- L'Art et ses représentants. Jean Metzinger, Revue Indépendante, Paris, September, 1911, pp. 161–172
- Le Fauconnier et son oeuvre, Revue Indépendante, Paris, October 1911 Unlocated article listed in Le Fauconnier bibliographies
- Les Beaux Arts. A propos du Salon d'Automne, Les Bandeaux d'Or, séries 4, no. 13, 1911–1912, pp. 42–51
- Cubisme devant les Artistes, Les Annales politiques et littéraires, Paris, December, 1912, pp. 473–475. A response to an inquiry
- Le Cubisme et la Tradition, Montjoie, Paris, 10 February 1913, p. 4. Reprinted in Tradition et Cubisme, Paris, 1927
- [Extracts from O Kubisme], Soyuz Molodezhi, Sbornik, St. Petersburg, no. 3, 1913. With commentary. Reference from gray, Camilla. The Great Experiment: Russian Art, 1893–1922, New York, Abrams, 1962, p. 308
- Opinions (Mes Tableaux), Montjoie, Paris, nos. 11–12, November–December, 1913, p. 14
- C’est en allant se jeter à la mer que le fleuve reste fidèle à sa source, Le Mot, Paris, vol. I, no. 17, 1 Mai 1915
- French Artists Spur on American Art, New York Herald, 24 October 1915, pp. 2–3. An interview
- Interview with Gleizes (Duchamp, Picabia and Crotti), The Literary Digest, New York, 27 November 1915, pp. 1224–1225
- La Peinture Moderne", 391, New York, no. 5, June 1917, pp. 6–7
- The Abbey of Créteil, A Communistic Experiment, The Modern School, Stelton, New Jersey, October, 1918. Edited by Carl Zigrosser
- The Impersonality of American Art, Playboy, New York, nos. 4 and 5, 1919, pp. 25–26. Translated by Stephen Bourgeois.
- Preface to the catalogue of Annual Exhibition of Modern Art at the Bourgeois Galleries, New York, 1919[32]
- Vers une époque de bâtisseurs", Clarté (Bulletin Français), Paris, 1920, no. 13, 14, 15, 32
- Letter to Herwarth Walden, 30 April 1920], Der Sturm, Berlin, Nationalgalerie, September, 1961, p. 46
- L’Affaire dada. Action, Paris, no. 3, April, 1920, pp. 26–32. Re-printed in English in Motherwell, Robert, ed. Dada Painters and Poets, New York, 1951, pp. 298–302
- Dieu Nouveau, La Vie des Lettres, Paris, October, 1920, p. 178
- Réhabilitation des Arts Plastiques, La Vie des Lettres et des Arts, Paris, series 2, no. 4, April, 1921, pp. 411–122. Reprinted in Tradition et Cubisme, Paris, 1927
- L'Etat du Cubisme aujourd'hui, La Vie des Lettres et des Arts, Paris, series 2, no. 15, 1922, pp. 13–17
- Tradition und Freiheit, Das Kunstblatt, Berlin, vol. 6, no. 1, 1922, pp. 26–32
- Ein Neuer Naturalismus? Eine Rundfrage des Kunstblatts, Das Kunstblatt, Berlin, vol. 6, no. 9, 1922, pp. 387–389
- Perle, La Bataille Littéraire, Brussels, vol. 4, no. 2, 25 February 1922, pp. 35–36 [A poem, New York, 1916]
- La Peinture et ses Lois : Ce qui devait sortir du Cubisme, La Vie des Lettres et des Arts, Paris, series 2, no. 12, March, 1923, pp. 26–73
- Jean Lurçat, Das Kunstblatt, vol. 7, no. 8, 1923, pp. 225–228
- L’Art moderne et la Société nouvelle, Moniteur de l’Académie Socialiste, Moscou, 1923. Reprinted in Tradition et Cubisme, Paris, 1927, pp. 149–161
- Où va la peinture moderne? Bulletin de l’Effort Moderne, Paris, no. 5, May 1924, p. 14. Response to an inquiry
- La Renaissance et la peinture d'aujourd'hui, La Vie des Lettres et des Arts, Paris, décembre 1924 (repris dans Tradition et Cubisme, Paris, 1927, p. 179–191)
- La Peinture et ses Lois, Bulletin de l’Effort Moderne, Paris, no. 5, May 1924, p. 4–9, no. 13, March 1925, p. 1–4
- A propos de la Section d'Or de 1912, Les Arts Plastiques, Paris, no. 1, January,1925, pp. 5–7
- Chez les Cubistes: une enquête, Bulletin de la Vie Artistique, Paris, vol. 6, no. 1, January 1925, pp. 15–19. Response to an inquiry
- L’inquiétude, Crise plastique, La Vie des Lettres et des Arts, Paris, series 2, no. 20, May, 1925, pp. 38–52
- A l'Exposition, que pensez-vous du... Pavilion de Russie, Bulletin de la Vie Artistique, vol. 6, no. 11, 1 June 1925, pp. 235–237. Response to an inquiry
- Cubisme", La Vie des Lettres et des Arts, Paris, series 2, no. 21, 1926, pp. 51–65. Announced as French text of Kubismus, Bauhausbücher 13, Munich, 1928, written in September, 1925, at Serrières
- Cubisme (Vers une conscience plastique). Bulletin de l'Effort Moderne, Paris, no. 22, February, 1926; no. 23, March, 1926; no. 24, April, 1926; no. 25, May, 1926; no. 26, June, 1926; no. 27, July, 1926; no. 28, October, 1926; no. 29, November, 1926; no. 30, December, 1926; no. 31, January, 1927; no. 32, February, 1927. Extracts, announced as partial contents of Kubismus, Bauhausbücher 13, 1928
- L’Epopée. De la Forme immobile à la Forme mobile, Le Rouge et le Noir, Paris, October, 1929, pp. 57–99. The final French text of Kubismus, Bauhausbücher 13, Munich, Albert Langen Verlag, 1928 (re-edited by Florian Kupferberg Verlag in 1980).
- Charles Henry et le Vitalisme, Cahiers de l'Etoile, Paris, no. 13, January–February, 1930, pp. 112–128. [Preface to La Forme et l'Histoire], l'Alliance Universelle, Paris, 30 April 1930
- Les Attitudes Fondamentales de l'Esprit Moderne, Bulletin de la VIIème Congrès de la Fédération Internationale des Unions Intellectuelles, Cracow, October, 1930. [Preface to an Exhibition of Paintings by Gottfried Graf, Berlin, 1931]. Quoted in Chevalier, Le Dénouement traditionnel du Cubisme, 2, Confluences, Lyon, no. 8, February, 1942, p. 193
- Civilization et Propositions, La Semaine Egyptienne, Alexandria, 31 October 1932, p. 5
- Moly-Sabata ou le Retour des Artistes au Village, Sud Magazine, Marseilles, no. 1021, 1 June 1932. [Statement], Abstraction-Creation, Art Non-Figuratif, Paris, no. 1, 1932, pp. 15–16
- La Grande Ville et Ses Signes, La Liberté, Paris, 7 May 1933, p. 2
- Vers la régénération intellectuelle, Naturisme du corps: naturisme de l'esprit, Régénération, Paris, new series, no. 46, July–August, 1933, pp. 117–119. [Statement], Abstraction-Creation, Art Non-Figuratif, Paris, no. 2, 1933, p. 18
- Vers une conscience plastique, La Forme et l'Histoire, Sud, magazine méditerranéen, no. 104, 1–16 July 1933, p. 20–21
- Propos de peintre, Almanach Vivarois 1933, Sous le signe de July, 1933, p. 30–34. May 2007
- Le Retour de l’Homme à sa Vie, Jeunesse, and Jeunesse (suite), Régénération, Paris, no. 49, 50, 53, 1934. [Expose] Abstraction-Création, Art Non Figuratif, Paris, no. 3, 1934, p. 18
- Agriculture et Machinisme, Regeneration, Paris, no. 53, August–September, 1934, pp. 11–14. Enlarged version of article originally published in Lyon Républicain, 1 January 1932
- Le Groupe de l'Abbaye. La Nouvelle Abbaye de Moly-Sabata, Cahiers Américains, Paris, New York, no. 6, Winter, 1934, pp. 253–259
- Le Retour à la Terre, Beaux-Arts, Paris, 14 December 1934, p. 2
- Peinture et Peinture, Sud Magazine, Marseilles, no. 8, August 1935. Offprint. (In Puissances du Cubisme, 1969, pp. 185–199)
- Retour à l’Homme. Mais à quel Homme?, December, 1935. Offprint, Sud Magazine, Marseilles. (In Puissances du Cubisme, 1969, pp. 201–218)
- Arabesques, Cahiers du Sud, (special edition), L’Islam et l’Occident, vol. 22, no. 175, August–September, 1935, pp. 101–106. (In Puissances du Cubisme, 1969, pp. 169–175)
- Article dated Serrières d'Ardèche, November, 1934. [Statement], Abstraction-Creation, Art Non-Figuratif, Paris, no. 5, 1936, pp. 7–8
- La Question de Métier, Beaux-Arts, Paris, 9 October 1936, p. 1
- Art Régional, Tous les Arts à Paris, Paris, 15 December 1936
- Le Problème de la Lumière, Cahiers du Sud, vol. 24, no. 192, March, 1937, pp. 190–207. (From d'Homocentrisme, also in Puissance du cubisme, 1969, pp. 245–267)
- Cubisme et Surréalisme: Deux Tentatives Pour Redécouvrir l'Homme, Deuxième Congrés international d'esthétique et de science de l'art, Paris, 1937, II p. 337. (In Puissances du cubisme, 1969, p. 269–282)
- Tradition et Modernisme, l'Art et les Artistes, Paris, no. 37, January, 1939, pp. 109–115
- L'Oeuvre de Maurice Garnier, Sud Magazine, Marseille, mars-avril 1939, p. 15–17
- Artistes et Artisans, L’Opinion, Cannes, 31 May 1941
- Spiritualité, Rythme, Forme, Confluences: Les Problèmes de la Peinture, Lyon, 1945, section 6. Special edition, edited by Gaston Diehl. (In Puissance du cubisme, 1969, p. 315–344)
- Apollinaire, la Justice et Moi, Guillaume Apollinaire, Souvenirs et Témoignages, Paris, Editions de la Tête Noire, 1946, pp. 53–65. Edited by Marcel Adema
- L’Arc en Ciel, clé de l’Art chrétien médiéval, Les Etudes Philosophiques, new series, no. 2, April–June, 1946. [Statement], Réalités Nouvelles, Paris, no. 1, 1947, pp. 34–35 (In Puissances du cubisme, 1969, p. 345–357)
- Réalités Nouvelles, Paris, no. 1, 1947, p. 34–35. Préliminaires à une étude sur les variations iconographiques de la Croix, Témoignages, Cahiers de la Pierre-qui-Vire, no. 15, October 1947
- Life and Death of the Christian West, Londres, Dennis Dobson Ltd., 1947. Preface by H. J. Massingham, translation by Aristide Messinesi
- Y a-t-il un Art Traditionnel Chrétien ?, Témoignages, Cahiers de la Pierre-qui-Vire, July 1948
- L’Art Sacré est Théologique et Symbolique, Arts, Paris, no. 148, 9 January 1948, p. 8
- Active Tradition of the East and West, Art and Thought, Londres, February 1948, p. 244–251 (Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, homage)
- Pourquoi j'illustre Les Pensées de Pascal, Arts, 24 March 1950, p. 1–2
- Introduction au catalogue de l'exposition Les Pensées de Pascal, Chapelle de l’Oratoire, Avignon, 22 July – 31 August 1950
- Peinture d’Opinion et Peinture de Métier, L’Atelier de la Rose, Lyon, June 1951
- Réflexions sur l’Art dit Abstrait et du Caractère de l’Image dans la Non-Figuration, I, L’Atelier de la Rose, Lyon, October 1951
- Réflexions sur l’Art dit Abstrait et du Caractère de l’Image dans la Non-Figuration, II, L’Atelier de la Rose, Lyon, January 1952
- L’Esprit fondamental de l’Art roman, L’Atelier de la Rose, Lyon, September 1952
- Mentalité Renouvelée, I, L’Atelier de la Rose, Lyon, December 1952
- Présence d’Albert Gleizes, Zodiaque, Saint-Léger-Vauban, no. 6-7, January 1952
- L’Esprit de ma fresque : L’Eucharistie, L’Atelier de la Rose, Lyon, March 1953.
- Mentalité Renouvelée, Il, L’Atelier de la Rose, Lyon, June 1953, pp. 452–460.
- Conformisme, Réforme et Révolution, Correspondences, Tunis, no. 2, 1954, p. 39–45. (With a biographical note by Jean Cathelin)
- Un potier [sur Anne Dangar ], La belle Journée est passée, Zodiaque, Saint-Léger-Vauban, no. 25, April 1955.
- Caractères de l’Art Celtique, Actualité de l’Art Celtique, Cahiers d’Histoire et de Folklore, Lyon, 1956, pp. 55–97 (extraits de La Forme et l’Histoire, 1932)
- Souvenirs, le Cubisme 1908–1914, Lyon, Cahiers Albert Gleizes, L’Association des Amis d’Albert Gleizes, 1957 (from Souvenirs, manuscript conserved at the Kandinsky Library / Centre Pompidou, Paris)
- Introduction à Mainie Jellett, The Artists’ Vision, Dundalk, Dundalgan Press, 1958, pp. 25–45 (written in 1948)
- Puissances du Cubisme, Chambéry, éditions Présence, 1969 (articles published between 1925 and 1946)
- Art et religion, Art et science, Art et production, Chambéry, éditions Présence, 1970. (English edition by Peter Brooke, 1999)
- Fragments de notes inédites (1946), Zodiaque, n° 100, April 1974, pp. 39–74
- Du Cubisme, Jean Metzinger, Aubard (éditions Présence), 1980 (re-edition of the 1947 version with an introduction by Daniel Robbins)
- Albert Gleizes en 1934, Ampuis, Association des Amis d'Albert Gleizes, 1991. (from Souvenirs, manuscript conserved at the Kandinsky Library / Centre Pompidou, Paris)
- Sujet et objet, deux lettres adressées à André Lhote, Ampuis, Association des Amis d’Albert Gleizes, 1996
Albert
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Articles
Press articles
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Albert Gleizes, Portrait de Jacques Nayral (1911) and Jean Metzinger Le goûter (Tea Time) (1911), Fantasio, 15 October 1911
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Paintings by Albert Gleizes, 1910–11, Paysage, Landscape; Juan Gris (drawing); Jean Metzinger, c.1911, Nature morte, Compotier et cruche décorée de cerfs. Front page of El Correo Catalán, 25 April 1912
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Paintings by Juan Gris, Bodegón; August Agero (sculpture); Jean Metzinger, 1910–11, Deux Nus, Two Nudes, Gothenburg Museum of Art; Marie Laurencin (acrylic); Albert Gleizes, 1911, Paysage, Landscape. La Publicidad, 26 April 1912
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Jean Metzinger, 1910–11, Paysage (whereabouts unknown); Gino Severini, 1911, La danseuse obsedante; Albert Gleizes, 1912, l'Homme au Balcon, Man on a Balcony (Portrait of Dr. Théo Morinaud). Les Annales politiques et littéraires, Sommaire du n. 1536, décembre 1912
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Albert Gleizes, (left) in front of his painting Jazz; Jean Crotti (center) studying his Femme à la toque rouge; Marcel Duchamp (right) at his drawing board, in front of Jacques Villon's Portrait de M. J. B. peintre, The Sun, New York, 2 January 1916
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Albert Gleizes (with Chal Post, 1915); Marcel Duchamp (with his brother Jacques Villon's Portrait de M. J. B. peintre (Jacques Bon) 1914); Jean Crotti; Hugo Robus; Stanton MacDonald-Wright; and Frances Simpson Stevens (center), Sometimes we dread the future, Every Week, Vol. 4, No. 14, April 2, 1917, p. 14
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Paintings by Gino Severini, 1911, Souvenirs de Voyage; Albert Gleizes, 1912, Man on a Balcony, L’Homme au balcon; Severini, 1912–13, Portrait de Mlle Jeanne Paul-Fort; Luigi Russolo, 1911–12, La Révolte, Les Annales politiques et littéraires, Le Paradoxe Cubiste, n. 1916, 14 March 1920
Writings
Books
- Du "Cubisme", Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, Paris, Figuière, 1912 (published in English and Russian in 1913, a new edition was published in 1947)
- Du Cubisme et des moyens de le comprendre, Paris, La Cible, Povolozky, 1920 (published in German in 1922).
- La Mission créatrice de l’Homme dans le domaine plastique, Paris, La Cible, Povolozky, 1921 (published in Polish in 1927).
- La Peinture et ses lois, ce qui devait sortir du Cubisme, Paris, 1924 (published in English in 2000)
- Tradition et Cubisme. Vers une conscience plastique. Articles et Conférences 1912–1924, Paris, La Cible, Povolozky, 1927
- Peinture et Perspective descriptive, conference at the Carnegie Foundation for l’Union Intellectuelle française, Paris, 22 March 1927. Sablons, Moly-Sabata, 1927
- Kubismus, Bauhausbücher 13, Munich, Albert Langen Verlag, 1928 (re-edited by Florian Kupferberg Verlag in 1980).
- Vie et Mort de l’Occident Chrétien, Sablons, Moly-Sabata, 1930 (published in English in 1947)
- Vers une Conscience plastique : La Forme et l’Histoire, Paris, Povolozky, 1932
- Art et Science, Sablons, Moly-Sabata, 1933. 2ème édition, Aix-en-Provence, 1961. Conference at Lodz, Poland, 28 April 1932, and Stuttgart, 6 Mai 1932.
- Homocentrisme ; Le retour de l’Homme chrétien; Le Rythme dans les Arts plastiques, Sablons, Moly-Sabata, 1937
- La Signification Humaine du Cubisme, Lecture by Albert Gleizes at the Petit Palais, Paris, 18 July 1938, Sablons, Moly-Sabata, 1938
- Du Cubisme, Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, Paris, Compagnie Française des Arts Graphiques, 1947 (re-edition of the 1912 book with slight modifications and a new Preface by Albert Gleizes).
- Souvenirs, le Cubisme 1908–1914, Lyon, Cahiers Albert Gleizes, L’Association des Amis d’Albert Gleizes, 1957
- Puissances du Cubisme, Chambéry, éditions Présence, 1969. Collection of articles published between 1925 and 1946
- Art et religion, Art et science, Art et production, Chambéry, éditions Présence, 1970 (published in English in 2000)
- L'Homme devenu peintre, Paris, Fondation Albert Gleizes and Somogy éditions d'Art, 1998
Gallery
See also: List of works by Albert Gleizes
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Albert Gleizes, 1910, L'Arbre (The Tree), oil on canvas, 92 x 73.2 cm, private collection. Exhibited Salon des Indépendants, 1910; Salon de la Section d'Or, Galerie La Boétie, 1912; Manes Moderni Umeni, S.V.U., Vystava, Prague, 1914
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Albert Gleizes, 1911, La Chasse (The Hunt), oil on canvas, 123.2 x 99 cm. Published in L'Intransigeant, 10 October 1911, "Les Peintres Cubistes" 1913, by G. Apollinaire, and Au Salon d'Automne, Revue d'Europe et d'Amerique, Paris, October 1911
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Albert Gleizes, 1910–12, Les Arbres (The Trees), oil on canvas, 41 x 27 cm. Reproduced in Du "Cubisme", 1912
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Albert Gleizes, 1911, Stilleben, Nature Morte, Der Sturm postcard, Sammlung Walden, Berlin. Collection Paul Citroen, sold 1928 to Kunstausstellung Der Sturm, requisition by the Nazis in 1937, and missing since
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Albert Gleizes, 1912 (spring), Dessin pour L'Homme au balcon, exhibited Salon des Indépendants 1912
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Albert Gleizes, 1912, Les ponts de Paris (Passy), The Bridges of Paris (Passy), oil on canvas, 60.5 x 73.2 cm, Museum Moderner Kunst (mumok), Vienna. Published in Du "Cubisme", 1912
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Albert Gleizes, 1913, Les Bateaux de pêche (Fischerboote), oil on canvas, 165 x 111 cm, exhibited Salon d'Automne, Paris, 1913–14, no. 770, Manes Moderni Umeni, Vystava, Prague, 1914, no. 44, Tel Aviv Museum of Art
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Albert Gleizes, c.1920, Figures planes (Trois personages assis), dimensions approximately 126 x 100 cm, location unknown. Exhibited Der Sturm, Berlin, 1921 (no. 927) and reproduced in Gleizes 1927, p. 97
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Albert Gleizes, 1920, Ecuyère, oil on canvas, 130 x 93 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen. Published in Broom, An International Magazine of the Arts, November 1921
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Albert Gleizes, Woman and child (Femme et enfant, Frau und Kind), Der Sturm, 5 October 1921
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Albert Gleizes, study for Femme au gants noirs, drawing (zeichnung), published on the cover of Der Sturm, 5 June 1920
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Albert Gleizes, untitled, drawing (zeichnung), published in the cover of Der Sturm, 5 June 1920
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Armory Show, International Exhibition of Modern Art, Chicago, 1913. The Cubist room, Gallery 53 (northeast view), Art Institute of Chicago, March 24–April 16, 1913. Gleizes' Man on a Balcony is exhibited to the right
World War II and after
During World War II, Gleizes and his wife remained in France under the German occupation. In 1942 Gleizes began the series of Supports de Contemplation, large scale, entirely non-representational paintings that are both very complex and very serene.[4]
Materials being difficult to obtain during the war, Gleizes painted on
burlap, sizing the porous material with a mixture of glue and paint. He
had used burlap in some of his earliest paintings and now found it
favorable to his vigorous touch, for it took the most powerful strokes
even while preserving the matte surface he so valued. In 1952, Gleizes
realized his last major work, a fresco titled Eucharist that he painted for a Jesuit chapel in Chantilly.[4]
Albert Gleizes died in Avignon in the Vaucluse département on 23 June 1953 and was interred in his wife's family mausoleum in the cemetery at Serrières.
Albert Gleizes died in Avignon in the Vaucluse département on 23 June 1953 and was interred in his wife's family mausoleum in the cemetery at Serrières.
Art market
In 2010, Le Chemin (Paysage à Meudon) (1911), oil on canvas, 146.4 x 114.4 cm, sold for 1,833,250 GBP ($2,683,878, or 2,198,983 Euros) at Christie's, London.[30]Legacy
"Gleizes' individual development, his unique struggle to reconcile forces," writes Daniel Robbins, "made him one of the few painters to come out of Cubism with a wholly individual style, undeflected by later artistic movements. Although he occasionally returned to earlier subjects... these later works were treated anew, on the basis of fresh insights. He never repeated his earlier styles, never remained stationary, but always grew more intense, more passionate. [...] His life ended in 1953 but his paintings remain to testify to his willingness to struggle for final answers. His is an abstract art of deep significance and meaning, paradoxically human even in his very search for absolute order and truth." (Daniel Robbins, 1964)[1]
Commemoration
In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the publication of Du "Cubisme" by Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, the Musée de La Poste in Paris presented a show entitled Gleizes – Metzinger. Du cubisme et après, from 9 May to 22 September 2012. Over 80 paintings and drawings, along with documents, films and 15 works by other members of the Section d'Or group (Villon, Duchamp-Villon, Kupka, Le Fauconnier, Lhote, La Fresnaye, Survage, Herbin, Marcoussis, Archipenko...) were included in the show. A catalogue in French and English was published for the event. A French postage stamp is issued representing works by Gleizes (Le Chant de Guerre, 1915) and Metzinger (L'Oiseau Bleu, 1913). This is the first time that a museum has organized an exhibit showcasing both Gleizes and Metzinger together.[31]Interwar period
By 1919 the pre-war sense of the Cubist movement had been virtually
shattered. Paris was overshadowed by a strong reaction against those
visions of common effort and revolutionary construction which Gleizes
continued to embrace, while the avant-garde was characterized by the
anarchic and, to him, destructive spirit of Dada. Neither alternative
held any appeal for him and, with the Salons dominated by a return to
classicism, his old hostility to Paris was constantly nourished.
Gleizes' attempt to resuscitate the spirit of the Section d'Or was met
with great difficulty, despite support by Alexander Archipenko, Georges Braque and Léopold Survage.[1]
His own organizational efforts were directed towards the
re-establishment of a European-wide movement of abstract artists in the
form of a large travelling exhibition, the Exposition de la Section d’Or,
in 1920; it was not the success he had hoped for. Cubism was passé for
younger artists, although Gleizes, on the contrary, felt that only its
preliminary phase had been investigated.[2]
It was the revival of the Section d'Or which ensured that Cubism in general and Gleizes in particular would become Dada's preferred target.[20] Similarly, an effort to organize an artists' cooperative received the support of Robert Delaunay, but of no other major artists.[1] The polemic resulted in the publication of Du cubisme et des moyens de le comprendre by Albert Gleizes, followed in 1922 by La Peinture et ses lois, within which appear the notion of translation and rotation that would ultimately characterize both the pictorial and theoretical aspects of Gleizes' art.[3] His post-Cubist style of the twenties—flat, forthright, uncompromising—is virtually Blaise Pascal's "Spirit of Geometry."[1]
Gleizes was in nearly every sense a maverick Cubist, perhaps the most unyielding of them all; both in his paintings and writings (which had a big impact on the image of Cubism in Europe and the United States). He developed a single-minded, thoroughly uncompromising Cubism without the diversion of a classical alternative. During the 1920s Gleizes worked on a highly abstract brand of Cubism. In addition to his shows at Léonce Rosenberg's L'Effort Moderne, the dealer-publisher Povolozky printed his writings. His art was indeed backed by a prodigious theoretical effluence, most notably in La Peinture et ses lois (first published in La Vie des Lettres, October 1922). Gleizes fused aesthetic, metaphysical, moral and social priorities to describe the status and function of art.[20]
In La Peinture et ses lois writes Robbins, "Gleizes deduced the rules of painting from the picture plane, its proportions, the movement of the human eye and the laws of the universe. This theory, later referred to as translation-rotation, ranks with the writings of Mondrian and Malevich as one of the most thorough expositions of the principles of abstract art, which in his case entailed the rejection not only of representation but also of geometric forms."[2] Flat planes were set in motion simultaneously to evoke space by shifting across one another, as if rotating and tilting on oblique axes. Diagrams entitled "Simultaneous movements of rotation and shifting of the plane on its axis" were published to illustrate the concept. His painting of 1920–1922, submitted to the same rigor, were not Cubist in any conventional sense; but they were Cubist in their concern with planimetric space, and in their relationship (synthesis) with subject-matter. Indeed, the abstract appearance of these compositions is misleading. Gleizes had always remained committed to synthesis. He described how artists had freed themselves from the 'subject-image' as a pretext to work from the 'subjectless-image' (nebulous forms) until they came together. The images known from the natural world combined with those nebulous forms were made 'spiritually human'. Though Gleizes considered his works as initially nonrepresentational and only afterwards as denotational.[20]
Before World War I, Gleizes had always been identified as a Cubist avant-garde. And during the twenties he continued to hold a prominent position, but he was no longer identified with the avant-garde since Cubism had already been replaced by Dada and Surrealism. Even after historians began their attempts to analyze the vital role played by Cubism, the name of Albert Gleizes was always mentioned because of his early and important participation in the movement. Gleizes had never ceased to call himself a Cubist and theoretically a Cubist he remained. In many ways his theories were close to those developed by Mondrian, though his paintings never submitted to the discipline of primary colors and the right angle; they were not Neo-Plastic (or De Stijl) in character. In fact, his works from the late 1920s through the 1940s looked like nothing else that was being done, and indeed, they were rarely seen in the art world because Gleizes deliberately distanced himself from extensive participation in the Parisian scene.[2]
Gleizes realized that his evolution towards 'purity' carried with it the risk of alienation from the 'mentality of the milieu', but he saw it as the sole means of arriving at a new type of art that could reach a mass audience (just as the French murals of the 11th and 12th centuries). In Du Cubisme et les moyens de comprendre (1920), Gleizes went so far as to envisage the mass-production of painting; as a means of undermining the market system and thus the status of artworks as commodities. 'The multiplication of pictures,' Gleizes wrote, 'strikes at the heart of the understanding and the economic notions of the bourgeois.'[20]
After World War I, with the support given by the dealer Léonce Rosenberg,
Cubism returned as a central issue for artists. With the Salons
dominated by a return to classicism, Gleizes attempted to resuscitate
the spirit of the Section d'Or in 1920 but was met with great difficulty, despite support by Fernand Léger, Alexander Archipenko, Georges Braque, Constantin Brâncuși, Henri Laurens, Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Louis Marcoussis and Léopold Survage.[21][22] Gleizes' organizational efforts were directed towards the establishment of a European-wide movement of Cubist and abstract art in the form of a large traveling exhibition; the Exposition de la Section d’Or.
The idea was to bring together a collection of works that revealed the
complete process of transformation and renewal that had taken place.[23]
It was not the success he had hoped for. Cubism was seen as passé for
emerging artists and other established artists such as Marcel Duchamp
and Picabia, although Gleizes, on the contrary, felt that only its
preliminary phase had been investigated.[24]
In addition to Cubists works (which already represented a wide variety of styles), the second edition of the Section d'Or held at the Galerie La Boétie from 5 March 1920 included De Stijl, Bauhaus, Constructivism and Futurism.[25] It was the revival of the Section d'Or which ensured that Cubism in general would become Dada's preferred target.[26] The new polemic resulted in the publication of Du cubisme et des moyens de le comprendre by Gleizes, followed in 1922 by La Peinture et ses lois.[27][28]
Following the death of Jules Roche, the Gleizes' had enough independent income and real estate to pursue their goals without bowing to material considerations, unlike many other artists. The Gleizes' spent more and more time at the family home in Serrières, in Cavalaire, and an even quieter location on the French Riviera, both associating with people more sympathetic to their social ideas. Gleizes became active in the Union Intellectuelle and lectured extensively in France, Germany, Poland and England, while continuing to write. In 1924–25 the Bauhaus (where certain ideals analogous to his own were practiced) requested a new book on Cubism (as part of a series which included Wassily Kandinsky's Point and Line to Plane, Paul Klee's Pedagogical Notebooks, and Kasimir Malevich's The Non-Objective World[4]). Gleizes, in response, would write Kubismus (published in 1928) for the collection of Bauhausbücher 13, Munich. The publication of Kubismus in French the following year would bring Gleizes closer to Delaunay.[1][3] In 1924 Gleizes, Léger and Amédée Ozenfant opened Académie Moderne.[4]
In 1927, still dreaming of the communal days at the Abbaye de Créteil, Gleizes founded an artist's colony at a rented house called the Moly-Sabata in Sablons near his wife's family home in Serrières in the Ardèche département in the Rhône Valley.[3][4]
Léonce Rosenberg, in 1929, commissioned Gleizes (replacing Gino Severini) to paint decorative panels for his Parisian residence, which would be installed in 1931. The same year Gleizes was part of the committee of Abstraction-Création (founded by Theo van Doesburg, Auguste Herbin, Jean Hélion and Georges Vantongerloo) that acted as a forum for international non-representational art, and counteracted the influence of the Surrealist group led by André Breton. By this time, his work reflected the strengthening of his religious convictions and his 1932 book, Vers une conscience plastique, La Forme et l’histoire examines Celtic, Romanesque, and Oriental art. On tour in Poland and Germany, he gave lectures titled Art et Religion, Art et Production and Art et Science and wrote a book on Robert Delaunay but it was never published.[3][4]
In 1934 Gleizes began a series of paintings that would continue for several years, in which three levels are identified: static translation, corresponding to his researches of the 1920s; mobile rotation, corresponding to his researches into coloured cadences of the late 1920s and early 1930s; and simple grey arcs
which, Gleizes argues, gives the 'form' or unifying 'rhythm' of the
painting. The level of 'translation' is generally a geometrical figure
evoking a representational image, unlike the work of the early 1930s.
These works no longer articulate the strict non-representation of Abstraction Création. Léonce Rosenberg—who had already published Gleizes extensively in his Bulletin de l'Effort Moderne,
but had not previously shown much enthusiasm for his painting—was
deeply impressed by Gleizes' paintings (which followed from his 1934
research) at the Salon d'Automne. This was the beginning of a close
relationship with Gleizes, which continued through the 1930s and is
reflected in a stream of correspondence.[4]
In 1937, Gleizes was commissioned to paint murals for the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne at the Paris World’s Fair. He collaborated with Delaunay in the Pavillon de l'Air and with Léopold Survage and Fernand Léger for the Pavillon de l'Union des Artistes Modernes. At the end of 1938, Gleizes volunteered to participate in the free seminars and discussion groups for young painters set up by Robert Delaunay at his Paris studio.[3][4] Then Gleizes, in collaboration with Jacques Villon, conceived the idea of executing a mural for the auditorium of the École des Arts et Métiers; the latter was rejected by the school authorities as too abstract, but immense panels by Gleizes survive as Four Legendary Figures of the Sky (San Antonio, TX, McNay A. Inst.). Other examples of this ambitious public style include The Transfiguration (1939–41; Lyon, Mus. B.-A.).
In the late 1930s, the wealthy American art connoisseur Peggy Guggenheim
purchased a great deal of the new art in Paris including works by
Albert Gleizes. She brought these works to the United States which today
form part of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
It was the revival of the Section d'Or which ensured that Cubism in general and Gleizes in particular would become Dada's preferred target.[20] Similarly, an effort to organize an artists' cooperative received the support of Robert Delaunay, but of no other major artists.[1] The polemic resulted in the publication of Du cubisme et des moyens de le comprendre by Albert Gleizes, followed in 1922 by La Peinture et ses lois, within which appear the notion of translation and rotation that would ultimately characterize both the pictorial and theoretical aspects of Gleizes' art.[3] His post-Cubist style of the twenties—flat, forthright, uncompromising—is virtually Blaise Pascal's "Spirit of Geometry."[1]
Gleizes was in nearly every sense a maverick Cubist, perhaps the most unyielding of them all; both in his paintings and writings (which had a big impact on the image of Cubism in Europe and the United States). He developed a single-minded, thoroughly uncompromising Cubism without the diversion of a classical alternative. During the 1920s Gleizes worked on a highly abstract brand of Cubism. In addition to his shows at Léonce Rosenberg's L'Effort Moderne, the dealer-publisher Povolozky printed his writings. His art was indeed backed by a prodigious theoretical effluence, most notably in La Peinture et ses lois (first published in La Vie des Lettres, October 1922). Gleizes fused aesthetic, metaphysical, moral and social priorities to describe the status and function of art.[20]
In La Peinture et ses lois writes Robbins, "Gleizes deduced the rules of painting from the picture plane, its proportions, the movement of the human eye and the laws of the universe. This theory, later referred to as translation-rotation, ranks with the writings of Mondrian and Malevich as one of the most thorough expositions of the principles of abstract art, which in his case entailed the rejection not only of representation but also of geometric forms."[2] Flat planes were set in motion simultaneously to evoke space by shifting across one another, as if rotating and tilting on oblique axes. Diagrams entitled "Simultaneous movements of rotation and shifting of the plane on its axis" were published to illustrate the concept. His painting of 1920–1922, submitted to the same rigor, were not Cubist in any conventional sense; but they were Cubist in their concern with planimetric space, and in their relationship (synthesis) with subject-matter. Indeed, the abstract appearance of these compositions is misleading. Gleizes had always remained committed to synthesis. He described how artists had freed themselves from the 'subject-image' as a pretext to work from the 'subjectless-image' (nebulous forms) until they came together. The images known from the natural world combined with those nebulous forms were made 'spiritually human'. Though Gleizes considered his works as initially nonrepresentational and only afterwards as denotational.[20]
Before World War I, Gleizes had always been identified as a Cubist avant-garde. And during the twenties he continued to hold a prominent position, but he was no longer identified with the avant-garde since Cubism had already been replaced by Dada and Surrealism. Even after historians began their attempts to analyze the vital role played by Cubism, the name of Albert Gleizes was always mentioned because of his early and important participation in the movement. Gleizes had never ceased to call himself a Cubist and theoretically a Cubist he remained. In many ways his theories were close to those developed by Mondrian, though his paintings never submitted to the discipline of primary colors and the right angle; they were not Neo-Plastic (or De Stijl) in character. In fact, his works from the late 1920s through the 1940s looked like nothing else that was being done, and indeed, they were rarely seen in the art world because Gleizes deliberately distanced himself from extensive participation in the Parisian scene.[2]
Gleizes realized that his evolution towards 'purity' carried with it the risk of alienation from the 'mentality of the milieu', but he saw it as the sole means of arriving at a new type of art that could reach a mass audience (just as the French murals of the 11th and 12th centuries). In Du Cubisme et les moyens de comprendre (1920), Gleizes went so far as to envisage the mass-production of painting; as a means of undermining the market system and thus the status of artworks as commodities. 'The multiplication of pictures,' Gleizes wrote, 'strikes at the heart of the understanding and the economic notions of the bourgeois.'[20]
1920s–1930s
La Section d'Or exhibition, 1925, Galerie Vavin-Raspail, Paris. Albert Gleizes, Portrait de Eugène Figuière, La Chasse (The Hunt), and Les Baigneuses (The Bathers) are seen towards the center. Works by Robert Delaunay and André Lhote are seen to the left and right respectively, amidst works by others
In addition to Cubists works (which already represented a wide variety of styles), the second edition of the Section d'Or held at the Galerie La Boétie from 5 March 1920 included De Stijl, Bauhaus, Constructivism and Futurism.[25] It was the revival of the Section d'Or which ensured that Cubism in general would become Dada's preferred target.[26] The new polemic resulted in the publication of Du cubisme et des moyens de le comprendre by Gleizes, followed in 1922 by La Peinture et ses lois.[27][28]
Following the death of Jules Roche, the Gleizes' had enough independent income and real estate to pursue their goals without bowing to material considerations, unlike many other artists. The Gleizes' spent more and more time at the family home in Serrières, in Cavalaire, and an even quieter location on the French Riviera, both associating with people more sympathetic to their social ideas. Gleizes became active in the Union Intellectuelle and lectured extensively in France, Germany, Poland and England, while continuing to write. In 1924–25 the Bauhaus (where certain ideals analogous to his own were practiced) requested a new book on Cubism (as part of a series which included Wassily Kandinsky's Point and Line to Plane, Paul Klee's Pedagogical Notebooks, and Kasimir Malevich's The Non-Objective World[4]). Gleizes, in response, would write Kubismus (published in 1928) for the collection of Bauhausbücher 13, Munich. The publication of Kubismus in French the following year would bring Gleizes closer to Delaunay.[1][3] In 1924 Gleizes, Léger and Amédée Ozenfant opened Académie Moderne.[4]
In 1927, still dreaming of the communal days at the Abbaye de Créteil, Gleizes founded an artist's colony at a rented house called the Moly-Sabata in Sablons near his wife's family home in Serrières in the Ardèche département in the Rhône Valley.[3][4]
Léonce Rosenberg, in 1929, commissioned Gleizes (replacing Gino Severini) to paint decorative panels for his Parisian residence, which would be installed in 1931. The same year Gleizes was part of the committee of Abstraction-Création (founded by Theo van Doesburg, Auguste Herbin, Jean Hélion and Georges Vantongerloo) that acted as a forum for international non-representational art, and counteracted the influence of the Surrealist group led by André Breton. By this time, his work reflected the strengthening of his religious convictions and his 1932 book, Vers une conscience plastique, La Forme et l’histoire examines Celtic, Romanesque, and Oriental art. On tour in Poland and Germany, he gave lectures titled Art et Religion, Art et Production and Art et Science and wrote a book on Robert Delaunay but it was never published.[3][4]
Installation shot of the Cubist room, 1913 Armory Show, published in the
New York Tribune, February 17, 1913 (p. 7). Left to right: Raymond Duchamp-Villon, La Maison Cubiste (Projet d'Hotel), Cubist House; Marcel Duchamp Nude (Study), Sad Young Man on a Train (Nu [esquisse], jeune homme triste dans un train) 1911-12 (The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice); Albert Gleizes, L'Homme au Balcon (Man on a Balcony), 1912 (Philadelphia Museum of Art); Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2; Alexander Archipenko, La Vie Familiale, Family Life (destroyed)
In 1937, Gleizes was commissioned to paint murals for the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne at the Paris World’s Fair. He collaborated with Delaunay in the Pavillon de l'Air and with Léopold Survage and Fernand Léger for the Pavillon de l'Union des Artistes Modernes. At the end of 1938, Gleizes volunteered to participate in the free seminars and discussion groups for young painters set up by Robert Delaunay at his Paris studio.[3][4] Then Gleizes, in collaboration with Jacques Villon, conceived the idea of executing a mural for the auditorium of the École des Arts et Métiers; the latter was rejected by the school authorities as too abstract, but immense panels by Gleizes survive as Four Legendary Figures of the Sky (San Antonio, TX, McNay A. Inst.). Other examples of this ambitious public style include The Transfiguration (1939–41; Lyon, Mus. B.-A.).
Albert Gleizes, 1911, Le Chemin, Paysage à Meudon,
oil on canvas, 146.4 x 114.4 cm. Exhibited at Salon des Indépendants,
1911, Salon des Indépendants, Bruxelles, 1911, Galeries J. Dalmau,
Barcelona, 1912, Galerie La Boétie, Salon de La Section d'Or, 1912,
stolen by Nazi occupiers from the home of collector Alphonse Kann during
World War II, returned to its rightful owners in 1997[29]
1913–1918
In February 1913, Gleizes and other artists introduced the new style of European modern art to an American audience at the Armory Show (International Exhibition of Modern Art) in New York City, Chicago and Boston. In addition to Man on a balcony (l'Homme au Balcon) no. 196, Gleizes exhibited at the Armory Show his 1910 Femme aux Phlox (Woman with Phlox), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.[17][18]
Gleizes published an article in Ricciotto Canudo's Montjoie entitled Cubisme et la tradition. It was through the intermediary of Canudo that Gleizes would meet the artist Juliette Roche; a childhood friend of Jean Cocteau and daughter of Jules Roche, an influential politician of the 3rd Republic.[3]
With the outbreak of World War I,
Albert Gleizes re-enlisted in the French army. He was put in charge of
organizing entertainment for the troops and as a result was approached
by Jean Cocteau to design the set and costumes for the William Shakespeare play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, along with Georges Valmier.[3]
Discharged from the military in the fall of 1915, Gleizes and his new wife, Juliette Roche, moved to New York, where they would meet regularly with Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp and Jean Crotti (who would eventually marry Suzanne Duchamp). It is at this time that Gleizes witnessed, with a critical eye, the readymades of Marcel Duchamp. After a short stay at the Albemarle Hotel Gleizes and his wife settled at 103 West Street, where Gleizes painted a series of works inspired by jazz music, skyscrapers, luminous signs and the Brooklyn Bridge. Here Gleizes met Stuart Davies, Max Weber, Joseph Stella, and participated in a show at Montross Gallery with Duchamp, Crotti and Metzinger (who remained in Paris)[3]
From New York City, the couple sailed to Barcelona where they were joined by Marie Laurencin, Francis Picabia and his wife. The group spent the summer painting at the resort area of Tossa del Mar and in December Gleizes had the first solo exhibition of his works at the Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona. Returning to New York city in 1917, Gleizes began writing poetic sketches in verse and in prose, some of which were published in Picabia's Dada periodical 391. Both Gleizes and his wife traveled from New York to Bermuda in September 1917,[19] where he painted a number of landscapes. When the war in Europe ended they returned to France where his career evolved more towards teaching through writing and he became involved with the committee of the Unions Intellectuelles Françaises.[3][4]
During the winter of 1918 at the Gleizes' rented house in Pelham New York, writes Daniel Robbins, Albert Gleizes came to his wife and said, "A terrible thing has happened to me: I believe I am finding God." This new religious conviction resulted not from any mystical visions but instead from Gleizes' rational confrontation of three urgent problems: collective order, individual differences and the painter's role. Although Gleizes did not join the Church until 1941, his next twenty-five years were spent in a logical effort not only to find God but also to have faith.[1]
From 1914 and extending to the end of the New York period, Gleizes' nonrepresentational paintings and those with an apparent visual basis existed side by side, differing only, writes Daniel Robbins, in "the degree of abstraction hidden by the uniformity with which they were painted and by the constant effort to tie the plastic realization of the painting to a specific, even unique, experience."[1] Gleizes approached abstraction conceptually rather than visually and in 1924 his intricate dialectic caused him to produce two amusing paintings which departed from his usual subject matter: the Imaginary Still Lifes, Blue and Green. In effect, writes Robbins, "Gleizes would have inverted Courbet's "Show me an angel and I will paint you an angel" to be "As long as an angel remains an unembodied ideal and cannot be shown to me, I'll paint it."[1]
Gleizes published an article in Ricciotto Canudo's Montjoie entitled Cubisme et la tradition. It was through the intermediary of Canudo that Gleizes would meet the artist Juliette Roche; a childhood friend of Jean Cocteau and daughter of Jules Roche, an influential politician of the 3rd Republic.[3]
Albert Gleizes, 1914-15, Portrait of an Army Doctor (Portrait d'un médecin militaire), oil on canvas, 119.8 x 95.1 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Discharged from the military in the fall of 1915, Gleizes and his new wife, Juliette Roche, moved to New York, where they would meet regularly with Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp and Jean Crotti (who would eventually marry Suzanne Duchamp). It is at this time that Gleizes witnessed, with a critical eye, the readymades of Marcel Duchamp. After a short stay at the Albemarle Hotel Gleizes and his wife settled at 103 West Street, where Gleizes painted a series of works inspired by jazz music, skyscrapers, luminous signs and the Brooklyn Bridge. Here Gleizes met Stuart Davies, Max Weber, Joseph Stella, and participated in a show at Montross Gallery with Duchamp, Crotti and Metzinger (who remained in Paris)[3]
From New York City, the couple sailed to Barcelona where they were joined by Marie Laurencin, Francis Picabia and his wife. The group spent the summer painting at the resort area of Tossa del Mar and in December Gleizes had the first solo exhibition of his works at the Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona. Returning to New York city in 1917, Gleizes began writing poetic sketches in verse and in prose, some of which were published in Picabia's Dada periodical 391. Both Gleizes and his wife traveled from New York to Bermuda in September 1917,[19] where he painted a number of landscapes. When the war in Europe ended they returned to France where his career evolved more towards teaching through writing and he became involved with the committee of the Unions Intellectuelles Françaises.[3][4]
During the winter of 1918 at the Gleizes' rented house in Pelham New York, writes Daniel Robbins, Albert Gleizes came to his wife and said, "A terrible thing has happened to me: I believe I am finding God." This new religious conviction resulted not from any mystical visions but instead from Gleizes' rational confrontation of three urgent problems: collective order, individual differences and the painter's role. Although Gleizes did not join the Church until 1941, his next twenty-five years were spent in a logical effort not only to find God but also to have faith.[1]
From 1914 and extending to the end of the New York period, Gleizes' nonrepresentational paintings and those with an apparent visual basis existed side by side, differing only, writes Daniel Robbins, in "the degree of abstraction hidden by the uniformity with which they were painted and by the constant effort to tie the plastic realization of the painting to a specific, even unique, experience."[1] Gleizes approached abstraction conceptually rather than visually and in 1924 his intricate dialectic caused him to produce two amusing paintings which departed from his usual subject matter: the Imaginary Still Lifes, Blue and Green. In effect, writes Robbins, "Gleizes would have inverted Courbet's "Show me an angel and I will paint you an angel" to be "As long as an angel remains an unembodied ideal and cannot be shown to me, I'll paint it."[1]
Theory
In Du "Cubisme"
Gleizes and Metzinger wrote: "If we wished to relate the space of the
[Cubist] painters to geometry, we should have to refer it to the
non-Euclidean mathematicians; we should have to study, at some length,
certain of Riemann's theorems." Cubism itself, then, was not based on any geometrical theory, but corresponded better to non-Euclidean geometry than classical or Euclidean geometry.
The essential was in the understanding of space other than by the
classical method of perspective; an understanding that would include and
integrate the fourth dimension.[14]
Cubism, with its new geometry, its dynamism and multiple view-point
perspective, not only represented a departure from Euclid's model, but
it achieved, according to Gleizes and Metzinger, a better representation
of the real world: one that was mobile and changing in time. For
Gleizes, Cubism represented a "normal evolution of an art that was mobile like life itself."[4]
In contrast to Picasso and Braque, Gleizes' intent was not to analyze
and describe visual reality. Gleizes had argued that we cannot know the
external world, we can only know our sensations.[4]
Objects from daily life⎯guitar, pipe or bowl of fruit⎯ did not satisfy
his complex idealistic concepts of the physical world. His subjects were
of vast scale and of provocative social and cultural meaning. Gleizes'
iconography (as of Delaunay, Le Fauconnier and Léger) helps to explain
why there is no period in his work corresponding to analytic Cubism, and
how it was possible for Gleizes to become an abstract painter, more
theoretically in tune with Kandinsky and Mondrian than Picasso and
Braque, who remained associated with visual reality.[1]
Gleizes' intent was to reconstitute and synthesize the real world according to his individual consciousness (sensations), through the use of volumes to convey the solidity and structure of objects. Their weight, placement and effects upon each other, and the inseparability of form and color, was one of the principal lessons of Cézanne. Forms were simplified and distorted, each shape and color modified by another, rather than splintered. His concern was to establish weight, density and volumetric relationships among sections of a broad subject. Gleizes himself characterized the 1910–11 phase of his work as an "analysis of volume relationships," though it bears little relation to the traditional use of the word "analytical" in our understanding of Cubism.[1]
A central theme of Du "Cubisme" was that access to the true essence of the world could be gained by sensations
alone. The sensation offered by classical painting was very limited: to
only one point of view, from a single point in space and frozen in
time. But the real world is mobile, both spatially and temporally.
Classical perspective and the formulations of Euclidean geometry were
only conventions (to use Poincaré's term) that distance us from
the truth of our sensations, from the truth of our own human nature. Man
sees the world of natural phenomena from a multitude of angles that
form a continuum of sensations in perpetual and continuous change. The
Cubists' aim was to completely eschew absolute space and time in favor
of relative motion, to grasp through sensory appearances and translate
onto a flat canvas the dynamical properties of the four-dimensional manifold
(the natural world). Only then could one achieve a better
representation of the mobile reality of our living experience. If
Gleizes and Metzinger write in Du "Cubisme" that we can only know our
sensations, it is not because they wish to disregard them, but, on the
contrary, to understand them more deeply as the primary source for their
own work. In reasoning this way, Gleizes and Metzinger demonstrate that
they are successors to Cézanne, who insists that everything must be
learnt from nature: "Nature seen and nature felt... both of which must unite in order to endure."[4][15][16]
Gleizes' intent was to reconstitute and synthesize the real world according to his individual consciousness (sensations), through the use of volumes to convey the solidity and structure of objects. Their weight, placement and effects upon each other, and the inseparability of form and color, was one of the principal lessons of Cézanne. Forms were simplified and distorted, each shape and color modified by another, rather than splintered. His concern was to establish weight, density and volumetric relationships among sections of a broad subject. Gleizes himself characterized the 1910–11 phase of his work as an "analysis of volume relationships," though it bears little relation to the traditional use of the word "analytical" in our understanding of Cubism.[1]
"We laugh out loud when we think of all the novices who expiate their literal understanding of the remarks of a cubist and their faith in absolute truth by laboriously placing side by side the six faces of a cube and both ears of a model seen in profile." (Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger)[10]
Albert Gleizes, 1913, L'Homme au Hamac (Man in a Hammock), oil on canvas, 130 x 155.5 cm, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
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