2016 has seen two major retrospectives of artists who, though acknowledged as among the most important twentieth century cultural figures both for their own achievements and their influence on subsequent generations, are rarely given exhibits here in New York City. I posted in August my thoughts on the Moholy-Nagy exhiibit at the Guggenheim, and now it is Francis Picabia's turn to take a bow at MOMA in a show entitled Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction.
To the museum's credit, it has attempted to put on as comprehensive an overview of the work of this complex, enigmatic artist as possible. This is even more necessary in Picabia's case than in that of other twentieth century artists. Anything less would have afforded attendees only a partial glimpse of this often misunderstood genius who moved, seemingly effortlessly, from one style to the next over the course of his career. Indeed, one reason Picabia is not better known, even today, is that it is difficult to place him with certainty in any one school or movement. Even though he was gregarious and well liked by almost everyone with whom he came in contact, he resolutely remained a loner who insisted on going his own way. He was associated with, though never a member of, such diverse groups as the Surrealists, the Cubists, the Arensberg circle, and even Stieglitz's 291 coterie. In the end, the artist possessed too great a sense of irony to permit affiliation with any one style or group.
The MOMA show moves in a fairly strict chronological order, beginning with Picabia's first incarnation as an "Impressionist" painter circa 1907. At first glance, these paintings look like outstanding examples of that style, and they in fact received favorable reviews when they were first shown. But there is something slightly off about them. When one looks more closely, one can see that while they are not parodies in the strictest sense they are also not completely sincere efforts. It is as if Picabia, one eyebrow cocked, were viewing this style, whose heyday had already passed, from a more modern point of view. The closest parallel I can think of is Prokofiev's Symphony No. 1 wherein the composer reimagined Haydn's Classical style as it appeared to a twentieth century sensibility. Picabia is not making fun of the achievements of the Impressionist masters so much as, tongue in cheek, he is reinterpreting their paintings as his own generation saw them.
The next set of works moved to the opposite end of the spectrum and represented Picabia's "take" on modernism. Created in 1912, during which period Picabia visited New York, these paintings are perhaps the most successful in the show. The best is the 1912 abstraction La Source, from MOMA's own collection, a huge canvas almost eight feet square first exhibited at the Salon d'Automne, that challenges all viewer's most cherished assumptions concerning modern art. But Picabia was not ready to entirely abandon figurative art. In Dances at the Spring, completed the same year and one of his three entries at the 1913 Armory Show, the figures of the male and female dancers, her leg kicking high, are easily discernible. After returning to France from New York, where he had had besides his representation at the Armory Show a one-man exhibit at Stieglitz's 291, Picabia painted in 1914 Je revois en souvenir ma chère Udnie, inspired by the dancing of Stacia Napierkowska that he had witnessed on shipboard during his first transatlantic crossing.
The MOMA exhibit is too large to describe in detail, but there are two categories of work that deserve special mention. The first of these is a series of "pinup" paintings based on soft-core magazine photos that Picabia completed during World War II while residing in Vichy France. Although the photographic sources are still clearly visible, the paintings themselves rise almost to the level of myth. The second category consists of the "Transparencies" in which one painting seems superimposed upon another. It is almost as if Picabia had here anticipated the "layers" feature of Photoshop in which the opacity can be controlled to reveal an underlying image. Probably the most successful of this type was the 1930 Aello.
The exhibit continues through March 19, 2017.
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