondam pacata juventus, Divitiae quorum messis et a��or erant! His tum blanditiis furtiva per antra puellae Oscula silvicolis emta dedere viris.