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Inspiration 1

The Invention of Cubism: Braque’s Partnership with Picasso

When the French painter Georges Braque [brahk] (1882–1963) first saw Les Demoiselles, in December 1907, he said that he felt burned, “as if someone were drinking gasoline and spitting fire.” He was, like Picasso, obsessed with Cézanne, so much so that he planned to paint the following summer in Cézanne country in the south of France. When he returned to Paris in September, he brought with him a series of landscapes, among them Houses at l’Estaque ( Fig. 14.10 ). Picasso was fascinated with their spatial ambiguity and cube-like shapes. Note in particular the central house, where (illogically) the two walls that join at a right angle are shaded on both sides of the corner yet are similarly illuminated. And the angle of the roofline does not meet at the corner, thus flattening the roof. Details of windows, doors, and moldings have been eliminated, as have the lines between planes, so that one plane seems to merge with the next in a manner reminiscent of Cézanne. The tree that rises on the left seems to merge at its topmost branch into the distant houses. The curve of the bush on the left echoes that of the tree, and its palmlike leaves are identical to the trees rising between the houses behind it. The structure of the foreground mirrors that of the houses. All this serves to flatten the composition even as the lack of a horizon causes the whole composition to appear to roll forward toward the viewer rather than recede in space.

Fig. 14.10 Georges Braque, Houses at l’Estaque. 1908.

Oil on canvas, 28¾” × 23¾”. Peter Lauri/Kunstmuseum Bern. Estate of George Braque Photo © Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art Resource, NY. Art © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Hermann and Margit Rupf Foundation. Braque’s trip to l’Estaque in the summer of 1908 was a form of homage to Cézanne, whose style he consciously radicalized in works such as this.

Inspiration 2

A New Color: Matisse and the Expressionists

When the painter Henri Matisse [mah-TEESS] saw Les Demoiselles, he is said to have considered it an “audacious hoax,” an “outrage [ridiculing] the modern movement.” It is little wonder, as the two painters’ aesthetic  visions were diametrically opposed. Gertrude Stein had introduced the two men in April 1906. Twelve years older than Picasso, Matisse was the favorite of Gertrude Stein’s brother Leo. He had established himself, at the Salon des Indépendants in 1904, as the leader of a radical new group of experimental painters known as the Fauves [fohvz]—or “Wild Beasts.”  Fauvism  [FOHV-izm] was known for its radical application of arbitrary, or unnatural, color, anticipated in a few of van Gogh’s paintings and in the pool of color in the foreground of Gauguin’s Mahana no atua (see  Fig. 14.7 ). Picasso and Matisse saw each other regularly at the Steins’ apartment, but their relationship was competitive. In fact, it is useful to think of Matisse’s monumental Dance ( Fig. 14.15 ) as something of a rebuttal to the upstart Picasso’s Demoiselles. For one thing, Matisse’s first circle dance consists of six figures that were in the distant yellow field of Joy of Life, but when Matisse repeats the motif in Dance, the number is five, like Picasso’s five prostitutes. Matisse also replaces Picasso’s squared and angular composition with a circular and rounded one. Where Picasso’s painting seems static, as if asking us to hold our breath at the scene before us, Matisse’s is active, moving as if to an unheard music. Most astonishing is Matisse’s color—vermilion (red-orange), green, and blue-violet, the primary colors of light. In effect, Matisse’s modernism takes place in the light of day, Picasso’s in the dark of night; Matisse’s with joy, Picasso’s with fear and trepidation.

Fig. 14.15 Henri Matisse. Dance.

Oil on canvas. 260 × 391 cm. Inv.no. GE-9673. The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Photograph © The State Hermitage Museum. Photo by Vladimir Terebenin, Leonard Kheifets, Yuri Molodkovets. Art © 2011 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. This work and another similarly colored painting of musicians called Music were commissioned by the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin to decorate the staircase of his home in Moscow.