I hadn't realized before having seen it, but the current exhibit at the Met Museum, Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection, has to be the most important staged in New York City in 2014. It's rare that I'd describe a show as overwhelming, but this certainly was. This is a huge exhibit by any standard, one that contains the very best work by both Picasso and Braque as well as masterpieces by Juan Gris and Fernand Léger. The connecting thread here is that all four artists were originally represented in the early twentieth century by the art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Leonard Lauder's entire collection, consisting of 81 artworks in total, is a promised gift to the museum; this exhibit marks the first time it has been shown as a whole to the public.
The exhibit has been broken down into seven separate galleries. In the first four, one encounters the earliest Cubist works by Picasso and Braque beginning with the latter's 1908 Trees at l'Estaque. With these paintings strategically hung side by side, the presentation gives the viewer an excellent idea of the interplay that existed between the two artists as they formulated the basis of the Cubist aesthetic and inspired one another to ever greater leaps of imagination. There was a constant back and forth between them. One can sense the excitement they must have felt as each stood in the other's studio and viewed his counterpart's newest work. Recalling that period from 1909 to 1911, Picasso later stated:
"... almost every evening, either I went to Braque's studio or he came to mine. Each of us HAD to see what the other had done during the day. We criticized each other's work. A canvas wasn't finished until both of us felt it was."
Each new innovation developed by this pair is carefully documented at the exhibit. Gallery 3 is labeled as "Braque's Musical Instruments" and contains works by both Braque and Picasso that feature at least one musical instrument in each. Gallery 4, labeled "Word and Image," traces the artists' adaptation of print material, such as newspaper sheets, to create collages. It was Braque who first came up with the idea; he began pasting strips of wood-grain wallpaper onto his canvases and then painting over them. Picasso in turn soon began pasting strips of newspaper onto his own canvases. When one looks closely, one realizes that Picasso chose news articles whose titles can often be interpreted as ironic references to the content of the paintings themselves. In these galleries one can also see Picasso's Nude in an Armchair, his masterpiece from the summer he spent in Horta de Ebro in 1909, as well as two astonishing 1907 studies - Nude with Raised Arm and Drapery and Head of a Woman - that he completed in preparation for Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, finished that same year.
Gallery 5 concerns itself with the work of Juan Gris. It is only after having viewed the works of Picasso and Braque in the preceding galleries that one can appreciate what Gris accomplished in his own oeuvre. He managed, if not to reinvent Cubism, at least to take it in an entirely new direction. This can be seen most forcefully in the painting Head of a Woman (Portrait of the Artist's Mother) from 1912. Though the influence of Picasso is very much in evidence, this is nevertheless an entirely original work. Looking at it, one can well understand Gertrude Stein's famous remark that "Juan Gris was the only person whom Picasso wished away." Other paintings, such as The Fruit Bowl (1915-1916) and The Bottle (1914), display an almost mathematical precision in their composition. Also shown in this gallery are examples of Gris's playful Fantomas series in which content is hidden in the form of optical illusions.
Gallery 6 is labeled "Cubist Color" and focuses on later examples of Cubism at a time when Picasso and Braque were moving away from the near monochromaticism that had characterized their earlier output and had begun to experiment with a more colorful palette. Showcased here is Picasso's Woman in a Chemise in an Armchair (1913-1914), the magnificent painting that marked the artist's transition from analytic to synthetic cubism.
Finally, in Gallery 7, the viewer encounters the work of Fernand Léger. While Léger was a Cubist to the extent that he employed geometric shapes in his artwork, his were cylindrical rather than angular. This led to his style being dubbed "Tubism" by at least one critic. The change in emphasis gives a different feel to Léger's work, one that is much more dynamic than either Picasso's or Braque's. This can be seen clearly in the delightful 1918 The Tugboat. As the museum's website notes:
"While Braque and Picasso depicted any given object from multiple points of view, Léger animated his subjects so that they actually appear to be in motion, churning in and out of depth."
A fascinating adjunct to the Cubism exhibit is another, much smaller, that is simply entitled Madame Cézanne. This consists of 24 portraits (from a total of 29) that Paul Cézanne painted and drew of his wife Hortense over a 20+ year period. Although Cézanne died in 1906, just before Picasso and Braque began their experimentation with Cubism, he is generally considered by critics to have been a forerunner of the movement in his reduction of form to more basic geometrical patterns. Picasso once referred to Cézanne as his "only master." It is interesting to compare Juan Gris's Portrait of Mme Cézanne after Cézanne (1916) in the Cubism exhibit with the works shown here.
The Cubism exhibit continues through February 16, 2015; the Cézanne exhibit continues through March 15, 2015.
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