INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. ‘The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. Ih the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g, maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600IGOR STRAVINSKY AND AGON, by Carl Kristian Wiens A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Music Theory) ‘The University of Michigan 1997 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Andrew Mead, chair Assistant Professor Matthew Biro Associate Professor Kevin Korsyn Professor Glenn WatkinsUMI Number: 9722122 Copyright 1997 by Wiens, Carl Kristian Al rights reserved. UMI Microform 9722122 Copyright 1997, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road ‘Ann Arbor, MI 48103“Music expresses nothing. It expresses itself." - Igor Stravinsky T have very little gift for teaching, and no disposition for it: I am inclined to think that the only pupils worth having would become composers with or without my help (though I am not sure that I would say the same thing about Berg and Webern in relation to Schoenberg). My instinct is to recompose, and not only students’ works, but old masters’ as well. When composers show me their music for criticism all I can say is that I would have written it quite differently. Whatever interests, whatever I love, I wish to make my own (I am probably describing a rare form ofkleptomania). - Igor Stravinsky, Memories and Commentaries (1960), p. 110.For Nathalie© copyright Carl Kristian Wiens (1997) All rights reserved iiACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It goes without saying that a project the size of a doctoral dissertation requires the support and understanding of a number of people. I would like to thank the University of Michigan, the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, and the School of Music for their generous financial support during my doctoral studies through a number of fellowships. Without these awards, I would not have been able to enroll at this prestigious schcol. Thanks also go out to the Presser Foundation for their grant that allowed me to study at the Paul Sacher Foundation of Basel, Switzerland and to the members of the Sacher Foundation, particularly, Dr. Ulrich Mosch, for his invaluable assistance. I would also like to acknowledge the members of my dissertation committee. All of them have a source of inspiration and support. The chair of my dissertation committee, Professor Andrew Mead, has been an indispensable mentor and fri discassions about music, books, art, and anything and everything else has been one of the highlights of my time in Ann Arbor. His voice can be heard throughout the dissertation. Professor Kevin Korsyn has been an invaluable source of critical thinking. Through a number of seminars, especially "Intertextuality and Music," and numerous conversations with Professor Korsyn, I was able to shape my understanding of Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of dialogue, an understanding that plays a pivotal role in Act III of Chapter Three. Professor Glenn Watkins has been a constant source of encouragement and a vital source on Stravinsky. Through his seminar and subsequent discussions, I attained a greater appreciation for Stravinsky's music as well as for the period in which he lived. I would also like to thank Professor Matthew Biro who guided me when I was lost in the art history forest, continually assuring me that I was on the right path, and Professor Kendall Walton for his reading the dissertation in its preliminary stages and for providing me with his critical insight. Lastly, I would like to thank my friend and wife Nathalie~without you, I would have quit a long time ago-my parents, Henry and Ruth, my brother, Eric, and my sister, Barbra, and my friends, Brian, Greg, Frangois, Rich, Michelle and Arlene, for keeping me sane. d. Our numerous‘The music example drawn from Igor Stravinsky's Symphony in C is used with the permission of European American Music Distributors Corporation, sole U.S. and Canadian ageat for Schott & Co. Ltd., London; © Copyright 1948, © Renewed, All Rights Reserved. Music examples drawn from Igor Stravinsky's Canticum sacrum (© Copyright 1956, Renewed), Symphonies of Wind Instruments, (© Copyright 1926, 1948, 1952, Renewed) and Agon (© Copyright 1957, Renewed) are used with the permission of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc. Music examples drawn from Igor Stravinsicy’s Petrushka (#25680-4) and The Rite of Spring (#25857-2) are from the Dover Publications’ scores; the works are in the public domain, Music examples drawn from Anton Webern's Variationen, Op. 30, are used with the permission of European American Music Distributors Corporation, sole U.S. and Canadian agent for Universal Edition A.G., Wien; © Copyright 1956, © Renewed, All Rights Reserved. The music example drawn from Arnold Schoenberg's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 36, is used with permission of G. Schirmer, Inc. (ASCAP); © Copyright 1939 (Renewed), International Copyright Secured, All Rights Reserved.ABSTRACT Igor Stravinsky's last ballet, Agon (1953-57) is an enigmatic entanglement of tonal, serial, and twelve-tone compositional procedures in conjunction with French court dances, classical ballet, and musical textures reminiscent of Anton Webern. In sorting out this puzzle, I have undertaken an interdisciplinary approach, one involving art history, traditional music analytical techniques, and linguistic theory. In the first chapter, "Artistic Interminglings: Picasso, Cubism, and Stravinsky's Compositional Approach,” I draw the parallel between Pablo Picasso's artistic approach during his Cubist period and Stravinsky's compositional approach, delineating three common elements between the two artis:s: context/modelling, cut-and-paste, and substitution. In the second chapter, "A Day in the Memory: The Fifth, the Torchbearer, and the Magician," I take a whimsical look at Stravinsky, the twelve-tone composer. With the third chapter, I offer two different looks at Agon. The first encompasses a more traditional music analytical investigation of the ballet, demonstrating how the various parts work together, creating this cohesive work. The second entails my borrowing of Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of dialogue as the fundamental element of communication between human beings. By considering musical compositions as medium of communication, I am able to explore Agon as a social act, thus, examining the relationship between Stravinsky, Agon, and other composers’ works and the effect that they had on Stravinsky's compositional choices.TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, ABSTRACT LIST OF EXAMPLES LIST OF FIGURES CHAPTER ONE. ARTISTIC INTERMINGLINGS: PICASSO, CUBISM, AND STRAVINSEY’S COMPOSITIONAL APPROACH. A DAY IN THE MEMORY: ‘THE FIFTH, THE TORCHBEARER, AND THE MAGICIAN THREE. ‘THE POST-GAME SHOW: AN ANALYSIS OF AGON. (A Drama in Three Acts) Prologue Act I, "Agon, In General Terms" Act II. "An Analysis of Agon" "Stravinsky's Tonal Souvenirs" “An Analysis of Agon’s First Section" “Agon’s Third Section" “The Ritornello Theme" "The First Pas-de-Trois" "The Second Pas-de-Trois" "The Pas-de-Deux" ii 62 70 2 73 90 90 102 140 150 154 174 193Act IIT. "Agon as a Social Act” Scene i, "The Pas-de-Deux: More Than Meets the Eye” Scene ji, "Dialogue, Bakhtin, and the Musical Work" Scene iii, "The Application to Music" Scene iv. "Agon via the Bakhtin Model" Scene v. “The Pas-de-Deux By Way of Bakhtin" Epilogue BIBLIOGRAPY 210 210 218 229 233 237 254 256LIST OF EXAMPLES Exampl Ll 12 13 14 15 16 31 32 33 34 3.5 3.6 a7 38 39 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 SYMPHONY IN C, THE ARRIVAL OF F (MEASURES 89 TO 103) "SURGE, AQUILO" (MEASURES 46 TO 79) SYMPHONIES OF WINDS INSTRUMENTS (MEASURES 1 TO 14) CANTICUM SACRUM, "EUNTES IN MUNDUM" (MEASURES 13 TO 19) PETRUSHKA (ORIGINAL 1912 VERSION), EXCERPT FROM THE FIRST TABLEAU LE SACRE DU PRINTEMPS, "DANSES DES ADOLESCENTES" DOUBLE PAS-DE-QUATRE (MEASURES 93 TO 95) THE "LANDINI" CADENCE, PAS-DE-QUATRE (MEASURES 1 TO 8) PAS-DE-QUATRE (MEASURES 9 TO 23) PAS-DE-QUATRE (MEASURES 28 TO 38) PAS-DE-QUATRE (MEASURES 43 TO 60) PAS-DE-QUATRE (MEASURES 9 TO 13 AND MEASURES 20 TO 27) PAS-DE-QUATRE (MEASURES 24 TO 31) PAS-DE-QUATRE (MEASURES 89 TO 47) DOUBLE PAS-DE-QUATRE (MEASURES 61 TO 76) DOUBLE PAS-DE-QUATRE (MEASURES 81 TO 86) ‘TRIPLE PAS-DE-QUATRE (MEASURES 96 TO 97) TRIPLE PAS-DE-QUATRE (MEASURES 98 TO 103) TRIPLE PAS-DE-QUATRE (MEASURES 118 TO 121) PAS-DE-DEUX, "QUASI STRETTO" (MEASURES 512 TO 519) 35 40 45 51 56 92 96 11 113 ut 120 124 130 134 136 140 142LIST OF EXAMPLES (continued) Example 3.15 FOUR DUOS 3.16 FOUR TRIOS (MEASURES 539 TO 563) 3.17 CODA (MEASURES 560 TO 567) 3.18 PRELUDE (MEASURES 122 TO 130) 2.19 THE SARABAND-STEP 3.20 GAILLIARDE (MEASURES 164 TO 169) 3.21 GAILLIARDE (MEASURES 170 TO 178) 3.22 CODA (MEASURES 185 TO 207) 3.23 CODA, SOLO VIOLINS DOUBLE-STOPPED SIXTHS 3.24 BRANSLE SIMPLE (MEASURES 278 TO 297) 3.25 BRANSLE SIMPLE (MEASURES 298 TO 309) 3.26 BRANSLE GAY 3.27 BRANSLE DOUBLE (MEASURES 336 TO 355) 3.28 BRANSLE DOUBLE (MEASURES 356 TO 386) 3.29 PAS-DE-DEUX (MEASURES 411 TO 451) 3.30 PAS-DE-DEUX (MEASURES 452 TO 462) 3.31 PAS-DE-DEUX (MEASURES 463 TO 494) 3.32 PAS-DE-DEUX (MEASURES 495 TO 511) 3.33 STRAVINSKY, PAS-DE-DEUX FEMALE DANCER'S VARIATION (MEASURES 468 TO 483); WEBERN, VARIATIONEN (MEASURES 12 TO 28) 3.34 ASAMPLE UTTERANCE 3.85 PAS-DE-DEUX (MEASURES 411 TO 423) 3.36 PAS-DE-DEUX (MEASURES 495 TO 501) 143 145 149 151 1s? 162 165 170 2 7 180 183 187 190 196 201 203 207 212 226 246 247LIST OF EXAMPLES (continued) Example 3.37 PAS-DE-DEUX (MEASURES 457 TO 462) OPENING OF SCHOENBERG'S CONCERTO FOR VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA, OP. 36 (MEASURES 1 TO 13); WEBERN’S VARIATIONEN (MEASURES 18 TO 23) 249 3.38 252Li 12 13 14 31 32 3.3 34 35 36 37 38 39 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15 LIST OF FIGURES FORMAL DIVISIONS OF SYMPHONY IN C, FIRST MOVEMENT THE ROW CHART FOR "SURGE, AQUILO" VARIATIONS: IN MEMORIAM ALDOUS HUXLEY, THE PRIME FORM ROTATIONAL ARRAY THE ROTATIONAL ARRAY VIA THE P-TABLE THE GROUPING OF AGON’S MOVEMENTS INTO FOUR SECTIONS TRIPARTITE GROUPING OF AGON’S MOVEMENTS THE DANCERS AND THEIR DANCES AGON AS A RITORNELLO AGON’S "KEYS" THE THREE EIGHT-NOTE DIATONIC ORDERINGS AGON'S FIFTHS THE FORM OF THE PAS-DE-QUATRE SUMMARY OF THE PAS-DE-QUATRE THE SECTIONS OF THE DOUBLE PAS-DE-QUATRE DOUBLE PAS-DE-QUATRE, THE WINDS’ MINOR TRIADS: DOUBLE PAS-DE-QUATRE (MEASURES 92 TO 94), THE STRINGS’ LAYERS THE FOUR DUOS’ ROW CHART THE SARABAND-STEP'S FORM THE GAILLIARDE'S FORM 34 42 6 acy 80 87 90 101 102 103 122 123 128 132 14h 156 160LIST OF FIGURES (continued) Figures 3.16 3.17 3.18 3.19 3.20 321 3.22 3.23 3.24 3.25 3.26 THE CODA’S ROW CHART THE CODA’S FORMAL DESIGN THE FORMAL DESIGN OF THE BRANSLES THE FORMAL DESIGN OF THE PAS-DE-DEUX VARTIATIONEN’S ROW CHART TETRACHORDAL REDUNDANCIES FORMAL DESIGN OF VARIATIONEN THE FIRST VARIATION’S ROW STREAMS THE SECOND VARIATION’S ROW STREAMS THE FORMAL DESIGN OF THE PAS-DE-DEUX THE PAS-DE-DEUX'S FORM, RECAST 168 168 175 194 239 240 241 242 242 243, 244CHAPTER ONE ARTISTIC INTERMINGLINGS: PICASSO, CUBISM, AND STRAVINSKY'S COMPOSITIONAL APPROACH.“We all know that Art is not truth. Art isa lie that makes us realize truth.. ‘Through art we express our conception of what nature is not.” - Pablo PicassoInvestigations of Igor Stravinsky's compositional career have often partitioned his works into one of three style periods: the Russian, the neoclassic, and serial/twelve-tone. In doing so, we tend to think of these style periods as impenetrable monoliths, sealed off from one another without any shared characteristics transcending the specified eras. A conscientious study of Stravinsky's works, one that compares compositions from different style periods, suggests a degree of audible similitude between the style periods. These similarities would suggest an underlying compositional approach, one that transcends artificial boundaries assigned by critics. An underlying compositional approach, one that spans an entire career, must be located early in a given artist's life. In Stravinsky's case, his student years in Russia as well as his residence in Paris during the 1910's figure prominently in the formation of his compositional approach. Like many of the artists working and living in Paris during this period, Stravinsky incorporated elements of his native country’s culture into his art, affording him a distinct voice. This component of Stravinsky's career and music has been thoroughly discussed by Richard Taruskin.’ Also distinctive to Stravinsky's compositional approach are a number of affinities that Stravinsky shared with the larger artistic community living in Paris during the 1910's, in particular, the Cubist works of Pablo Picasso.’ In this chapter, I will compare ‘Stravinsky's approach to composition with Picasso's approach to painting during his Cubist period. I will begin by giving a brief history of Cubism, tracing its origins to the French modernist movement of the nineteenth century through primitivism to its emergence as one of the quintessential art movements of the early part of the twentieth century. From there, I will discuss three similarities between Picasso's and Stravinsky's approaches: ‘See, Richard Taruskin, "Russian Folk Melodies in The Rite of Spring." Journal of the American Musicological Society 33/3 (1980): 501-43; "How the Acorn Took Root: A Tale of Russia." Nineteenth Century Music 6/3 (1983): 189-212; "Chernomor to Kashchei: Harmonic Sorcery; or, Stravinsky's ‘Angle’." Journal of the American Musicological Society 38 (1985 /2-142; “From Subject to Style: Stravinsky and the Painters.” In Confronting Stravinsky: Man, Musician, and Modernist. Edited by Jann Pasler. (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1986): 16-38. *This line of argument is not without precedent; for example, see Tom Gordon, "The Cubist Metaphor: Picasso in Stravinsky Criticism.” Current Musicology 40 (1985): 22-33; and, Glenn Watkins, "Stravinsky and the Cubists," In Pyramids at the Louvre. (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 229-74. 3context/modelling, cut-and-paste, and substitution. These three affinities, along with his Russian heritage, form the basis of Stravinsky's compositional approach and are constants throughout his three style periods. I While the actual Cubist period encompassed no more than a dozen years, approximately 1908-20, its effects were wide ranging much like the ever widening rings on a pond that follow the initial splash of an errant stone. ‘The evolution of painting, and of cubism in particular, shared with science the common characteristic of drawing upon late nineteenth-century achievements, but, in so doing, of intensifying and transforming them. The result was the overthrow of much of the heritage of the nineteenth and earlier centuries. In certain respects cubism brought to an end artistic traditions that had begun as early as the fifteenth century. At the same time, the cubists created a new artistic tradition that is still alive, for they originated attitudes and ideas that spread rapidly to other areas of culture and that to an important degree underlie artistic thought even today. Cubism first posed works of the highest artistic quality, many of the fundamental question that were to preoccupy artists during the first half of the Twentieth century; the historical and aesthetic importance of cubism, therefore, renders worthy of the most serious attention.’ In this quotation, Edward Fry contends that Cubism by drawing upon the conventions of the late nineteenth century was able to strike in a new direction, discarding many of the long held traditions. In this regard, Cubism can be seen as a product of its time, a specific instance in history where conditions allowed for its innovations to unfold, becoming a reflection of the events in which it arose. This point is key to an understanding of any artistic movement, as well as any social occurrence for that matter, for Cubism in Picasso's hands was a political statement as well as artistic one.‘ Using Picasso's Les Demoiselles d’Avienon of 1907 as a significant antecedent, a harbinger of something new, this ‘movement arose in a period of tumultuous change in Europe. In seven years, the whole of Europe would be plunged into war, a war that ultimately marked the end of the nineteenth century. ‘The early twentieth century was also a time of great technological innovation; in “Edward F. Fry, Cubism. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1966), pp. 9-10. “Patricia Leighten, Re-Ordering the Universe. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 4-6. Picasso's choice of subject matter often commented on the shortcomings of European society. He did this by painting beggars, prostitutes, the sick, the mentally disturbed, and other downtrodden members of society, selecting them instead of the traditional, approved subjects, such as Greek and Roman gods and pastoral landscapes. In doing s0, Picasso drew attention to the inequalities of life, compelling his patrons, who, generally, were not oppressed members of society, and others to confront these issues. “4this period, the light bulb, electric street lights, the telephone, phonographs, motion pictares, wireless telegraphs, vast railroad networks, the automobile, the airplane, stardard time and a number of technological wonders were created and introduced to the public. What were once great distances now could easily be traversed by technology in the mere seconds that it took to place a phone call or send a telegraph. Stephen Kern, in his book, The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918, argues that one of the results of these technologies was a reshaping of the way in which we thought of time and space and the effect that it had on our everyday lives and on the creative output of the artists of this period Consequently, artists devised new ways of trying to come to terms with and reflected the changing reality of their everyday life. Cubism has its roots in the modernist movement of the middle nineteenth century. 1848 has often been designated as the locus of the modernist movement, a year in which Marx and Engels published the Communist Manifesto and revolutions broke out in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Venice, Milan, Parma, and Rome. These revolutions centred on a growing belief in individual determination, democracy and an emerging social awareness.° These uprisings challenged the dominance of class structure and its binding social hierarchy, holding people in predetermined stations. As a result, artists began to look at art as more than objects for their patrons’ pleasure, seeing it as a vehicle of social activism. Viewed as a component of the established social order, they contested the accepted rules and routines of Academic painting with its sanctioned means of depicting subjects, use of colour, and roster of subjects. Artists, painters, in particular, began to work outside of the established academies searching out new subject matter and techniques of depicting the world, shedding the expected and sanctioned epic subject matter of the academies. ‘Two other important antecedents to Cubism are the late nineteenth century's interest in Primitivism and the works of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906). In the nineteenth century, the term Primitivism was used to contrast contemporary European society with cultures and societies outside of the contemporary urban centres.’ The term is explicit in SStephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 1-2. Bruce Cole and Adelheid Gealt, Art of the Western World. (New York and London: Summit Books, 1989), p. 235. *] am indebted to a number of sources, in particular, Gillian Perry's "Primitivism and the ‘Modern (In Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993): 2-85) and Kirk Varnedoe’s "Gauguin" (In Primi Century Art. Volume 1. Edited by William Rubin. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1984): 178-209).its Euro-centricity, a Western-centred view of alien cultures. It was used both pejoratively, ‘as a means of designating peoples and societies deemed to be less civilized than the dominant European cultures, or favourably, denoting a simpler way of life, having the essence of decency and goodness, in contrast to the decadence of Western society. Primitivism not only applied to the description of the cultures outside of Europe~Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Oceania—but also pertained to paintings of the Medieval and early Renaissance masters and to contemporary rural European cultures outside of the major urban European centres, In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the interest in the Primitive had many different facets. In part, it involved a resurgence of the eighteenth century's notion of the Noble Savage. To a critic in this century, the Noble Savage was seen as an unspoiled and innocent being whose purer thoughts were placed against the artifice of the Western civilization! This topic was greatly enriched in this period as philosophers and thinkers, such Herder and Rousseau, developed models regarding the utopian origins of humankind. Developed as the antithesis of the European civilized man, the Noble Savage was linked to a number of other polarities including Christian/heathen, artificial/natural, raticnaVirrational, man/woman, and high/low. The turn to the Primitive was also bound to the larger social issues of the day. Painters outside of the Academies used their works to promote their political beliefs, as a commentary on contemporary society, as Gustave Courbet did with his Stonebreakers (1849) and Edouard Manet with Olympia (1863). A self-confessed realist, Gustave Courbet (1819-77) set out to portray life as it appeared. Courbet's Realism was a reaction to the Academic paintings which smoothed over the divisions of class society, depicting traditional themes such as mythological subjects, Courbet felt that these paintings, created in the cloistered surrounding of the art academy, did not reflect the reality around them and putting forth false representations of reality. Affected by the events of 1848, Courbet concentrated on realist subjects, consciously setting out to provoke controversy with his works, using his paintings as a means of articulating his socialist ideals and as critiques of the contemporary social order.” A good example is his Stonebreakers, the scandal of the 1850 Salon season. In this painting, Courbet depicted the downtrodden in the lowly stonebreaker with his *Yarnedoe, p. 180. *Francis Franscina, "Realism and Ideology: An Introduction to Semiotics and Cubism.” In Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993): 104. "Cole and Gealt, p. 238.tattered clothes waited upon by his equally desolate young assistant, embroiled in the brutally repetitive task of breaking rocks for the roads. In 1865, Edouard Manet (1832-83) exhibited a painting entitled Olympia. This work created a fervour perpetuated by the critics and salon goers alike. Olympia was hailed by Manet’s supporters and other more progressive artists as the cutting edge of modernity, while the more conservative crities and artists alike considered it an outrage, an overly sexually explicit and socially provocative work, a painting that was the antithesis of the accepted norms and traditional depictions of the nude." Manet breaks a number of well established conventions of depicting the female nude, giving Olympia an ironic twist. With Olympia, Manet parodies the tradition of the female nude. In place of the lounging aristocratic lady waiting for her servants to arrive with her clothes, Manet presents the audience with a naked prostitute. Olympia had explicit connotations in Paris during this period for it was a pseudonym used by Parisian prostitutes along with other ones such as Floras, Delphines, and (ironically) Virginias.’* The central issue that the viewer is confronted with in this painting is sex, and sex for a price. It is as if we have walked in on the lounging Olympia, who makes no attempt to hide her body, knowing full well who she is. Her power, her identity, is her body; this feature of Olympia was by far the most troubling to those who saw the work. Also, in this painting, Manet raises the question of social class. Prostitutes, in contrast to the more genteel and epic female nudes, occupy the lower classes of society, conjuring up images of poverty, hunger and disease (in Olympia’s case, sexually transmitted diseases). Consequently, Olympia shows the victimization of the lower classes by the upper classes~prostitutes’ male customers were often from the upper classes of society, willing participants in the sexual game, one which involved the exchange of money for services that they could afford due to their wealth and social standing—but also her defiance by her unrelenting regard of the viewer.* In search of alternative sources to the traditional subjects, artists, such as Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) and Vincent van Gogh (1853-90), moved into small communities, ‘PJ. Clark, "Olympia’s Choice." In The Painting of Modern Life. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985): 79-146. A superb study of this painting, in this chapter, Clark shows how the various social and political conditions aided in shaping the reaction to Manet’s painting. “Tbid., p. 86. "Clark also identifies other issues of painting in the second chapter of The Painting of Modern Life, such as the ways in which Manet left things incomplete further violating the traditional rendering of the subject, including his depiction of hair and the absence of the phallus.chronicling the peasants’ lives and their world in their paintings. Artistic colonies were set up in these communities, such as the one set up in the village of Pont-Aven in Brittany." ‘The Primitive allowed these artists a way of being new, outside of the tradition, a means of injecting new ideas and techniques into the painterly discourse. It was also a way of prodding, upsetting the conservative society that wanted paintings to look like the Academic canvases. Paul Gauguin is the exemplary model of the primitif in the late nineteenth century. ‘Moving first to Brittany and Pont-Aven in the 1880's, he later relocated to Tahiti in 1891 returning to France in 1893-95 before departing once again for the South Pacific where he died in 1903. Gauguin’s interest in the Primitive grew out of his dissatisfaction with the Impressionist view of the world. For Gauguin, art should be a response to the world around the artist rather than a representation, a construction rather than a imitation, a conceptual approach rather than perceptual one, an affinity he shared with Picasso.'® ‘The mind was not a passive receptacle of received impressions, but an active organizer. ‘The Primitive, for Gauguin, was the origin of culture, the first organization of chaos by humans that resulted in communication between members of the species through language and art rather than mere imitation of the depicted subject. The Primitive was an embcdiment of a basic truth in touch with the origins of the urban dweller. ‘The manifesto of Gauguin’s Primitivism was La vision aprés le sermon (La lutte de Jacob avec l'ange) of 1889. It combines elements of the physical world along with the elements of the supernatural. In this work and others, Gauguin defines Primitivism in terms of simplicity. On this flattened field, the pious Breton women, under the spell of the sermon, are confronted by Jacob wrestling with an angel. The work’s predominant red background joins the women to the hallucination, but they are separated from the painting’s action by the tree trunk that cuts a diagonal swath across the canvas. The lack of depth in Li approach to painting. By painting in this manner, Gauguin mirrors the direct faith of the depicted subjects in La vision. The total devotion to the Christian God in Brittany and other rural French provinces was viewed by the urbanites as one of the prime elements of the Primitive, a part of their Primitive charm, surviving the invasion of the "civilized" culture. Following his departure for Tahiti, Gauguin incorporated Tahitian elements into his paintings. Manao tupapau (Spirit of the Dead Watching) (1892) showed a greater ion conjures up images of an art naif, a more simplistic, untutored “Perry, p. 8. ‘Svarnedoe, p. 183.integration of the supernatural with the physical world. A classic pose and a variation on Manet’s Olympia, a painting that Gauguin admired, the female nude occupies the foreground of the canvas with the spirit lurking in the background, dressed in black. Unlike La vision, Gauguin does not separate the prostrate woman from the supernatural elements of the work. In comparison to La vision, the colours of Manao tupapau are more subdued, more in harmony in with each other. Gauguin used a soft yellow as the bed cover, contrasting the woman's brown skin. The woman's skin blends with the mauve of the walls, the pinkish-purple of the pillow, and the darker portions of the lower part of the canvas. There is also a greater attention paid to the details of the painting, with a number of decorations on the pillar, the wall and the bottom part of the bed. A contemporary of Degas, Manet, Monet, and Renoir, Paul Cézanne developed a deeply personal style, sharing a number of affinities with the Impressionist painters, exhibiting with these painters in their first show in 1874. As Cézanne matured as an artist, he moved away from the perceptual Impressionist approach to painting, concentrating on the elements and their composition as well as the construction of a work on the canvas. An important antecedent for Picasso and his Cubist partner Georges Braque (1882-1963), in his paintings, Cézanne took on a more structured approach, one which emphasized a more conceptual approach to painting, placing greater weight on the fundamental shape of the subjects, as well as positing different ways of using perspective and colour." For example, in Woman with Coffee Pot (1890-92), Cézanne reduces the various everyday elements of the painting to their fundamental shapes that he carefully orchestrates, showing the interrelationship between the elemental forms. The woman, the central figure of the painting, is reduced to an assemblage of basic shapes: her arms and the trunk of her body are cylinders, her head is a circle, and the lower part of her dress is atriangle. The basic cylinder shape of the woman is in concert with cylindrical shape of the coffee pot and the cup and saucer, as are the rectangular paintings in concordance with the rectangular table. As a result of the reduction of the depicted objects to geometric shapes, Cézanne’s paintings have the appearance of sculpture. Human figures strike poses reminiscent of Michelangelo and Cézanne's contemporary, Rodin, momentarily holding a pose for the artist. As a consequence, there is a lack of implied movement in Cézanne’s works. In The ‘Bather (1885-87), the man gazes down at the ground while his hands are placed on his “William Rubin, "Cézannisme and the Beginnings of Cubism." In The Late Cézanne. Edited by William Rubin. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1977): 162. ‘9hips, his left leg slightly preceding the rest of his body.” The same holds true with the woman in the Woman with Coffee Pot, she patiently holds her pose for the artist, with her arms slightly bent and her head turned to the left. One of Cézanne’s significant contributions to the Cubists was a technique called passage. Loosely defined, passage is the merging of two or more forms through the incompleteness of lines separating the two from one another. For example, in Mont Sainte- Victoire Seen from Bibémus Quarry (1897), the quarry walls and the bottom of the pit are painted the same orangish brown." To differentiate between the vertical walls and the hor‘zontal quarry bottom, Cézanne adds a curvy black line. In some areas of the canvas, the line is heavier, as is the case on the right-hand side of the painting, while on the far left side of the work he omits this plane's defining line. Based on our experience on the right-hand side of the canvas, we can infer a dividing point, but if we start on the left-hand side of the painting, we are not quite sure where quarry floor begins and where the quarry wall ends. Often, Cézanne will use the thinnest line possible to separate two different planes. To the immediate right of the first tree on the left-hand side of the painting, the protrusion is articulated by a very thin black line. Even though the line is broken in the middle, allowing one plane to blend into the other, Cézanne reinforces the division of the two planes by adding a touch of shading at the top of the wall on both sides of the divide. In addition, a truncated tree is placed at the base of the quarry wall with, its left side in line with the planar articulation. Unlike the Impressionists who used colour to bring out the various contrasts of light and darkness, Cézanne employs colour to amplify structure. Instead of covering the entire canvas with paint, Cézanne applied colour in a concentrated manner focusing on the key elements of the painting, building up the forms. This treatment of colour was in keeping with his reduction of the subjects of his works to their basic forms. Colour helps to bring out their fundamental structure; for example, in Still-Life with Basket of Apples (1880-94), Cézanne illustrates the apples with red, green and yellow, emphasizing their roundness. The apples are also arranged through the use of colour. Beginning in the top left-hand corner of the canvas, green and red dominate most of the apples in the basket. ‘As we move our eyes to the right of the work, Cézanne replaces green with yellow, first "Ibid., p. 181. "John Rewald, Cézanne: A Biography. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1986), p. 246; and, William Rubin, editor, Cézanne: The Late Work. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1977), p. 245. For a further description of this work, see Theodore Reff, "Painting and Theory in the Final Decade." In Cézanne: The Late Work. Edited by William Rubin. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1977): 24. 10with the apples at the bottom of the basket and then with the apples scattered on the table. The colour of the table is also in harmony with the colour of the apples and the basket, its dominant brown contrasted with touches of green and yellow found on the apples. On the right-hand side of the table, Cézanne places two darkly coloured red apples, providing the brightly coloured apples of the centre part of the painting with a border, an effective counterweight to the to the darker areas of the basket found on the left-hand side of the work. The central object of this work, the table cloth, is given an unique form through careful placement and folding. Cézanne contrasts its basic rectangular shape with that of the table top both through colour and the tablecloth’s placement on the table. The tabiecloth is predominantly white while the table is mostly brown; the tablecloth is turned at an angle to the table, with one corner hanging off the front of the table. ‘As Cézanne reduced the elements of his works to their fundamental shapes, he also began to experiment with perspective. ‘Traditionally, painters only presented one viewpoint in their works. Cézanne, however, incorporated multiple perspectives into his works. Nature morte avec Amour en patre (c. 1895), is another one of Cézanne'’s stilllifes in which the elements are carefully orchestrated on the table. There are least three perspectives presented on this canvas. First, we find ourselves looking up at the plaster figure, the focus of our gaze being centred on torso of the sculpture. At the same time, we find ourselves gazing upward at 'Amour, Cézanne places the other objects on the table, the onicns and apples, below our field of vision. We find ourselves looking down on the table in opposition to our elevated view of the statue. Lastly, our view of the room is a similar direction to our perspective of the statue. The room is tilted toward us, the back wall raised as if it could fall on us. The hearth, on the left-hand side of the canvas is also tilted, presented to us in a downward fashion in keeping with the back wall; however, it is not from the front of the painting but rather from a point further to the right of the canvas, as, if we were trying to see what lies on the other side of Amour. 0 Many of the elements that distinguished the avant-garde painters from their Academic brethren in the nineteenth century are also found in Picasso's pre-Cubist and Cubist works. Dating back to his student days in Barcelona and continuing throughout his life, Picasso was politically active. Like Courbet, Picasso was sensitive to many of the social injustices perpetuated in European society and, like his earlier counterpart, he used the downtrodden as the subject of many of his paintings. As a result of Picasso's choice of subjects and the means through which they were depicted, we can read political messages, isocial commentaries in many of his works." Painting, for Picasso, was not a simple matter of putting paint on a canvas, but just as much a social and political statement as any protest, strike, or riot.” Through the radical formal innovations of Cubism in conjunction with the use of conventional subject matter, Picasso attacked the entire European tradition of painting as well as the larger society that produced it, seeing tradition as a perpetuation of the power structure." By using the oppressed as the subject of his works, Picasso poignantly illustrated the shortcomings of the power structure and of society in general. For Picasso, the renderings of the subjugated included African masks and Iberian art, using the oppressed peoples of the European colonies and the idyllic as weapons to attack the Western tradition demanding that we reevaluate and reconceive what we are seeing. Like Manet before him, tradition, for Picasso, became a source of inspiration, a starting point from which one could base their own works. The use of images from the past were not merely intended as emulation of past masters; instead, Picasso set out to "re-order the universe," to update, to change, to manipulate these images of the past so that they had a context in today’s world and were not mere relics of a long ago Eden, but to make an Eden which was relevant to life as it existed now.” Like his predecessors, Picasso took up the familiar modes of representation such as still-life, landscape, and the human figure (by far the most prevalent theme in works, especially, the female nude). Often working with "classic" poses from the works of masters such as Michelangelo, El Greco, Goya, and Ingres, Picasso brought these influences into his works, using them as commentary on contemporary society. In conjunction with the more classic Academic elements, Picasso also used the conventions of the avant-garde on his canvases, such as the Primitive, the coffee shop, the street people, prostitution, sexual roles, war and disease. In addition to the social messages conveyed in his paintings, Picasso experimented with the various painting techniques of his predecessors. In the Blue and Rose periods, the two stages that predate Cubism, Picasso limits the colours on his palette. In the former, “Leighten, p. 125 and 150. *bid., pp. 119-20. *bid., p. 112; and, Pierre Daix, Picasso: Life and Art. Translated by Olivia Emmet. (New York: Icon Editions, 1993), pp. 137-8. This fact was not lost on the critics of the day who saw the Cubists as destroyers of the French tradition of painting, perpetuated by foreign nationals living in Paris and German collectors such as Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. ™Leighten, p. 113. This phrase "re-order the universe,” the title of Leighten’s book, was coined by Apollonaire. 2various shades and hues of blue figure prominently, depicting the subject's feeling of despair and hopelessness. Light and shadow figure prominently on this limited palette, being a means of emphasizing a work's central components. In The Blindman’s Meal (1903), through the use of lighter shades of blue, with hints of green, Picasso highlights the blindman’s hands that contain the staples of life.” He communicates a sense of the man’s handicap through the way his right hand feels for the water jug. Picasso also illuminates the man’s face giving him an angelic quality, reminiscent of Renaissance works depicting the Virgin Mary and Christ, imparting a sense of hope. In other works, Picasso creates a sense of misdirection through his treatment of light and shadow, a trend continued in his Cubist works. In Two Nudes (Autumn 1906), light would appear to be coming from the right-hand side of the canvas." The woman on the right is bathed in light on the left-hand side of her body while there are shadows on. the right-hand side of her body. However, the figure on the left-hand side of the canvas is less adorned than her companion, even though she is standing slightly in front of the other woman, The light is pockishly applied, alternating light and shadow with little regard to the light’s source, as was the case with the woman on the right. By doing so, Picasso contrasts the two women. The one on the right appears to be healthier than her companion. She is the taller of the two, her head is up looking outward and she is smiling. She is also standing more upright and is more generously proportioned; she supports her shorter companion. In contrast, the woman on the left looks at the ground, slouches, and is quite meagre. Her colour, in comparison to the other woman, is paler and looks sickly. While the exact temporal location of Cubism is one of debate, the years between 1906 and 1909 witnessed a drastic change in Picasso's paintings. Following his stay in Gosol in the Pyrenees in the summer of 1906, Picasso retuned to Paris and removed the face trom his portrait of Gertrude Stein and replaced it with a masklike face reminiscent of Ancient Iberian art. In subsequent works, Picasso painted a number of human figures ‘in which he replaced the expected human face with Iberian ones. Beginning in late April 1907, Picasso began preparation work for a huge canvas that would later be known as Les “William Rubin, editor, Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1980), p. 53. “bid., p. 77. “William Rubin, "Picasso." In Primitivism in 20th Century Art. Volume 1. Edited by William Rubin. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1984): 242. On this page and in his footnote number nine, Rubin shows that Picasso had viewed an exhibit of Iberian art at the Louvre. A series of bas-reliefs had been on display in the spring of 1906. They had been excavated from the Iberian fortress at Osuna by a French mission in 1903. 13Demoiselles d’Avignon.* Best characterized as proto-Cubism, this canvas is one of the most discussed and important paintings of the early part of the twentieth century. Picasso intended Les Demoiselles d’Avignon to be a monumental work, carefully planning his project through a series of sketches, experimenting with different formats, different arrangements of the constituent characters.” For this particular painting, Picasso, as many Academic artists before him, ordered an exceptionally large, specially made wooden stretcher of unconventional proportions (Les Demoiselles is 244 x 234 cm. or 8’ x 78"), a clear signal to other artists he was planning something on an epic scale.* With Les Demoiselles, Picasso drew upon a number of Academic practices. Tke work’s harem scene is one of these “approved” subjects, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres's Le bain ture (1862) being an exemplary model.” The poses assumed by the women also invoke past practices. For example, the raised arms of the two central women are reminiscent of a number of works, such as Michelangelo's statue the Dying Slave (1513-16), Ingres's Vénus Anadyoméne, and William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s La Naissance de Vénus (1863).” Similar to Manet’s appropriation of Titian’s The Venus of Urbino for his Olympia, Picasso uses these conventions in order to make his own artistic statement. In contrast to its predecessors, ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon plays with the convention of idealized beauty and sensual love put forth by Titian, Ingres and Bouguereau in their works, epitomized by the Roman goddess Venus, raising issues of sexual promiscuity, women as a commodity, venereal disease, and death. Similar to Manet with his Olympia, with Les Demoiselles, Picasso addresses a number of society's dichotomies-woman as the bearer of children/woman as whore; sex as a sacred bonding of people/sex as evil, profane and animal; the body as the image of God/the body as a commodity-depicting the plight of the lower classes and commenting on some of the difficulties confronting these groups." *[dem (1980), pp. 86-8. For a discussion of the sketches, the history and a reading of Les Demoiselles Avignon see, Leo Steinberg, "The Philosophical Brothel." October 44 (Spring 1988): 7-74. Other discussions of this work can be found in: Rubin, (1984): 240-343; and Franscina, pp. 104-22, *Franscina, pp. 105-6. Perry, p. 61. ™Daix, pp. 66-9; Franscina, p. 106; and, Rubin (1984), pp. 245-6. "Rubin (1984), pp. 253-4. In the early part of the twentieth century, a number of venereal diseases were, for the most part, incurable and considered a death sentence. 4One of the most discussed components of Les Demoiselles are the African masklike faces of three of the women. The inclusion of the African sources helped to set Picasso apart from the rest of the avant-garde, making him more avant-garde than the rest. Nevertheless, the employment of these foreign sources goes further than simple need to be different. They allowed Picasso another avenue of commentary outside the conventional routines of tradition and the current progressive trends in painting. They enabled Picasso to break with the artistic inclinations of late nineteenth century practices, resulting in a more direct, reductive solution.” Like Gauguin before him, Picasso's use of the Primitive ‘was borne out of a commitment to the conception and invention of the artwork rather than emphasizing skill and virtuosity, a notion that stemmed from the view that the Primitive was the first organizer of chaos which resulted in communication between members of the species.* Works of art, in the hands of Picass. painterly prowess. Paintings, drawing, and sculptures became political statements, intentionally created to provoke responses from his audience. They were also statements about the condition of painting for in works, such as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Picasso suggests new subject matters through a new treatment of traditional subjects, an expansion of the painterly dialogue, and, in his Cubist works, new means of conceptualizing the painting itself. ‘The incorporation of the Primitive, in works such as Les Demoiselles and other ‘works from the years 1907 and 1909, was one of the factors that cleared the path for Picasso's Cubist period. It gave Picasso new avenues of expression and alternatives to the conventional modes of painting. Although the Primitive afforded Picasso new opportunities, the most consequential predecessor to the Cubist movement was Paul Cézanne. For Picasso and many of his contemporaries, including Henri Matisse and André Derain, Cézanne’s late works held a revered position. Cézanne was somewhat of a mythical figure in Parisian art circles; prior to 1895, his works last shown at the third Impressionist exhibition of 1877.* The only way to see his paintings would be in the collections of a few colleagues and enlightened amateurs or occasionally in the shop of a colour merchant.* In November of 1895, at the urging of Pissaro and Monet, Ambroise were more than a simple exhibition of his “Idem, "Modernist Primitivism: An Introduction." In Primitivism in 20th Century Art. Volume 1. Edited by William Rubin. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1984): 53 Yid., p. 242; and, Varnedoe, p. 183. “Rubin (1977), p. 151. *Reff, p. 14. isVollard, a prominent collector put together a retrospective of Cézanne’s works, containing 150 paintings. The result was several sales and an increase in critical discussion of Cézanne’s works, firmly establishing his reputation. In regards to Picasso and his contemporaries, two important showings of Cézanne's works were held in 1907, the year after his death. The first was an exhibit of seventy-nine watercolours at the Bernheim- Jeune Gallery from June 17 to 29, 1907. The second was a large retrospective held as part of the fifth Salon d’Automne, opening on October 1, 1907 and closing a year later on Octcber 22, the second anniversary of Cézanne’s death; fifty-six works, most oil paintings were shown at this exhibition.” For Picasso and his avant-garde contemporaries, the appeal of Cézanne’s works lay in his extensions to the traditions of painting, providing them with different means of construing their compositions. Cézanne carefully scripted all elements on his paintings, an affinity shared by Picasso in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Cézanne carefully placed the various components of his paintings, often presenting the viewer with a number of different perspectives in one painting. He also restricted the colours of his palette, juxtaposing bright colours versus cooler ones. Paint was placed on the canvas in a rhythmic manner, matching brush strokes with certain colours, giving the painting a textural consistency. Moreover, in his late works, Cézanne attained a level of abstraction in which the reality of the depicted object was still discernible. Within the objects of a given picture, we can see elemental geometric shapes such as triangles, circles, and quadrilaterals, although never as pure geometric shapes. Cézanne’s late works are instrumental in Picasso's development of his Cubist style, in particular, his limiting the colours on his palette, the rendering of the depicted objects to elemental forms, passage, and painting in a way that suggest multiple readings. A good example of Cézanne’s late works is the Mont Sainte-Victoire et le Chateau Noir (1904- 06)." Cézanne painted Mont Sainte-Victoire a number of times throughout his life, including a series on this landscape late in his life, demonstrating the changes he experienced over the course of his career. In this work and others of his late period, Cézanne carefully orchestrates the elements of the picture. Only three geometric shapes are used: the triangle for the mountain, quadrilaterals for the chateau, and circles for the foliage, and parts of the sky. Colour is also restricted and used strategically throughout the painting: blue, gray and touches of white make up the mountain and the sky while green, black with touches of blue and gray comprise the foliage. The chateau is the only Rubin (1977), p. 155. Rewald, p. 242. 16‘exception to this colour scheme, being largely a brownish ochre. The mountain occupies the centre of the canvas, framed in the foreground by the overhanging foliage on the right- hand side of the canvas and the trees on the left, and is delineated by a heavy black line, tracing its basic shape. Cézanne delineates the mountain's various features by adding some lighter blacks, enhancing the ascending grade. To the left of Mont Sainte-Victoire, we find the Chateau Noir coloured in an ochre and demarcated by a series of black lines similar to the mountain. Cézanne omits the various features of the chateau, reducing the building to a series of quadrilaterals. Some passage can be found on the front portion of the edifice, blurring the delineation of the tower and the lower frontal structure. The foliage, trees, shrubs and other plants, are defined by a vertical circular brush stroke, in stark contrast to the squareness of the chateau, while blending in with the lower reaches of the mountain. Blues and grays are reserved for the sky as well as the mountain. By painting the mountain with the same colours as the sky, Cézanne gave this weighty figure a sense of lightness, a feeling of air. Light is focused on the mountain in this picture, ‘concentrated in the background of the work, while darkness is reserved for the front of the canvas. By keeping the lighter portions of the picture concentrated on the mountain and the darker areas to the front of the canvas, framing this earthen formation, Cézanne creates a sense of depth as well as concentrating the viewer's gaze to the centre and toward the back of the work. Only the brightness of the chateau moves our eyes away from this central vista, Cézanne's landscapes played a prominent role in the definition and inception of the Cubist phase. One of the painters to take the innovations of Cézanne’s late works to heart was, Picasso's Cubist partner, Georges Braque. As is evident from the Museum of Modern Art Exhibition, Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism, and the subsequent monograph of the same title, these two artists worked closely with one another from 1909 to beginning of World War I when Braque left to fight in the war.®* In the early part of his career, Braque had been associated with the Fauve painters, such as Matisse, Derain, and ‘Viamnick. Following the posthumous exhibitions of Cézanne's works in 1907, Braque and the Fauves were quite involved with the problems proposed by the late artist’s paintings. Emulating Cézanne, Braque undertook three trips (Fall 1906, September 1907, and ‘Summer 1908) to L’Estaque, a village in the south of France, so he could paint the same subject matter as Cézanne had, developing a style that built upon the techniques and innovations presented by Cézanne in his late works. “William Rubin, editor, Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1989). iIn his article, "Cézannisme and the Beginnings of Cubism,” William Rubin contends that the beginnings of Cubism coincided with these Braque landscapes and not with Picasso's Les Demoiselles D'Avignon” Beginning with a work such as Landscape at ‘LEstaque" (1907), a painting which bears an uncanny resemblance to Cézanne’s Bend in Road Montgeoult'', Braque reduces the colour of palette even further than Cézanne did in his work as well as further reducing the houses to their elemental geometric shapes. Passage is employed to a far greater extent than ever used by the older master, making the distinction between the various surfaces difficult to discern. In this painting, Braque presents one of the defining features of Cubism; the objects are arranged so that the houses appear to be pushing outward towards the viewer rather than retreating into the canvas, as is the conventional means of portraying depth on the two-dimensional canvas. In his Houses at L'Estaque (August 1908), Braque eliminates all distinguishing features of the houses, leaving only their geometric shapes. Like Cézanne, he carefully orchestrates the geometric shapes and the work's colours, interspersing the houses’ brownish ochre with the green of the foliage, trees, and shrubs. Passage is used with greater confidence, blending the houses’ various planes into other facets of the scene. As was the case with the Landscape at L’Estaque, the houses appear to be plunging out towards the viewer, held back by the foreground tree trunk. It was in reaction to this work that Matisse coined the term, "Cubism," having drawn a sketch of Braque’s rejected painting for the Salon d’Automne of 1908 for a friend, described the painting as fait de petits cubes.” As it ‘turns out this label became a misnomer for Cubism not only made use of cubes, but with the delineation and arrangement of a number of geometric shapes, in conjunction with the handling of space, light and the linkage of planes through passage. Braque and Picasso were acquainted with one other before they began working together in 1909. Braque had been disturbingly struck by Picasso's Les Demoiselles dAvignon, having viewed the canvas in Picasso's studio, and had put aside his favoured landscapes so he could work on one of his rare nudes, the Large Nude of 1908." Following Les Demoiselles, Picasso produced a number of canvases that continued to explore the African motifs. Although there is no record of this event, Rubin feels that it Idem (1977), pp. 151-2. “Idem (1989), p. 80. “dem (1977), p. 272. Bhi “Jdem (1989), p. 87. P. 180 and footnote 114. i8was Picasso's exposure to Braque’s L'Estaque landscapes that produced paintings such as the Three Women (Autumn 1907 to late 1908)", a work for which Picasso drew a number of preparatory sketches, similar to Les Demoiselles, and turned Picasso towards Cézanne’s innovations and works as a source of inspiration. Like the earlier painting, Picasso composes the Three Women on a large canvas, 200 x 178 centimetres, or 78 3/4” x 70 U8" inches. The women's poses are strikingly similar to the those of the two Iberian-faced women of Les Demoiselles, and a reference to an earlier tradition. The women are an assemblage of geometric shapes articulated by various shades of ochre that is counterpointed by green. Like Braque’s L’Estaque landscapes, Picasso skilfully uses ‘passage, linking and blending the women in with the background.* The faces are no longer imitations of African tribal masks, but a return to his earlier Iberian borrowings. Picasso also did a number of landscapes and still lifes in 1908, in lieu of his favoured human figures. In works such as Landscape with Two Figures" (late 1908), Bread and Fruit Dish on a Table“ (winter 1908-09) and especially the landscapes painted at Horta de Ebro,“ Picasso experiments with many of the elements found in Braque’s L'Estaque landscapes: for example, the figures in nature represented by geometric shapes and colour carefully arranged in the painting aiding in the articulation of the depicted subject. As was the case with Three Women, Picasso transferred the techniques used in his and Braque’s landscapes to his interpretations of the human figure. During his stay at Horta de Ebro in the summer of 1909, Picasso did a number of portraits of his companion Fernande Olivier.” In these works, Picasso addresses a number of issues that will play a Prominent role in his Cubist works including the use different configurations of geometric shapes as a means of representing the human figure, the representation of the three- dimensional world on the two-dimensional canvas, the use of colour as a means of differentiating between the subject and the background but also as a means of blurring the “Tp »p. 111 “Idem (1977), pp. 184-7. “Ibid., p. 187. “"[dem (1989), p. 109. “Ibid., p. 115. “Tbid., p. 181 and p. 134. Some of the portraits can be found in Picasso and Braque; see Rubin (1989), p. 130, 135, and 139. 19line between the two. In Seated Woman (1909), the woman is facing us; her head is slightly bent to her right and she is looking downward. Her body is comprised of a number of different shapes, squares, rectangles and other quadrilaterals as well as triangles. Despite the multitude of shapes, we still can discern the woman's facial features, such as her hair, eyes, nose, mouth, eyebrows and ears. Like the woman, the background is composed of geometric forms. Colour aids in the definition and differentiation of the woman and the background. Picasso largely reserves ochre, gray, and black for the woman while greens dominate in the painting's background. In works following this one, Picasso often merges foreground details with the background, downplaying or even dispensing with the traditional representation of three-dimensional space on the two-dimensional canvas. ‘The woman would appear to be melting into the background, both being reduced to their essential geometric forms. bing Cubism proper began in late 1909, after Picasso's return from Horta de Ebro to Paris and Braque returned from military exercises and a visit to Derain in Chatou.** This art movement was the result of the working partnership between Picasso and Braque; it was a partnership of equals, each artist feeding off the works of the other, discussing their ideas about art, politics, social conditions, and daily events. Both artists continued to create works in their favourite genres: Picasso, the human figure; and Braque, the landscape and still-life. Cubism allowed the artist greater analytical space than had been afforded before. All artists, whatever their field of endeavour may be, analyzed and examined their works, standing back in order to gain a better perspective of what they were creating. They also scrutinized the works of their predecessors taking from them what they deemed significant. ‘The formal innovations of the Cubist revolution, with its deconstruction of the picture resulted in a pronounced objectivism, leading to an idealized abstraction in which the portrayed object was represented through its dissection into geometric shapes rather than as a depiction of the actual entity before the artist's eye. Cubism allowed the artist to reflect on the relationship between the conventions of representation and the depiction of the subject on a flat surface. While still using traditional subjects, Cubism permitted the artist to take a metaphorical step back to examine in greater detail the object's form from “[pid., p. 364. Previous to his military service, Braque had spent a couple of months painting at another one of Cézanne’s favourite places, La Roche-Guyon. 20the standpoint of its formation by permitting the artist to address issues of style and content. Cubism divides into two phases: 1) Analytic Cubism encompassing the years 1908 to 1912; and, 2) Synthetic Cubism, lasting from late 1912 to 1917. Analytie Cubism grew ‘out of Picasso and Braque’s confrontation with the innovations and routines of Cézanne’s late works. The traditional genres of representation were still used by Picasso and Braque in the works of this era. Analytic Cubism involved an analysis of the object into smaller parts or facets. For example, in Girl with a Mandolin (Fanny Tellier) (Spring 1909), the central figure of this work is a young woman playing a mandolin.” She is facing the viewer with her head turned to her left looking down at the neck of the mandolin. The combination of a square and a cylinder comprise her head and her neck, respectively, while a cirdle and a triangle make up her eye. Besides her hair which is tied up at the back, represented by the curl, other facial features, such as the mouth, eyes, eyebrows, nose and ears are omitted. Like her neck, her arms are cylinders, bent in the appropriate manner to play the mandolin, while the rest of her body amalgamates various geometric shapes. Similar to the majority of the works of this era, colour is greatly reduced. Eliminating such commonly used colours as red, blue, and green, Picasso and Braque favoured various shades of brown, as well as black and gray.” In Girl with a Mandolin, Picasso only uses varicus shades of brown along with some black. Nevertheless, he is able to preserve the spatial separation between the young woman's foreground figure and the background through by using lighter shades of brown on her face and upper body while outlining her frame with dark colours. In addition, certain geometric shapes, such as the cylinder, are only found in the depiction of the young woman's body and the mandolin. As Analytic Cubism progressed, the "space" between the object and the background disappeared. As a result, the three-dimensional reality of the depicted subject was flattened into the two-dimensional space of the canvas, merging background and foreground, beginning the move from painting as representation to painting as formal composition. Moreover, Picasso's representation of the picture's subject became more “Ibid., p. 187. “The colours used by Picasso and Braque are reminiscent of the Conté chalks which are traditionally black, white, terracotta red, and brown. “Yve-Alain Bois, “The Semiology of Cubism." In Picasso and Braque:_A Symposium. Edited by William Rubin. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1992): 184. In this, article, Bois contends that Picasso, in eliminating the "space" between subject and background, composed his painting with a grid, giving the work a look that has also been described scaffolding. 21reductive, to the point where the figure would seem to disappear into the canvas, often utilizing passage for this effect. In these works, we, the viewers, through the clues provided by Picasso (such as the painting's title, the turn of the armchair's arm rest) must reassemble the dissected subject. From this viewpoint, Picasso has reduced the subject of the painting to memory. For example, in a work such as "Ma jolie’ (Woman with a Zither or Guitar) (Winter 1911-1912), we no longer can see a woman playing a stringed instrument like we did in Girl with a Mandolin; there is little differentiation between. background and foreground. Picasso, however, leaves us with traces of the woman playing the zither (or guitar). At the bottom of the canvas, Picasso has provided the viewer with an obvious clue that the painting is about a woman. The phrase "Ma jolie” is stencilled onto the canvas, a reference to a popular song of the day and Picasso's nickname for his companion, Eva Gouel.'” Moving diagonally from bottom left to upper right, we see a swath of light, approximately where the woman would be, and at the top right of the canvas, we see a brief curl, reminiscent of her hair. At the bottom right-hand side of the canvas, we also see four cylindrical forms, reminiscent of the zither (or guitar) player's hand. About a third of the way down, Picasso paints a heavy horizontal black line and to the immediate right of this is another heavy black line, roughly at forty-five degrees to the former line. These two lines could stand for her shoulders, especially if we consider the cylindrical form that extends from the angled line; perhaps it is an arm? While "Ma jolie” is but a memory, Picasso leaves a number of obvious remnants of the zither (or guitar). In the bottom right of the canvas, there is a series of diagonal lines, suggesting the neck of the stringed instrument; in addition, in the bottom centre, there is a series of six vertical lines, symbolic of the strings near the soundhole of the zither (or guitar). Early in the summer of 1912, Picasso had reached an artistic crisis. Having extended Analytic Cubism, in works such as "Ma jolie", to the point where objects are so diffused, Picasso reintroduced colour and unfragmented objects into his works. In The Scallop Shell: "Notre Avenir est dans V’air (May 1912), he paints sea shells, a pipe, a Rubin (1989), p. 210. For an insightful reading of this painting, see Franscina, pp. 140-6. “Thid., p. 147. "Ma jolie" is part of the opening lyrics of Dernitre Chanson, a popular love song in 1911: "O Manon, ma jolie, mon coeur te dit bonjour!" (Oh Manon, my pretty, my heart says hello to you). "Bois (1992), p. 185. Rubin (1989), p. 229.packet of tobacco (portrayed by the rectangle with the initials ChB in its centre), along with a reproduction of the Michelin brochure "Notre Avenir est dans 'Air" (Our Future is in the Air). Part of the dialogue between Picasso, Braque, and their audience involved the pun. This patriot pamphlet put out by Clermont-Ferrand was a compendium of military officers who advocated the development of the aeroplane as the ultimate weapon of war. As an anarchist, Picasso would have objected to such "advancements," especially in light of the war in the Balkans, giving "Notre Avenir est dans l’air an ironic twist. As present in this work is the word "JOU," found on the left-hand side of the canvas. This word and others like it, journal, jouailler, jouasse, jouer, jouet, iouir, jouissance, joujou, is one of the consistent puns of the Cubist dialogue, playing a central role in Synthetic Cubism in which the different forms of representation combined within the same image." What materializes in the latter part of Analytic Cubism is a system of painting that makes use of a series of signs, coded messages if you will, to the point where everything, even paint, can have multiple meanings. A product of a conceptually based approach to painting, Picasso and Braque relied on their audience's knowledge of the history of painting, current polities, social events, and even the details of their own relationship and interactions with people of their own social circle. For example, in order to “reassemble” “Ma jolie", we must have some knowledge of the traditional modes of portrait painting, including Picasso's own works, to have any prospect of perceiving the woman playing the zither (or guitar). Consequently, painting, in the hands of a cerebrally and conceptually ies of signs that often have more than one meaning. For example, the oval frame of paintings such as The Scallop Shell and Still Life with Chair Caning (May 1912) can be understood as a painting hanging on a wall or an oval table top. In 1912, Picasso and Braque began to experiment with techniques outside of the traditional realm of painting. With Still Life with Chair Caning (May 1912), Picasso glued an oil cloth and pasted paper onto the canvas, surrounding the finished work with a piece of rope, replacing the customary frame. Braque, who had been trained as a oriented artist such as Picasso, becomes a se: house painter, painted imitations of wood, at times using a comb to mimic wood grains, “Franscina, p. 156. “Ibid., pp. 156-7. “Rubin (1989), p. 229. Bais (1992), p. 186. This observe by Bois in the cited article. ion was originally made by Rosalind Krauss, quoted 23