Constructed Realities: Cubism, part
2
In the first stage of cubism, Picasso
and Braque challenged representation and illusion with their focus on the
"language" of painting. One of the most recent interpretations of
cubism (T. J. Clark: Farewell to an Idea) begins with an unusual
premise. If Manet’s painting of the Bar at the Folies Bergere,
as well as Matisse’s window and studio paintings, were ultimately metaphors
about the illusion of depth and space, then, he asks, were Picasso’s cubist
paintings (Ma Jolie, for example) metaphors about the illusion of
painting and imitating? Are they paintings which pretend to make
a new perceptual order out of the pieces of painting which signify illusion
but which, in the end, refuse to make sense? If this is the case,
then the painting has become a metaphor of painting (the goal of
both Manet and Matisse), a metaphor which says that painting is an impoverished
action and an impoverished product, always removed from the world, and
because it is removed from the world, it must find ways to put the world
at greater distance than those artists did.
This metaphor of painting as an
impoverished art (impoverished because the illusion of the real is no longer
there) is, somewhat surprisingly, a rejection of the earlier cubist experiments
made by Picasso and Braque – experiments which were leading to a rigorous
and austere painting of the armature of a subject, leading to what Mondrian
eventually arrived at but not where Picasso, the anarchist who never eliminated
politics from his message, wanted to go. Although Picasso's cubist
paintings had already affirmed the objecthood of the painting, he now took
this affirmation to the next step by returning the world of everyday objects
to his painting.
From the de-construction of the image
to the constructed painting:
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| Picasso:
Still Life with Chair Caning, 1912 |
Picasso:
Guitar, Sheet Music, and Glass, 1912 |
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| Picasso:
Glass and Bottle of Suze, 1913 |
Picasso:
Guitar (El Diluvio), 1913 |
In Still-Life with Chair Caning,
the rope serves as a frame but it is a frame which is actually an element
of the work. A frame usually separates what is "real" from
what is imagined, but in this case, because the frame is a collaged element,
it becomes part of the world of the imaginary. Just as Matisse did in paintings
like The Red Studio, Picasso has confused the boundaries between
the real and the imaginary. As Picasso and Braque continue in this
format, they begin to add pieces of newspaper, matches, and other items
and fragments which could be found on any table in the cafe. These real
materials have several implications: first, the use of newspaper or other
"detritus" was a challenge to the "belle peinture" tradition or the cult
of fine materials and "beautiful painting," characteristic of the tradition
of high art. Second, the collage became an ironic commentary on traditional
means of representation, especially the creation of illusion. The collage
is a new type of realism as well as a new expression of the idea that pictorial
reality consists of different layers of material reality. This leads
to the idea and the method of starting not with the object itself and then
dissecting it (generally what we think we see when we look at works of
analytic cubism), but starting instead with the pictorial elements and
letting the composition give them objective significance (what we see when
we look at the later works of synthetic cubism -- usually the papiers collés,
Picasso's cubism of the later 1910s, and the cubism of another Spaniard:
Juan Gris). Whereas the first period of cubism is of lasting significance
for its complete rejection of illusionistic space, and is undeniably critical
to the work of the abstract expressionists, the second period was probably
of more direct importance to artists such as Matisse, some of the Russian
constructivists (Rodchenko, Tatlin, Popova), and the surrealists.
More can certainly be said about the collages. For now, we should
consider the fact that even in these small reproductions, we can read many
of the words in the newspapers and we should therefore assume that an artist
of Picasso's political and social leanings chose his clippings carefully.
This belief derives additional support from the fact that many of the works
with pasted paper did not use newspaper -- when he did, he chose it for
a reason.
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| Picasso:
Violin, 1913/14 (cardboard, pasted papers, gouache, charcoal and chalk) |
Picasso:
Violin, 1913 (oil/canvas) |
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| Picasso:
Still Life with Compotier, 1914-15 (oil on canvas) |
Reconstructing the object:
In his early constructions, the goal
appears to be a process which reverses the process of the cubist painting.
In the painting, Picasso deconstructs or decomposes the object. In
the construction, he reassembles it. We see him begin this process
of reassembling in the paintings and papiers collés; it is in the
true constructions, that he arrives at his constructed object. In
the construction of a guitar from late 1912, the sounding hole of the guitar
extends as a cylinder into space, suggesting that volume, interior space,
and exterior space all exist simultaneously. Whether guitar, still
life or absinthe glass, Picasso has made a three-dimensional representation
of a three-dimensional object, but in the end, it is not a traditional
sculptural representation. No guitar looks like Picasso's guitar,
just as no absinthe glass looks like any of the six glasses he made.
What he has made is similar to the invention of a new word. The guitar,
for example, is both a guitar and not-guitar. And then, there is the undeniable
anthropomorphic quality of some of the guitars and glasses.
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| Picasso:
Guitar (sheetmetal and wire, 1912) |
Picasso:
Guitar (painted sheet metal, 1924) |
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| Picasso:
Still Life (painted wood and fringe), 1914 |
Picasso:
Glasses of Absinthe, 1914 (two pieces from the series; all are painted
bronze and a real spoon) |
The orchestra of musical instruments,
which Picasso seems to be creating in his constructions of violins, guitars,
and clarinets, and the non-representational constructions of real, non-real
objects reach their apogee in his work for the theater -- in particular,
the sets and costumes for the Cocteau, Diaghilev, Satie, and Picasso collaboration
on Parade.