Cubist Sculpture

 

'Picasso infused the head with artistic muscle, exaggerating and at times inverting normally concave and convex areas, disrupting continuity, and making the normally passive areas of brow and cheeks as expressive as the eyes. He gave to all areas of the head a new formal interdependency without total loss of the psychological mutuality of the features. His drastically inflected, coruscated surface invited decomposition of light and drastic shifts of mood as illumination changed, going beyond Rodin's recreations of Balzac's head.'

 

Though Picasso and Braque pioneered Cubism there were many other sculptors within this movement who pushed the boundaries and experimented with Cubist sculpture greatly during this period. This exhibition will focus on four artists: Alexander Archipenko, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Jaques Lipchitz and Henri Laurens. These four sculptors all met in Paris between 1908-1914, Archipenko, Lipchitz and Laurens all lived at La Ruche artist residence in Montparnasse. Though Duchamp-Villon did not live at La Ruche he was still acquainted with the three, especially Archipenko who became a member of 'Section d'Or' a group of like-minded artists who met regularly at the home of the three Duchamp brothers.

 

The earliest piece presented in this exhibition is 'Seated Woman', conceived in 1912 in plaster and terracotta by Alexander Archipenko, this sculpture depicts a nude woman with her elbow resting on her knee, her thighs and waist are exaggerated. Influences of the stone idols or 'Babas' Archipenko viewed in Kyiv as a child can be seen in this sculpture such as the woman's simplified face. He was particularly inspired by Byzantine, Gothic and Archaic art.

 

Archipenko's reliefs blurred the line between painting and sculpture, he coined the term sculpto-painting to describe these works which he created using a mixture of material collaged onto a flat surface that he then painted. Though 'Form on Blue Background' is not a sculpto-painting, the defined, geometric shapes combined with the dramatic shadowing gives the illusion of a three-dimensional surface, alluding to this innovative technique.

 

'Portrait of Professor Gosset' was Duchamp-Villon's final sculpture, created in 1917 just before his death in 1918. He contracted typhoid during World War One and was subsequently sent to convalesce at a military hospital in Cannes, here he was cared for by his doctor Professor Gosset who would become the focus of his last creation. While the lower part of the face is obscured by a doctor's mask, the deep eye sockets and oversimplification of the nose and head give a skeletal look to the figure, foreshadowing Duchamp-Villon's own death. In the exhibition catalogue for Jaques Villon and Marcel Duchamp's 1957 exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, James Johnson Sweeney, (the Guggenheim's Director at the time) reflects on Duchamp-Villon's final portrait, '... done just before his death hinted at the direction in which the power, drama and sense of form which he embodied in his 1911 'Baudelaire' might have been carried to new heights.' Examples of Duchamp-Villon's work are held in some of the most significant collections in the world such as Tate, The Art Institute of Chicago, Philadelphia Museum of Art and MoMA.

 

Jaques Lipchitz and Henri Laurens both survived World War One and were able to return to their sculptural practices. In 1919 Lipchitz sculpted 'Pierrot with Clarinet', as he was fascinated by performers during 1919-1920. Cathy Pütz, Curator and Historian who wrote Jacques Lipchitz: the first cubist sculptor explains this focus: 'like many in his circle, both during and after the Great War, Lipchitz féted the liberating effects of imaginative play by embracing the world of Italian street theatre, the Commedia dell'Arte, producing a host of its traditionally masked characters - Pierrots, Harlequins and a panoply of musicians'. This playful sculpture fuses the performer and his instrument together and uses blocky, graphic shapes to create dramatic light and shade within the piece.

 

As he enters the 1920s Lipchitz's style becomes more abstracted, however the human figure remains the focus for much of his sculpture and Cubism is still extremely prevalent within his work. H. H. Arnasan writes that 'Cubism for Lipchitz had been the liberating factor, and between 1915 and 1925 he created many of the most important Cubist sculptures in existence.' The three Lipchitz sculptures in this exhibition 'Seated Woman in an Armchair' (1921), 'Seated Bather' (1923), and 'Meditation' (1925) all share similar characteristics, a mix of expressive, curving lines juxtaposed with sharp linear angles.

 

'Seated Bather' was conceived two years after 'Seated Woman in an Armchair' and was actually created in direct response to 'Seated Woman in an Armchair'. Although a clear connection can be made between the two, there are some distinct differences such as how the chair relates to the figure in both. In 'Seated Woman in an Armchair' the figure is being enveloped by the chair whereas the figure emerges from the chair in 'Seated Bather'. This small difference changes how the viewer interprets the figure; in the earlier sculpture the figure seems passive and perhaps guarded by the chair; however the Bather conveys a sense of energy, rising above the chair. Lipchitz relates the Bather to 'Madonna and Child' and says that it has a 'kind of tenderness', however, while Madonna is often depicted as a tender, compassionate figure there is undeniably a sense of power conveyed through her. Lipchitz describes 'Seated Woman in an Armchair' as 'the woman-chair'; the chair has been given human qualities such as eyes which sit at the top of the sculpture, imparting the piece with an element of surrealism.

 

'Meditation' is the first of two sculptures created in 1952 which 'mark the first germs of a series of ideas which were to be realised in a number of different major works of the late 1920s and 1930s. Inspired by Auguste Rodin's iconic 1904 sculpture 'The Thinker', this gestural piece mimics the classic pose while disporting and elongating the figure. The 'Meditation' was quickly translated without significant change into larger versions of marble and bronze, and in its general forms served as the basis for such sculptures as the 'Reclining Nude with Guitar' (1928). In its blocky yet curving masses, it again anticipated aspects of many major works of the 1930s'.. A version of this sculpture was acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2006, other prominent museums such as Tate, MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art and Harvard Art Museums hold examples of Jacques Lipchitz' work in their collections.

 

By the mid 1920s-1930s the Cubist movement had reached its conclusion, however the impact of this important period of art history was prolonged. Lauren's lifelong friendship with Cubism founder George Braque undoubtedly continued to influence his work. Laurens' 'Early Pregnancy' sees a definite shift from the angular, abstracted work he was producing between 1910-1920 such as 'Man with Clarinet', where he overlaid different views of the man and clarinet onto an angular stone surface. This shift does not mean Laurens is disregarding Cubism however as Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler notes that, 'the appearance of round shapes in Laurens was by no means a rejection of cubism, but rather a normal development in a new world,'. This development was extensive after World War One with artists returning to Classicism and new exploration into the landscape of Surrealism.