Cubism at the Pompidou

Wednesday October 17 (Cannabis legalization day in Canada!) started cloudy, but by mid afternoon there was bright sun.  It was still a very nice 22C.

Alain went out for a walk while I worked on the October 16th blog.  He took a lovely picture of the Jardin des Plantes.

Jardin des Plantes

 Alain also took a picture of the Cuvier Fountain at the end of our street near the park.

Cuvier Fountain- 1840

We were going to have our coffee at Le Peloton but it was closed on Wednesdays so we went to Comme à Lisbonne for our espressos and pastéis de nata, our favourite Portuguese treats.

At Comme à Lisbonne

We walked up Rue Vieille du Temple, the street we had rented our apartment for our three month stay in 2011.

Window at Repetto  

A quick stop at the beautiful Fragonard store

We then walked over to the Centre Pompidou to see the Cubism 1907-1917 exhibit, which just opened. (We have been very lucky- seeing both the Dorothea Lange and Cubism exhibits on the days that they have opened).

As we entered the level with the exhibit there was an installation called Auditorium, by Franz West, which had first been exhibited in 1992--- he used this type of furniture at other installations- references to the oriental rug as a bourgeois symbol, while the juxtaposition of a sofa and a rug refers to Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic couch.
Frantz West (1947-2012), an Austrian sculpture and painter, was the subject of the second large exhibit at the Pompidou, which we did not see.

The Cubism exhibit was immense.  It offered an overview of cubism in Paris, the city of its birth, from 1907-17.  In the beginning, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, inspired by Gauguin, Cézanne, and primitive art, invented a new visual and conceptual language.  Perspective was gone in favour of a transparent and colourless grid in which volumes and patterns were flattened into planes and facets.   Other artists started to take part in the experiment.  The Cubist revolution fizzled out after 1917 and the WWI, but its influence on the birth of abstraction and on 20th century art in general was immense.

Poster for the exhibit

The first room dealt with the sources of cubism.  Non-European art was discovered and in 1907 Derain and Picasso visited the Trocadéro ethnographic museum.  Picasso considered Paul Cézanne as "the father of us all".

Paul Cézanne- Cinq baigneuses 1885-87  - considered an extremely influential painting

Paul Cézanne- La Femme å 1a cafetière, 1890-1895 - the artist was moving away from traditional portraits, concentrating on a strict geometry of  horizontal and vertical lines arranged around a symmetrical axis.  Ambroise Vollard, the dealer, acquired the painting in 1904.

Paul Cézanne- Portrait d'Ambroise Vollard, 1899 - Vollard was a key figure in the history of modern art in Paris--discovered Cézanne, Gauguin, Picasso, and Matisse among others.  This picture is a demonstration of one of Cézanne's recommendations: treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone... (this became a maxim heralding the advent of Cubism).

Masks from Gabon 

Pablo Picasso- Portrait de Gertrude Stein, 1905-06-- After 90 sittings, this "mask-portrait" of Gertrude Stein was finally finished in the absence of the model.  It shows the influence of Iberian and Romanesque sculpture and of Gauguin's style. This picture marked the end of Picasso's "Rose period" and announced the advent of Cubism.

Pablo Picasso-Femme à la tête rouge [hiver 1906-07]

Georges Braque- Grand Nu, hiver 1907-Juin 1908 - this is a landmark work in the history of Cubism.  

Pablo Picasso- Trois figures sous un arbre, Paris hiver 1907-08 - the same ochre, green and blue colours are used to represent the faces, the bodies, the tree and the background, reinforcing the unity of the pictorial space.  The oval faces echo the masks Picasso saw in the Trocadero ethnographical museum.

Georges Braque- Maisons et arbre, été 1908 

Braque-le Viaduc à L'Estaque, [début 1908] -Matisse descried Braque's paintings as "little cubes".  The critic Louis Vauxcelles wrote that "Mr. Braque despises form, reducing everything, places and figures and houses,
to geometric diagrams, to cubes".  The term "Cubism" was born.

Arbres à L'Estaque, 1908

Raoul Duffy Arbres à L'Estaque, [1908]  Dufy and Braque worked side by side at L'Estaque in 1908 painting very similar landscapes influenced by Cézanne's aesthetic.

Pablo Picasso- Pains et compotier aux fruits sur une table, 1908-09 

André Derain- Nature morte à la table, 1910

Picasso- Étude pour Tête de femme [Fernande], Horta de Ebro, été 1909

Picasso -Tête de femme [Fernande], Paris, automne 1909- this sculpture disrupts the homogeneity of the form-- very innovative-lead the way for cubist sculpture

Georges Braque- Broc et violon, 1909-10.  This was the high point of Braque's work on still life with musical instruments. 

Pablo Picasso, Portrait de Daniel-Henry Kahweiler, automne 1910

Picasso- Portrait d'Ambroise Vollard, hiver 1909-printemps 1910 - Vollard was known to feign sleepiness while negotiating prices.  A very penetrating portrait.

Picasso- Homme à la clarinette, 1911-12

Fernand Léger, La Couseuse, 1910

Albert Gleizes- Portrait de Jacques Nayral, 1911

Robert Delaunay- La Ville de Paris, 1910-12

Francis Picabia- La Procession, Séville, 1912

Marc Chagall- À la Russie, aux ânes et auz autres, 1911-- while Chagall later in life said that he wasn't interested in Cubism, nonetheless, this painting done during his first stay in Paris dealt with the geometrization practised by the Cubists.

The roofs of Paris- I took this photo from a window in the gallery

Léger's La Femme en bleu, 1912 on the wall, Amedeo Modigliani's Tête de femme, 1912 in the foreground

1912 was the year of radical inventions by Braque and Picasso with collages, pasted papers and assemblages.

Braque- Violon Bach, 1912

Picasso- Nature morte â la chaise cannée, Paris printemps 1912

Picasso- Guitare, Paris décembre 1912-- new type of sculpture with folded and cut up cardboard

Picasso- Bouteille, journal et verre sur une table, 1912

Picasso- Violon, hiver 1912

Braque- La Guitare Statue d'éprouvante, novembre 1913

Henri Laurens- Clown 1915

Henri Laurens- Joséphine Baker, 1915

Fernand Léger- L'Escalier, 1914

Sonia Delaunay- La Bal Bullier, 1913

Juan Gris- Nature morte au livre, décembre 1913 

Auguste Herbin- Les Trois Arbres, 1913

Léopold Survage- Les Usines, 1914- He elaborated a personal vision of Cubism using the concept of "coloured rhythm"

Picasso- Étudiant à la pipe, Paris 1913 - he used pasted paper that once belonged to Gertrude Stein

Three sculptures by Jacques Lipchitz 1917  (L'Homme à la madeline, Baigneuse and Marin à la guitare

Marie Laurencin- Appolinaire et ses amis [2e version], 1909 -

Jean Metzinger- Portrait de Max Jacob, 1913

Picasso- Portrait de Max Jacob, 1907

Sonia Delaunay- Prismes électriques, 1914 

Jean Metzinger- Soldat au jeu d'échec, vers 1915-16

Pierre Albert- Birot La Guerre, 1916

Jean Cocteau- Les Eugènes de la guerre, vers 1914

Juan Gris- Le Petit Déjeuner, octobre 1915

Braque- La Musicienne- 1917-18

Picasso- Arlequin et femme au collier, 1917-- aesthetic of a collage, characteristic of late Cubism.

The First World War brought an end to the Salons and scattered the Parisian artists.  Some were called up to the Front, including Braque and Léger.  Some turned to Cubist expression to describe the realities of the war.  Others worked in the secrecy of their studies.  In 1917, the ballet Parade marked a turning point for Picasso.  Although the sets and some of the costumes were Cubist, the stage curtain signalled a return to figuration, sounding the death knell of "essential cubism."

It was a fascinating exhibit of an incredibly creative decade of Parisian art.  While Cubism as a movement may have ended, its influence clearly lives on.

We had a quick sandwich outside the Pompidou and then headed into the Marais.  We checked out Anaim, another favourite.  Just looking this year.

Anaim

Across the way was a new coffee and tea place called Oultma, serving Moroccan treats.  We had coffees and rested up a bit.

Lovely new coffee shop

We wandered some more and stopped at Merci, a large concept shop.  Their main floor was featuring plaid!

Guess plaid is in this year--- all over Merci 

We decided to have an appetizer at Miznon- an Israeli restaurant in the Marais.  We shared an artichoke and a falafel on a pita.  We really like the Paris branch much better than the New York branch, where we had lunch on our first day in New York (so long ago).

Ordering at Miznon

A lovely artichoke

Our falafel

Then it was a walk back to our apartment to pack and have a salmon dinner.  We continue our adventure with three days in Antwerp.  We leave on a mid morning train on October 18.  Stay tuned!!