Annotated Mona Lisa, The - Strickland, Carol [105]
SYNTHETIC CUBISM. Braque and Picasso invented a new art form, called collage (from the French word “coller,” to glue). From 1912 to 1914, joined by Spanish painter Juan Gris, they incorporated stenciled lettering and paper scraps into their paintings. Braque’s “Mandolin” dismantles the stringed instrument only to reassemble, or “synthesize,” its essential structural lines in corrugated cardboard and newsprint.
Besides Braque and Picasso, Juan Gris (pronounced Grease; 1887-1927) contributed significantly to Synthetic Cubism. From 1909, Fernand Léger (pronounced Lay ZJEH; 1881-1955) added curved forms to the angular Cubist vocabulary. Because his shapes tended to be tubular, he was inevitably dubbed a “Tubist.” He is most noted for his urban, industrial landscapes full of polished, metallic shapes, robotic humanoids, and hard-edged mechanical gears.
Picasso, “The Studio,” 1928, MoMA, NY.
SYNTHETIC CUBISM employs strong colors and decorative shapes. At left the painter holds a brush indicated by a small diagonal line at the end of a horizontal “arm.” His oval “head” contains three vertical eyes, perhaps suggesting the painter’s superior vision. A floating circle is all that remains of the artist’s palette. His subject, a still life of fruit bowl and bust on a table with red tablecloth, also consists of geometric shapes. What holds the tautly constructed composition together are repeated (and precisely related) vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines.
Braque, “Mandolin,” 1914, Ulmer Museum, Ulm, Germany. Coinventor of Cubism with Picasso, Braque colloborofed in the development of collage during the Synthetic Cubist phase.
The teasing quality of all Cubist art springs from its ambivalence between representation and abstraction. On the brink of dissolving an object into its component parts, hints of it flicker in and out of consciousness. Based on the world of appearances, Cubism delivers a multi-faceted fly’s-eye view of reality. “It’s not a reality you can take in your hand. It’s more like a perfume,” Picasso said. “The scent is everywhere but you don’t quite know where it comes from.”
MODERNISM OUTSIDE OF FRANCE
During the decade after the birth of Cubism, the world witnessed astounding changes. Technology zoomed ahead at breakneck speed, transforming the world from agrarian to industrial, from rural to urban. Against a backdrop of World War I, Europe erupted in political chaos. Finally the Russian revolution of 1917 called for the destruction of everything from the old regime. Artists searched for new forms to express this upheaval. Three movements — Futurism in Italy, Constructivism in Russia, and Precisionism in the United States — adapted the forms of Cubism to redefine the nature of art.
FUTURISM
KINETIC ART. Futurism began in 1909 as a literary movement when the Italian poet F. T. Marinetti issued its manifesto. Marinetti, a hyperactive self-promoter nicknamed “The Caffeine of Europe,” challenged artists to show “courage, audacity, and revolt” and to celebrate “a new beauty, the beauty of speed.”
BOCCIONI: POETRY IN MOTION. Marinetti found an ally in the ambitious, aggressive painter Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916), who urged painters to forsake art of the past for the “miracles of contemporary life,” which he defined as railroads, ocean liners, and airplanes. The bossy Boccioni, labeled by a friend “Napoleon come back to life,” refused to study academic art: “I want to paint the new, the fruit of our industrial age.”
FASTER THAN A SPEEDING BULLET. The key to Futurist art, practiced by Giacomo Balla, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, and Gino Severini in addition to Boccioni, was movement. The painters combined bright Fauve colors with fractured Cubist planes to express propulsion. In his most famous painting, “The City Rises,” Boccioni portrayed workers and horses bristling