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a blue deer lifts its head to a falling tree: there are red
foxes on the right, green horses at the top left. Colours
are used for symbolic reasons: and blue for Marc is the
colour of hope. Yet hope is soon to be extinguished in
CHAPTER SIX
Cubism
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Wer aber sind sie, sag mir) die Fahrenden) diese ein wenig
Flu'chtigern noch als wir selbst, die dringend von friih an
wringt ein wem - wem zuliebe
niemals zufriedener Wille !
'But tell me, who are they, these acrobats, even a little
more fleeting than we ourselves, so urgently, ever
since child-hood,
wrung by an (oh, for the sake of whom<)
never. . contented will?'
(translated by J. B. Leishman and Stephen Spender.)
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of human life.
All this theatricality disappeared when Picasso tackled
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exotic example.
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PABLOPICASSO(I88I-I973)
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dilemma at all.
In any case, the introduction of trompe.-l'ceil passages,
with their built-in implications, provided the cubists
with an answer. Picasso early in 1912 made the Still-life
with Chaircaning (Ill. 112), in which he pasted onto his
canvas a piece of oilcloth that simulated the split.-cane
weaving of a chair seat. A length of rope was added as a
frame. This use, first of pasted paper (papier co ill), then of
attached objects (collage), revolutionized painting. !llu,
sionism was now so totally abandoned, and the flat
surface of the painting so paramount, that such additions
became aesthetically acceptable. But the method blurred
the division between painting and object to the extent
that one could conceive a situation in which it would be
impossible to decide which was which. This was the
significance of Marcel Duchamp's exhibiting signed
ready-made objects in 1917.
In the Still-life with Chaircaning Picasso offered a
statement of the stage reached in 1912. Objects in painting
can be treated in a number of different ways, he seems to
say. They can be analyzed, as in an engineer's working
drawing which gives us a precise specification and
measurements. They can be presented as painted
Cubis1
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paint?
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.
This new development of cubism called for a revtsed
1bel and Picasso's friend Kahnweiler proposed 'syn'
rheti~'. He wrot~: 'Instead of an analytic.al de~cription
the painter can if ?e prefe~s also create m th1s w,:Y a
synthesis of the object, or, m the words of Kant put
together the various c;:on~e?tions a~d comprehend ~eir
variety in one percepnon . To put lt another way, usmg
the same terminology, it was, like African sculpture, a
conceptual and not a perceptual art, in which the idea of
the object comes before any attempt to record Its appear,..
ance.
By r912 the aesthetic argument that had begun on the
death of Cezanne six years earlier had reached a COOl
elusion. The logic according to which Picasso and
Brag ue had progressed so unhesitatingly now seemed to
have reached its term. It was entirely in character that
Braque should settle down in 1913 and 1914 and paint
a series of still,..lifes with musical instruments in the now
definitive cubist style, whereas Picasso should suddenly
grow restless again and begin to branch out in different
directions.
One was the extension of collage into fully three'
dimensional construction, involving the use of scrap
wood, cardboard boxes, anything that came easily to
hand (seep. 180). He also reintroduced bright colours,
painting in dots and dabs, to increase the decorative
content of his pictures. He also seems to have wanted to
bring back the passionate, emotional quality of the early
pre1cubist period and in the Woman in an Armchair of
I9IJ (Ill. 111) the disturbing, disruptive element re'
appears, with the added force of Picasso's new pictorial
language.
The outbreak of war in the summer of 1914 upset the
rhythm of Picasso's development - nor completely, as
with Braque who was at once mobilized into the French
irmy, but profoundly enough to make one suspect that
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Still-Life with Chaircaning, 19
Oil and waxed canvas glued on can~
1oYz" x 13Yz 11 (27 x 35). Mu
Picasso, Paris
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Otl on canvas, 4 10 x
(147 x8g). The Philadelphia
Museum of Art (Louise and Walter
Arensberg Collection)
1911-12.
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Both movements were a part of the neo,.classicism that
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23' 4" (351 x 872). Collection Museo
Nacional Reina Sofia, Madrid
Guernica, 1937. Oil on canvas,
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FERNAND
LEGER
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CHAPTER SE\1
Abstract 1
Abstract art was the inevitable result of the reaction
against naturalism that began in the r 88os. As we have
seen, it took two main directions, according to whether.
the emphasis was placed on content or on form. In the
first category were the symbolists, with their emphasis
on the spiritual meaning of painting; in the second were
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the posr. .impressionists, who did not deny art its spiritual
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VASSILY KANDINSKY