ONE

THEMECHANICAL

PA A ISE

I n 19 13, th e Fren ch wr ite r Charl es P egu y rema rk ed th at " the world has change d less
since th e tim e of] es us C h rist than it has in the last thirty years." H e was spe aking ofall
the con d itions of W est ern capitalist soc iety : its id ea of itself, its sen se of history, it s
beliefs, pieties, and m od es of produ ction - and its a rt. In P eguy's tim e, th e time of our
gra ndfa thers and great-grand fathers , the visual arts had a kind of soc ial importance
th ey ca n no lon ger cla im t oda y, and they see me d to be in a state of utter conv ulsion .
D id cultural turm oil pr e'pi ~t social tum ult? Man y peop le thought so th en; today we
are not so sure, but th at isbecau se we live at the end of modernism, whe reas they were
alive at its be gin ni ng'. ',Between 188o and 1930 , on e of the su p re me cultural
ex perime n ts in th e.hist or y of th e world was enac ted in E urope and Ame rica. After
1940 it was re fined up on , d evelop ed her e and ex ploite d th er e, and finally turn ed into a
kin d of entro pic, ins tit utionalize d pa ro dy of its old self. Man y people think th e
mo de rn ist laborato ry is now vaca nt. It has be com e less an aren a for significan t
experim en t and m or e like a period room in a mus eu m , a historical space that we can
en ter, look at, but no lon ger be pa rt of. In art, we are at the end of th e mod ernist era,
b u t th is is not - as so me cri tics appa rentl y thin k - a matter for se lf -co ng ra tulation.
'W hat has our cult ure lost in 1980 th at th e aoant-garde had in 1890? Eb ullienc e,
idea lism , confide nce, the belief that there was plenty of ter ritory to explore, and above
all the sense that art , in th e most di sinter est ed and nobl e way, could find th e necessary
m et aph ors by wh ich a radi cally changin g c ultur e could be ex plained to its inhab itants.
Fo r th e Fren ch , and for E urope ans in gene ra l, th e grea t metaphor of this se nse of
c ha nge - its mast er - im age, the one struct ure that see me d to gathe r all th e m eanin gs of
m od ernity tog eth er - was th e Eiffel Towe r . The T ower was finish ed in 1889 , as the
focal point of th e P ari s World's Fair. T he date of th e Fa ir was symbolic. It was the
cente na ry of the F re nc h R evolution. T he holding of W orld 's F airs, th ose festi vals of
hi gh machine-a ge capi ta lism in which nati on aft er nat ion showed off its ind us trial
stre ngth a nd th e breadth of its colon ial resources, was not , of co urse, new. T he fas hion
had bee n set by Vic toria 's Prince Al bert, in the Great Ex h ibition of 185 1. T he re, the
grea tes t marvel on view had not been the Birmingh am stoves, the reci procating
eng ines, the looms, th e silver ware , or even the Chinese exotica ; it had be en their
10 I THE M E CHANI C AL P ARADI S E

showp lace itself, the Crystal Palace, with its vaults of glitt er ing glass and nearl y
in visible iron tr acery. O n e ma y perhap s mo ck the prose in whi ch some o f th e
Victorian s re corded th eir wond er at th is cathed ral of th e ma ch in e ag e, but th eir
emotion was real.
The planners o f th e Paris 'Wo rl d's Fai r wanted so meth ing even more spectac ular
than th e Cryst al Palace. But P axton' s triumph cou ld not be capped by anoth er
horizontal build in g, so th ey de cided to go up : to build a tow er that would be the tall est
manmad e obj ect on earth , toppin g ou t- before th e ins tallation of its p resen t- day radi o
and TV masts - at 1056 feet. N o doubt a biblical sug gestion was at work, con sciously
or not. S ince th e F air wo u ld em b race all nati on s, its central metaphor sh ould be th e
Tower of Babel. But th e Tower em bod ied oth er and soci ally deep er metaph ors. The
them e of the F ai r was m anufacture an d tran sformat ion , th e dynamics of capital rath er
than sim p le owne rs h ip. It was m eant to illu strate th e triumph of th e present over th e
past, the victory of industrial over lan d ed wealth that re p resen te d th e essential
econo m ic differ en ce between th e Third Republic a nd th e A ncien R egime. What m or e
brilliant cen tre piece for it than a str uc ture that turned its back on the owne rsh ip
of land - that occ u p ied unowned and previously useless space, th e sky itself? I n
beco m ing a hu ge ver tica l extrus ion o f a tiny pat ch o f th e ea rt h's s urface, it would
demon strate th e p ower of process. Anyon e could bu y land, bu t only In France ntoderuc
could undertake the conquest of th e air.
Th e F air's com m iss io ne rs turn ed to an eng ineer, not a n architect , to d esi gn th e
Tower. This d ecision was in its elf sym bolic, and it went aga inst the prestige of Beaux­
A rts ar chitect s as the official voice o f the Stat e ; but Gusta ve E iffel, who was fifty- seven
an d at th e peak of his career wh en h e took th e job, ma naged to infuse his stru ctu re with
what now seems to be a sin gular r ichness of mean ing. Its re m ote inspiration was th e
human figure - th e To wer ima gin ed as a ben evolent co loss us, planted with sprea d legs
in the m iddle of Par is. It also referred to th e greates t pe rm anen t festi ve str uct ure of th e
se ven tee n th century, Bernini's Fo un tain of the Fo ur Ri vers in th e P iazza N a vona in
R ome, whi ch (lik e the T ower) was a sp ike balan ced ove r a void defin ed b y fou r arch es
and (lik e the Fair itself) was an ima ge of ecumenical domination of th e four qu arters of
the world.
You cou ld not escape th e Tower . It was and is th e one struc ture that can be seen
from every point in th e city. No metropolis in E u ro pe had ever b een so visually
dominat ed by a si ng le struc t ure, excep t R om e by S t. P eter's ; and even toda y, Ei ffel's
sp ike is more ge nerally visible in its own city than Michelangelo's dome. The Tower
became th e symbol of Pa r is overnigh t, and in doin g so, it proclaimed In »illc lumicre to
b e th e m od ernist cap ital - quite inde pende n tly ofany th ing else that m ight be wr itt en ,
com p ose d , produced, or painted there . As su ch , it was praised by Guillaume
A pollina ire, th e cos m opo lita n poet wh o had once been a Catholi c and ima gin ed , in a
tone of mingled iro ny and delight, th e Se cond Comin g of Christ en ac te d in a n ew Paris
whose ce ntre was the T ow er , at th e ed ge of the co m ing mill ennium , the tw entieth
ce ntury :
 TH E fvlE CHA NIC A L P A R ADIS E I I I

At last yo u ar e tir ed of thi s old world .

o shepherd E iffel T o we r, th e flock of br idges bleats thi s mo rning
You ar e throu gh with livin g' in Greek an d Rom an an tiq ui ty
Here, eve n th e au to m ob iles see m to be ancien t
Only reli gion has remained brand new, reli gion
Ha s remained sim ple as sim ple as th e aero d rome hangars
It's Go d who d ies Frida y an d rises again on Sund ay
It's C hrist wh o climbs in the sky bet ter than an y av ia to r
H e hold s the world ' s altitud e record
Pupil C h rist of th e eye
T wenti eth pupil of the ce nt ur ies he kno ws wh at he's ab out ,
And t he cen tury, becom e a bird , cli mbs skyw ards like J esu s.

The important thing was that th e Tower had a ma ss au d ience; millions of people,
not th e thou sands wh o went to th e sa lons and galler ies to look at work s of art, wer e
tou ched by th e feelin g of a new age that th e E iffel T ower mad e concrete . It was th e
herald of a miJlennium, as the nin et eenth century mad e read y to click over into th e
twentieth . And in its height, its struc tura l darin g, its th en-radical us e of industrial
mat erials for th e com me mo rative purposes of th e Stat e, it summed up wh at the ruling
classes of Eu rope con ceived the promise of technology to be : F aust's con tract, th e
promi se of unlimited pow er ove r the world and its wealth .
Fo r the lat e nineteenth century, th e cr ad le of modernism , did not feel th e
un certainties abo u t the ma chine th at we do. No statisti cs on pollution, no prospect of
melt-downs or core ex plos ions lay on th e horizon ; and very few of the visito rs to th e
W orld's Fair of 1889 had mu ch experience of th e mass sq ualor and voice less suffer ing
that William Blake had ra iled again st and Friedrich Engels des cribed. In th e past th e
ma chin e had bee n represented and caricatured as an ogre, a beh emoth, or - due to th e
read y analogy between furn aces, ste am , smoke, and H ell- as S atan himsel f. But by
1889 it s "otherness" had waned, and the W orld's Fair aud ience tended to think of th e
mach ine as unqualifiedl y go od, stro ng , stu pid, and obed ient. They th ou ght of it as a
giant slave, an untirin g stee l N eg ro, contro lled by Rea son in a world of infinite
res ou rces. The machine meant th e conqu est of process, an d only ver y exceptiona l
sights, like a rocket laun ch , can give us an ything resembling th e emotion with whi ch
our ance sto rs in the 1880s co n tem plated heavy machi ner y : for th em , th e " ro ma nce"
of technology seem ed far more d iffused and optimistic, act ing publicly on a wid er
ran ge of obj ects, than it is toda y. P erhaps thi s had h appened beca use mor e and mor e
peopl e were livin g in a ma chin e- formed env iro nme n t : th e city. The machine was a
rel at ively fresh part of soc ial experience in 1880, wh er eas in 1780 it had be en exo tic ,
and by 1980 it would be a cliche. T he vast industrial growth of European cities was
new . In 1850, E urope had sti ll been ove rw he lmi ng ly rural. M ost E ng lishme n,
Fren chmen, and German s, let alone Italian s, Poles, or Spaniards, lived in th e country
or in small villages. Forty years lat er the machine, with its imperative centralizing of
pr ocess and pr oduct , had tipp ed th e balance of population towards th e town s.
Baudelaire's [o nn nillante cite of alienated so uls - "a nt-swarmi ng City, Ci ty full of
J2 I THE IvIECHANICAL PARADISE

dreams/Where in broad da y the spectre tugs your sleeve" - began to di splace the
pastoral images of nature whose last efflore scen ce was in the work o f M on et and
Renoir. The master-ima ge of painting was no lon ger landscape but th e metropolis. In
the 'c ou n try, things gro w; but the essence of manufacture, of the city , is proce ss, and
this could only be ex p ress ed by metaphors of linkage, relativity, interconnectedness .
These metaphors wer e not ready to hand . Science and technology h ad outstrip ped
them, and the rate of change was so fast tha t it left art stranded, at least for a time, in its
pastoral conventions . P erhaps no painting of a railway sta tion, not even M on et's Care
S nint-Lazare, could possibl y have the aestheti c brilliance and clarity of the great
Victorian railroad sta tions themselves - Euston, St. Pancras, Penn Station, those true
cathedrals of the ninet eenth century. And ce rtain ly no painting of a con ven tional sort
could deal with the new public experience of th e late nineteenth century, fast travel in
a machine on wheels . F or the machine meant th e conq uest of horizontal space. It also
meant a sense of that space which few people h ad experien ced before - th e succession
and superimposition of views, the unfolding of landscape in flickering sur faces as one
was carried swiftly past it , and an exaggerated feeling of relative moti on (the poplars
nearby seeming to m ove fast er than the church sp ire across the field) du e to parallax .
The view from th e tra in was not the view from th e horse. It compressed m ore motifs
into the same time. C onversel y, it left Jess tim e in which to dwell on an yon e thin g.
At first, onl y a few p eople could have this cu rious ly altered experien ce of the visual
world without taking a train: the crackpots and inv entors with their home-made cars,
and then the adventurou s rich, veiled and gog gled, chugging down th e co u ntry lanes
of Bellosguar do or Norm an dy. But because it promised to telescope more experience
into the conventional fram e of travel, and finally to burst the fram e alt ogether, the
auant-garde of en gin eering seemed to have so meth ing in common with th e «oant­
garde of art.
As the most visib le sign of the Future, th e automobile entered art in a peculiarly
clumsy way. The first public sculpture ever se t up in its praise stand s in a park at the
Porte Maillot in Paris. It comrnemora tes th e gr eat road race of 1895 , from Paris to
Bordeaux and back, which was won by an en gin eer named Emile L eva ssor in the car
he designed and built himself, the Panhard-Leva ssor 5 - which could go at about the
sam e speed as a jumpin g frog. Nevertheless, L evassor's victory was of great social
co nse q u en ce, and worth a memorial, since it persuaded Europeans - manufacturers
and public alik e - that th e future of road transport lay with the internal com b ustion
engin e and not with its competitors, electricity or steam . In all ju stice th ere sh ould be a
replica of the L eva ssor Monument set up in eve ry oil port from Bah rein to Houston .
Yet it looks slightl y ab surd to us as sculpture today, suggesting th e d ifficulties artists
faced in transposing' the new category of th e machine into th e con ven tions of
traditional sculpture (pl ate I).
I t is a stone car - an id ea that seems Surreali st to a modern ere, almost as wrong as a
teacup made of fur . Marble is immobile, sil ent, mineral , brittle, white, cold . Cars are
fast, noisy, metallic, clasti c, warm. A human bod y is warm , too , but we do not think of
statues as stone m en be cause we are used to th e con ven tions of d epi cting flesh with

[ Camille Lefebvre i\1o/l//lIIellllo Lecossor, Porte i\1({i//OI , Paris J907

M arble relief after Jule s Dalal! ,83 8- 1902 (photo Roger Viollct, Paris)
«

 -
14 / TH E MECH A NI C AL PAR ADI S E

stone. (Wh en these conventions are viol at ed, as in the secon d act of Don G iovanni
when th e st atu e of the Co nuncndatore comes alive, the effe ct is always spe ctral or
comic.) The problem for Jul es Dalou, wh o d esigned the L evassor Monument, was the
lack o f agreed con ventions for depictin g a headlarnp or a stee r ing wheel. Such motifs
were too n ew , like the m achin e itself, so n o exact representati on of a car in sto ne could
be as visu ally convincing as the car itself.
Yet th e cult ural condition s of seeing wer e star tin g to change, and the Eiffel Tower
stood for th at too . The most spe ctacu lar thin g about it in th e r890 s was not th e view
of the Tower from th e gro u n d . It was seei ng the ground from th e Tower. Until then,
the hi gh est manmade point from whi ch Paris could be see n by the publi c was the
gargoyle galle ry of Notre Dame . Most peopl e lived entirely at grou n d level, or within
forty feet of it, the heigh t of an ordinary apa rtm en t house. Nobody excep t a few
intrepid ball oonists had ever ri sen a thou sand feet from th e eart h . Consequ entl y, the
bird 's-eye view of nature or townscape was an ex treme and rare curiosity, and wh en
the photographer Nadal' took hi s camera up in a balloon in r856, his dagu erreotypes
were not on ly sn ap p ed up b y the public but also commemorated, in a spirit of fri endly
irony, by H onore Daumier. But when the T ower opened to th e public in 1889, n early
a million people rode its lift s to the top platform ; and there th ey saw wh at modern
tra vellers tak e for granted every time th ey fly - th e earth on whi ch we live seen flat , as
pattern, fr om above. As P ari s turned its on ce invisible roofs and the n ow clear
labyrinth of its alleys and stree ts towards th e tourist's eye, becoming a map of itself, a
new type o f landscape began to seep into p opular awareness. It was based on fron tality
and pattern, rather than on perspective rec ession and depth.
This way o f seeing was one o f the pivots in human consciousn ess. The sight of Paris
V II d'en Iiaut, ab sorbed b y millions of peopl e in the first tw enty years of the T ow er's

life, was as sign ifican t in 1889 as the famou s NASA photograph of the earth fr om the
moon, floating like a green vu ln erab le bubbl e in the dark indifferenceof spa ce, would
be eighty yea rs later. The ch aracteristic flat, patterned space of m odern art - G a ug uin,
Maurice D eni s, Seurat - was alread y under de velopment before th e Tower was built.
It was based on other art-h ist orical sources : on the flatn ess of " prim itive" Itali an
fresco es, on Japanese wo odblock prints, on th e coiling' and distinct patterns of
cloisonne en am el. When Gauguin's friend Maurice Denis wr ot e his manifesto The
Definition o] N co-Traditionalism in the summer of 1890, it began with one of th e
canoni cal phrases of m od ernism: that "a pi cture - before being a warhorse, a nud e
woman, or som e sort of an ecdote - is essentiall y a surface cover ed with colours
arranged in a certain ord er ." Denis was inv oking this prin ciple in order to bring
painting back to a kind of h eraldic flatnes s, th e flatness of bann ers and crusad er s'
tombslabs and the Bayeux T ap estry, in which hi s ambition to cover the new church es
of France with Christian frescoes might pr osper. The Eiffel T ow er had nothing to do
with his inter ests; bu t th e id ea of space tha tit provok ed, a flatn ess tha t con rain ed id eas
of dynami sm, movement, and the quality of abs traction inh er ent in structures and
maps, was also the space in which a lot of th e most advanced E uropean art d on e
between r9 07 and 1920 would unfold.
 THE ME CI-IAl ' I C AL P ARADISE / 15

The speed at which culture reinvented itself throu gh technology in the last qu arter
of the nineteenth century and the first d ecades of the twenti eth, seems alm ost
pr eternatural. Thomas Alva Edison in vented the ph onograph, th e most radi cal
exte nsion of c ult ural memory since th e ph otograph , in 1877; two years later, he and
]. W. Swan, working ind ep endently, developed the first incandescent filament light­
bulbs, the techni cal sensati on of the Belle Epoque. The first twenty-fi ve years of th e life
of th e archetypal modern artist , Pabl o Pi casso- who was born in 1881 - witnessed th e
foundation of twentieth-century technology for peace an d war alike : th e recoil­
op erated ma chine gun (1882), the first syn th etic fibr e (1883), th e Parsons stea m
turbine (1884) , coated photographic paper (1885), the Tesla electric m otor, the K od ak
box cam era and the Dunl op pn eumatic tyre (1888), cordite (1889), th e Diesel eng ine
( 1892), the F ord car (189 3), the cinem ato graph an d th e gram opho ne dis c (1894 ). In
1895, Roentgen discov er ed X-rays, M arconi invented radio tel egraphy, the Lum iere
br others de veloped the m ovie camera, the Russi an Konstantin T siolkovsky first
en un ciated the principle of rocket dri ve, and Freud published hi s fundamental st ud ies
on h ysteria. An d so it wen t : the discover y of radium, th e ma gnetic recording o f so u n d,
th e first voi ce rad io transm issions, th e W right brother s' first power ed flight (1903),
and the atmus mirabilis of t he oretical physics, 1905, in which Albert Einstein formu­
lat ed the Special Theory of R elativity, th e photon th eory of light, an d ushered in the
nuclear age with the clima cti c formula of h is law of m ass- energy eq u ivalence, E = 111( 2.
One did not nee d to be a sc ien tist to sense the magnitude of suc h changes. They
am ou n ted to th e greatest alteration in man's view of th e universe since Isaac N ewton .
The feeling that this was so was wid esp read. For th e essen ce of th e early mod ernist
expe r ience, between 1880 and 1914 , was not the specific invention s - nobod y was
much affect ed by Einstein until Hiroshima; a protot yp e in a lab or an equation on a
bl ackboard co uld not, as su ch, bear on th e man in th e street . But wh at did emerge fro m
th e growth of scien tific and technical discovery, as th e age of steam passed in to th e ag e
of electr icity, was th e se nse of an accelerated rate of chang e in all areas of hum an
discourse, in cluding art. F ro m now on the rules would qua ver , th e fixed cano ns of
knowledge fail, under th e p ressure of n ew experience an d the dema nd for new forms
to con tain it. Without thi s h eroic sense of cultural possibility, Arthur Rimbaud's
injunction to be absolutncnt ntoderne would ha ve mad e n o sense . With it, however , one
co uld feel present at the end o f one kin d of history an d the sta rt of an other, who se
em blem was the Machine, many-arm ed an d infinitely various, dan cing like Shiva the
crea tor in th e midst of th e lon gest continu ous peace th at European civilization would
eve r know .
In 1909 , a F re nc h aviat or named L oui s Bleriot flew the En glish Channel, fro m
Ca lais to D ov er. Brought ba ck to Paris, his little wood en dra gonfl y of a plane was
car ried throu gh the street s in triumph - like C im abu e's M adolllla, Apol1in aire
remarked - and installed in a deconsecra ted ch u rch, n ow part of th e M usee des Arts et
M etiers . It still han gs th er e, under th e blue sh aft s of light from th e staine d-glass
windows, slig htly dilapidated, lookin g for all the world like th e relic of an ar cha n gel.
Such was th e earl y apoth eosis of the Ma chine. But the existence of a cult do es not
 -

16 I T HE JvlEC HAN IC AL PA R AD ISE

mea n tha t images appropriate to it au tomatically follow. The cha nges in ca pita list
man 's view of him self and th e world bet ween 1880 and 19 14 were so far- reaching that
th ey prod uce d as m any probl em s for art ists as th ey did st im uli. Fo r instance : how
could you make pa intings tha t mi ght reflect th e imme nse sh ifts in cons cious nes s th at
th is altering" tec hnologic al land scape im plied ? H ow could you produce a parallel
dynam ism to the mach ine age witho ut falling in to th e elemen tary trap of just
becom ing a mac hine illus trato r? And above all: how, by shov ing sticky stu ff like pai nt
arou nd on th e surface of a can vas, could you produce a convincing recor d of process
and transformation ?
T he first artists to ske tc h an ans wer to all this were th e C u bists.
Even tod ay, seven ty years after they were pa inted , th e key Cubist pain tings can be
obsc ure. T hey see m hard to gras p; in so me ways they are alm ost literally illeg ible.
They do not present an imm ediately coherent view of life, in th e wa y tha t
Im pressioni sm set forth its ima ges of m id-bourgeois plea sure and boul evard ma nners .
They have very little to d o with nature ; almos t eve ry C ubist pa inting is a still- life, and
on e in whi ch manmad e objects predom inate over natural ones like flowe rs or fruit.
Cu bism as practi sed by its in ventors and chief interp rete rs - P icasso, Braq ue, Leger,
and G ris - does not woo th e eye or th e se nses , and its th eatr e is a cra m ped brown room
or th e corner of a cafe. Beside the peacocks of th e n ineteent h cent ury - the canvases of
D elacroix or R enoi r - th eir paintings look like ow ls. A pipe, a glass, a guitar; some
yellowed newsprint, black on dirty white whe n it was glue d on tw o ge ne rations ago,
now the colou r of a ba d cigar, irrevocably alt ering th e tonal bala nce of the piec e.
Nevertheless, C ubism was th e firs t radi cally new proposit ion ab ou t th e way we see
th at pai nti ng had mad e in almost five hundred years.
Si nce th e R enaissa nce, almost all pai nting had obeyed a conventio n : th at of on e­
point persp ecti ve. It was a geo me trica l sys te m for depi ct ing th e illu sion of reality,
based on th e fact th at things seem to ge t sm aller as th ey go furth er hom one's eye.
Once the cons tr uction for setting up a perspec tive scene is kno wn , things ca n be
rep resented on a flat shee t of pap er as tho ug h th ey were in sp ace, in th eir right sizes
and positions. To fifteenth-century arti sts, perspective was the phil osopher's stone of
art ; one can hardl y exaggerate th e excit em ent th ey felt in the face of its abi lity to
conj ure up a measurabl e, precise illus ion of th e world. In so me perspecti ve studie s of
Id eal Towns or UccelJo's mazzocchi, thi s exciteme nt alm ost becomes poetry, taking
on th e clarity an d finality of a mathematical mod el. A few years ago, eve ry art stude nt
kn ew the ches tn ut in Vasa ri's Lices, whi ch told how U cce llo would lab our all nig ht at
th ese exercises and , when call ed to bed by his fret ful wife, could onl y ans wer , "0, chc
doicecosa equesta pro spettrca I" (" Ho w delightful per sp ect ive is l" ). An d in fac t it was,
sin ce no more po we rful tool for th e ord ering of visua l ex peri ence in terms of illu sion
had ever be en invented ; indeed, perspect ive in th e fifteen th cent ury was somet imes
see n not on ly as a bra nc h of math em at ics but as an almos t ma gical process, having
som ething of the surprise that our grand parents go t from their K od aks. Apply the
m eth od and the illusi on unfold s ; you press the bu tt on, we do the res t.
Neverthe less , th ere are conve nti ons in persp ective. It pr esupposes a certa in way of
18 I THE MECHANICAL PARADIS E

A word of ca uti on is due here. Grea t artists have many sid es, and different ag es - or
even different cultures at the same moment - extract different things from th em. As
Lawrence G owing has remark ed, the relation between late C ezan n e and Cubism is
quite o n e- sid ed : he would not ha ve ima gined a Cubist painting, for his work " was
reachin g out for a kind of mod ernity that did n ot exist, and still do es nor." He would
not ha ve lik ed Cubist ab straction, th at much is sure. F or C ezann e' s wh ole effort was
directed towards the ph ysical world - the shapes of M ont Ste- Victoire , of the tumbled
inchoate ro cks of the Bibernus quarry, of six dense red appl es or h is gardener' s fac e.
The id ea of Cezan n e as the father of abstract art is based on his remark that on e must
detect in Nature the sphere, the cone, and th e cylin der. What h e meant by that is
any one 's gu ess, since th ere is not a sin gl e sph ere , cone, or cylinder to be seen in
C ezan n e' s work. What is there, esp ecially in th e work of th e last decade and a half of
his life - from 1890 on wa rds, after he finall y abandoned Paris an d settled in solitude in
Aix - is a vast curiosity a bo u t the relativeness of seeing, coupled with an eq ually vast
dou b t tha t he o r an yone else could a pproxima te it in paint. In 1906, a few week s before
he di ed, he wrote to his son in Paris:
I mu st tell you that as a painter I am becomin g mor e clear-sighted befo re Na ture, but with me
the realizetion of my sensations is always pain ful. I cannot atrain th e intensi ty th at is un folded
befor e my senses. I do not have the magn ificent richn ess of colouring that animates Na ture.
Here on the bank of the river th e moti fs multiply ... .
These " m o tifs" were not m erel y rocks and gra sses; they were the relationships
between gra ss and rock , tree and sh adow , leaf an d cloud, which blossomed into an
infin ity of sm all but equall y worth y and interesting' truths each time the old m an
moved his easel or his head . This process of seeing, thi s adding up and weighing of
choices, is what C ezann e' s pe culiar style makes co n cre te : th e broken outl ines, strokes
of pencil laid side by sid e, ar e em b lems of sc ru p u lous ne ss in the midst of a welter o f
doubt. Each painting or watercolour is about th e motif. But it is also about som ething
else - the process of se eing the motif (plate 2). No previous painter had tak en hi s
viewers through this process so frankly. In Titian or Ruben s, it is the final form that
matter s, th e triumphant illusion . But Cezann e tak es yo u ba cksta ge ; there are th e ropes
and pulleys, the wooden back of th e Ma gic M ountain, and the th eatre - as di stinct
from the sing le performance - becomes more com p rehe ns ib le. The Renai ssance
admired an artist's certainty about what he saw. But with Cezanne, as th e critic
Ba rb ara R ose remarked in ano the r con tex t, th e statement : " T h is is what I sec,"
becomes replaced by a questi on: "I s this wha t I see?" You share hi s hesi ta tion s abou t
the position ofa tr ee or a branch; or the final shape of M ont Ste- Vict oire, a nd th e trees
in front of it (plate 3). R elativity is all. Doubt becom es part of th e painting's su b ject .
Ind eed, th e idea that dou bt can be heroic , if it is locked into a st ruc t ure as g ran d as that
of the paintings of C ezan n e's old age, is on e of th e keys to our cen t ury, a touchst one o f
modernity itself. Cubism would tak e it to an extreme.
The idea be gan in 1907, in a warren of ch eap artists' st ud ios kn own as the "B ateau­
Lacoir" or " L au n d ry Boat," at 13 Rue Ravignan in Paris. It was tou ch ed o ff by a
Spaniard , P ablo Pi cass o, then aged twenty- si x. Hi s partner in inventing C u bism was a
2 Paul Cezanne MO il / St e­
Victoirc 19°4-6
Oil on canvas 29 x 36t ins
Philadelphia Museum of Art,
George W, Elkins Collection

3 Paul Cezann e / U OII / si­

Victoire 1906
Oil on canvas 25 x 32t ins
K unsrhaus, Zurich
20 I TH E IvIECHANICAL PARADISE

you ng er and rather more conser vati ve Fren chman, G eo rges Braque, the son of a
hous ep ainter in Normandy. Pi casso alread y had a sm all reputation, based on th e
wistful, etiolated nud es, circus folk , and be ggars he had been painting up to 1905 - th e
so- calle d Blue an d R ose periods of hi s work . But he was so littl e known , an d Braqu e so
wholl y un known, th at in the public eye n either ar tist exis ted. The a ud ienc e for th eir
work m ight have been a dozen people: other painters, mi stresses, an obs cu re young
German d ealer nam ed Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, and one another. Thi s might seem
like a crushing isolati on, but it m eant that th ey were fr ee, as r esearch er s in some ver y
obscure ar ea ofsc ience ar e free . N obod y cared eno ug h to interfere . Their work had no
role as public speech, and so th ere was no public pressure on it to conform. This was
fortunat e, sin ce th ey wer e enga ged in a proj ect which would presentl y see m , from th e
point of view of normal descr iption, quite crazy . Pi casso an d Braqu e wanted to
re pr ese n t the fact that our knowl ed ge ofan object is mad e up ofall possible views of it :
top, sid es, front, b ack . They wanted to comp ress this in spection, wh ich takes time,
into on e moment - one synthesized view. They aim ed to rend er that sense of
multiplicity, whi ch had been th e su b text of Cezan ne 's lat e work, as th e gove rni ng
eleme n t of reality.
On e of their exp erimental materials was the art of oth er cultures. With th eir
ap p rop r iation offorms and moti fs from Afri can art, P icasso an d th en Bra q u e brou ght
to its climax a lon g inter est whi ch ni ne tee n th-cen tury Fran ce had shown in the exo tic,
the dist ant, and th e p rimitive . The French co lon ial emp ir e in Morocco had give n the
exotic im ages of Ber ber and sou kh , dancing girl and war cam el, lion-hunt and R iff
warrior to the ima ger y of Romanti cism , throu gh Delacr oix and his fellow Romanti cs.
By 1900 , technology in the form of the gu n boa t and th e tradin g stea me r had cr eated
another F rench em pire in equat orial Afri ca, whose cu ltural artefact s wer e ritu al
carvings, to which th e French assigned no importance whatsoever as art. T h ey
thou ght of th em as curios ities , an d as su ch th ey we re an insignificant part of th e flood
of raw material th at France was siph on ing fro m A fr ica . Pica sso th ou ght th ey did
matter - but as raw m aterial. Both he and Braque owned African carvin gs, but they
had no anthrop olog ical interest in them at all. They didn 't care ab out their ritual uses,
they kn ew nothing about th eir original tribal meanings (whi ch ass ign ed art a very
different fu nction to an y us e it co uld ha ve in Paris), or abo u t the soci etie s from wh ich
the ma sks cam e. P robably (althou gh the art historian piously hopes it was otherwise)
their id ea of Afri can tribal so ciet ies was n ot far from th e one mo st Frenchmen had ­
jungle d rums, bon es in the noses, mi ssionary ste w . In th is respect , C u b ism was like a
dainty parod y of th e imperi al m odel. The Afr ican ca rvi ngs were an ex p loi ta ble
resource, like copper or palm-oil, and P icasso's use of them was a kind of cu lt ural
plund er .
But th en , wh y use Afr ica n ar t at all? The C u bis ts wer e just about th e first artis ts to
think of doing so. One hundred an d thirty years before, wh en Ben jam in West ad mi red
the tapa cloths, war-clubs, and canoe carvings that had com e ba ck from th e Pa cific
with Ca p tain Coo k and Jos eph Ba n ks - relics of a new world tha t had the strangen ess
of mo on roc ks - no R oyal Ac adem icians took the cue and sta r ted pa inting T ah itian­
 T H E ME CHANICA L PARA DISE / 21

st yle or Maori-fashion . T o depi ct th e monuments ofE aster Island , as William H od ges

did, was one th ing; to imitate th eir st yle, quite anothe r. Yet this was what P icas so did
with hi s Afr ican prot ot yp es, around 1906-8. W he n he began to parod y bla ck art, h e
was stating wh at no eigh tee n th-c en tury artist would ever have imagine d su gge st ing:
that the tr adition of the human figure, wh ich h ad been th e very spine o f W est ern art
for two and a h alf mill ennia, had at last run out; an d th at in or de r to ren ew its vitality,
on e had to look to untapped cu lt ur al resources - the Afr ica ns, re m ote in their
othe rness. But if one co m pa res a work like Picasso' s Les Demoiselles d'A uignon, 1907,
with its African source m aterial (plates 4, 5), the differen ces ar e as strikin g as th e
simi lar ities . What P icas so cared ab out was the formal vitality of African art, whi ch was
for h im in separabl y in vol ved with its ap paren t freedo m to d istort . That the alterations
of the human face and bo dy represented by such figures were n ot E xpressionist
di stortion s, but conven tiona l forms, was perhaps less cle ar (o r at least less in ter esting)
to h im th an to us. They seemed viol ent, an d they offere d th emsel ves as a re cepta cle for
his own panach«. So the wo rk of Pi casso' s so-ca lled " Negro P eriod" has non e of th e
aloofness, th e re se rve d co n tain m ent, of its A fri can protot yp e; its lashing rh ythms
remi nd us th at Pi casso look ed to h is m asks as emb lem s of savagery, of violence
transferred in to th e sp he re of cu lt ure .
'Wi th its hacked contou rs, staring interrogatory eyes, an d gen eral feeling of
insta b ility, Les Demoiselles is sti ll a di sturbin g painting a fte r three qu art ers of a
cen tury, a refut ation of th e id ea that the surp r ise of art , like th e surprise of fashion,
must n ecessarily wea r off. No paintin g ever looked m ore co nv u lsive . N on e sig na lled a
fas ter ch ange in th e h ist or y of ar t. Yet it was anc ho re d in traditi on , and its attack on th e
eye woul d ne ver ha ve be en so sta rtling if its format h ad n ot be en that of th e cla ssical
nu de ; th e three figu res at th e left a re a di stant but unmi sta kabl e ec ho of th at favo urite
ima ge o f the lat e R enaissance, the Th ree G races. Pi casso be gan it th e year C ezann e
di ed , 1906, an d its nearest ancestor seems to ha ve been Ceza nne's m onumental
compos itio n of ba thers displa yi ng th eir bl ockish , ang u lar b odi es be nea th arching trees
(pl at e 7)' Its other lin e of d esc ent is P icas so's S panish heritage. T h e b odi es of th e two
caryatid- like sta nd ing nud es, an d to a lesser d egr ee th eir n eigh bour on th e rig h t, twi st
like EI G reco's figu res. And th e an gular, ha rsh ly lit b lu e space be twee n th em closely
resem b les th e d ra p ery in E l G reco 's D umba rto n O aks V isitation.
T hat Pi casso could give em p ty sp ace th e sam e kind of d istortion a sixteen th­
century art ist reserved for cloth with a body ins ide it points to th e newn ess of L es
Demoiselles. W ha t is so lid , an d wha t void? W hat is opa q ue , a n d w ha t trans pa re n t? T he
qu estions that pe rspe ctive an d mod elling were meant to an swer are precis ely th e on es
Pi casso begs, or rather shoves as ide, in this re ma rka b le pa in ti ng . Inst ead of so lids
(nu de and fruit ) in fro n t of a m emb ran e (th e curtain) bathed in em p tin ess an d light,
Pi casso con ceived Les Demoiselles as thou gh it we re m ad e of a co n ti n uo us su bs ta nce, a
so r t o f pl asma, thi ck a n d in tru sive. If th e painting has any ai r in it at all, it co mes from
th e colours - the pinks an d blues that survive fro m th e wist ful miscrnblisme of hi s
ea rlier wor k, lending Les Demoiselles a peculiarl y ironi c air : wha tever else th ese five
wom en m ay b e, th ey ar e not victims or clowns.
4 Pablo Picasso Les Demoiselles dAoignon Paris (begun M ay, reworked July I 907)
Oi l on canvas 96 x 92 ins: Co llection, The Museum of M odern Art ,
New York, Acquired through the L illie P. Bliss Bequ est

5 Calion !Ha!l ol7gme IHasR

Wood a nd pigm en ts 14 x 6 ins
Brooklyn M useum, Frank L. RIbbo n F und

7 P aul Cezanne Les C ratules Ba igneuses J 1894-19°5

Oi l on ca nv as (10 x 7 5 ~· ins : Nationa l Ga lle ry, Lo ndo n
 }, I

')
•
6 Pablo Pi casso St udyfor Les Demoiselles d' Arignon 1907

C rayon drawin g I 8f x 30 ins: Kup fersrichkabinetr,

K uns trnuse um, Ba sle (phot o H an s Hin z)

24 I TH E M ECHANI CA L P AR ADIS E

They wer e, as every ar t stud ent kn ows, wh or es. P icasso did not name the pain tin g
hi ms elf, and he never liked its final title. H e wanted to call it The A uignou Brothel, afte r
a whoreho use on th e Ca rrel' d 'Aviny o in Barcelona he had vis ited in his student days.
The painting was or igina lly meant to be an allego ry of vene real disea se, en titled The
Wages oj Sill, and in one of th e orig ina l stud ies for it (pla te 6), th e narrative is q uite
clear: at th e cen tre, a sailor carou sin g in a brothel, and on th e left, another man , a
m edi cal st ude nt , wh om Pi casso represented in other stud ies with a self- por trait,
en te ring with a skull, that very Spani sh rem inde r of mortalit y. Vanitas ixmitatum,
omnia uanitas S1l11 / .
In the final painting, however, only th e nud es ar e left. Their formal asp ect was a
favou rite of I 890s' painting, m ern ora bly captured by D egas and T oulouse-Lautr ee; it
is the parade, th e m om ent whe n th e pr ostitutes of th e hou se di spla y th em sel ves to th e
client and he picks one.
B y leaving' out th e client.Picasso turns viewer in to voy eur ; th e sta res of th e five girls
are co ncen trated on wh oever is looking at th e painting. And b y p utting' th e viewer in
th e client's sofa , Pi casso tr a nsmits, with ov erw he lm ing force, the sex ual an xiet y whi ch
is th e real su bjec t of Les Demoiselles. The gaze of th e wo me n is in ter rogatory, or
indiffer ent, or as remote as stone (the three faces on the left wer e, in fact, d eri ved from
arc haic I beri an stone head s that Pi casso had se en in th e L ou vre). Nothing ab out th eir
expressions could be con strued as we lcoming, let alone coq uettish. They are mo re like
ju dges th an houris. And so Les Demoiselles announ ces one of th e recurrent subthem es
of Picasso's art: a fear, amounting to holy terror, of women . This fear was th e psychic
reality behind th e image of Pi cass o th e walk in g scrotum, th e in exh au st ibl e old stud of
th e C ote d ' Az ur, th at wa s so devoutly cultiva ted by th e pr ess and his court from 1945
on . N o painter ever put his anx iety ab out impote nce and cas tra tion more plainl y th an
Pi casso d id in Les Demoiselles, or proje ct ed it throu gh a m or e violen t di slocati on o f
form . Even th e me lon, that swee t a nd pulpy fr ui t, looks like a wea po n.
This co mb ina tion of form and su bjec t alar me d the few peopl e who saw L es
Demoiselles. G eorges B raque was horrifi ed by its ugliness and in ten sit y - Pi casso , he
said , had been "drinking tur pe ntine and spitting fire, " m or e like a carny performer
than an artist - b u t in 1908 he painted a rather tim id and lab ori ous resp on se to it . In
Braqu e' s Crand N il (pl at e 8), th e brusque pal m-fron d hatch in g of P icasso' s faces is
much soften ed ; but fr om then on , Braque an d P icasso would be locke d in a
pa rtnership of q ues tions and resp ons es, " roped together like mountai neers, " as
B raque memo ra bly said. It was one of th e great part ne rs hips in the h isto ry of art:
P icas so's im petuous anx iet y and ast on ishi ng' power to real ize se nsa tio n on canvas,
married off to Braq ue's sense o f or der, ntcsttre, and visua l p rop riet y. S om e ideas are too
fu nd ament al , and co n ta in too grea t a cultural loading, to be th e in vention of one man .
S o it was with C u bis m .
Pi casso cleared th e gro und for Cu bism , but it was Braque who did m ost to develop
its voca bulary over th e next tw o yea rs, 1 9 08~. The fox, as I saiah Berlin ha s sa id ,
kn ows m an y thi ngs, but th e hed geh og knows one big thin g. Picasso was th e fox, the
virtu oso . Braqu e was th e hed geh og, and th e a ile big thing he knew was Ce za n ne, with
8 G eorg-es Braque Grand N il H)o8
O il on canvas sst x 39 ins
Private Collecti on, Paris
9 G eorges Braque H ouses at L'Estaqne 1908

O il on canva s 28t x 23 ins K unstm useum , Berne,

Hermann and Marg rir R up f F oundation

10 D . H . Ka h n wei ler Photogra p]: ofHouses at L'Est aqnc 1909

 THE MECHANICAL PARADISE I 27

whom he identified almost to the point ofobsession. He admired Cezanne, as he put it,
for " sweeping painting clear of the id ea of mastery ." He lo ved Cezanne's doubt, his
do ggedness, his conce n tra tion on the truth of the motif, and his lack of eloq ue nce.
These, he knew, were expressed in the very structur e of Ce zan ne's paintings, with its
accumulated fusing of little tilted facet s. And so he wanted to see if that so lid ity of
cons truction and ambi guity of reading could be pushed further whil e a painter
remain ed in the actual pre sence of his motif; Braque was not yet interest ed in the
abstractions of the studio, and he felt a ne ed to be on the spot. Specificall y, he needed
Cezanne's own moti fs, and in the sum me r of 1908 he went off to paint in L' Estaque, in
th e South of France, wh ere C ezanne had work ed . His work th er e began as almost
straight Ce zanne. How it dev eloped can best be seen b y comparing a sligh tly lat er
Estaque painting with a photo of th e view Braqu e was paintin g' : a country hous e seen
av er a bu sh y slope, with a tree sloping awa y to the left (plates 9,10) . Braque turned thi s
sim ple motif into a curious pla y of ambiguiti es. E very scrap of detail is ed ited out
of th e view . One is left with an arrangem ent of prisms and triangles, child's- block
hous es, the scale of which is hard to judge: relati ve size was one of the first casu alti es of
the Cubist war against perspecti ve. D espite th e bu sh on th e right, whose branche s
ha ve taken on a sprightly, emblematic quality like palm-fronds , th e rest of th e
landscap e is static, alm ost mineralized. In his wish to see behind th e tr ee on the left ,
Braque ab olished its foliage and brought in to view more hous es, who se planes con ne ct
into the br anches and trunk of the tr ee, immo vabl y locking' foreground and
backgr ound in the top left quarter of th e painting tog ether. Yet the houses giv e no
feeling of solid ity; th eir shad ing is eccentric, and some of th eir corners - not a bly th e
on e of the lar ge house at the centre of the com position, clos est to th e eye - could be
either sticking out of the canvas or pointing back in to it . The Cubist "look," offo rms
sta cked up th e canv as in a pil e, as th ou gh the gro und had rot ated throu gh 90 degrees to
gr eet on e's eye , was now full y fixed in Bra que's work .
The second place to which Braque followed Cezan ne was the village of La Roche­
Guyon, in the S ein e Vall ey som e m iles outside Paris . By coincid en ce or design, it gave
him a landscap e th at embodi ed, ready - made in natu re, th e fro n ta lity towards which
his art was moving. The valley in which L a Roche-Gu yon stands is lined with tall
chalk cliffs, greyish-white and sown with flints . The town is built between the riv er
and the cliffs, and its main build ing is a sixtee nth-c entury castl e - th e cluiteau of the de
la R ochefoucauld fam ily. This castl e is built up again st th e chalk cliff, and Braque
mad e it his motif: that jumble of conical spires and triangular gabl es, ver tically
stacked . On top, th ere is a thirteenth-century N orman tower - the roche itself, a ruin in
19°9 , still de serted toda y, capping th e view with a big strong cylinder. Braque first
painted it from what is now th e parking lot of the village hotel (p late II) . The face of
th e cliff blocked the perspective ; th e shape s of the cas tle ascended th e hill alread y
flatt ened, as it wer e, against th e canvas . He th en scrambled up the ch alk bluff to the
side and looked at the castle from an angle that gave him an even more complicated
geo me try of gables and turrets, cascad ing musicall y down into the vall ey (plate 12).
So could Braqu e hav e inven ted Cubism on his own? Qu ite possibly; but it would
 -

11 G eorge s Braq ue Cluitean ric L a R oche-Guy on IgOg

Oil on canvas 31t x 23-1- ins
M odern a Mu scer, Stock hol m

12 G eor ges Bra q ue La Roche-Cuvon Ig0g

Oil on canvas 36 x 28t ins
Van Abbcmuseum, Eindhoven

 TH E lVI E CH ANI C AL PAR ADI S E / 29

ha ve lac ked th e power an d ten si on tha t Picasso brought to it. For P icasso , m or e than
an y ot her pa inter of th e tw entieth cent ury - and ce rtain ly more than th e co nce pt ua lly
in clined Braque - predicated his art on ph ysi cal se ns ati o n. He had an un equalled .
ab ili ty to realize form: to ma ke yo u fee l the s hap e, the weight, the ed gin ess, the silen ce
of thin gs . T his is clea r fro m hi s handlin g of a m otif similar to B raqu e' s pa in tin gs at La
R oche-Gu yon . In 1909, Picasso wen t painting in northern Spain, in the villa ge of
H orta d e E bro . H is ca n vas of Tile Fact ory, H orta de Ebro ; 1909 (plat e 13), ha s th e gre y
im pacted solid ity of a galena cry stal, and de spite th e ir rati on ality of th e shading - for
th e treatm ent of the b u ild ing s is ve ry simil ar to Braque's h ouse at E staq ue - on e feels
tha t th e whole im age cou ld almost b e pi ck ed, like sculpture, off the can vas , including
th e hill s in the di stan ce behind the palm tre es . And ind eed , within a few years Picasso
would be turning this pred ilec tion in to real sc u lp t ure, so com menc ing a par all el career
as th e m ost s uc cinctly in ventive scu lptor of the twentieth ce nt ury . His C u bist
co ns tr uc tions of around 1912, such as the me tal Guitar (p lat e 51), attest to Pi cass o's
extra or d in ary gift for thinkin g laterall y, be yond th e given ca te go r ies. Fo r the first time
in the h is tory of art, sc u lp t ure is conc eive d not as a sol id mass (mo de lle d cla y, cas t
bronze, carved s to ne or wood ), but as an open const r uction of planes . It is doubt ful
wh ether any sin gle sculptu re ha s ever had , b y su ch decepti vely humbl e m eans, a
co m pa rab le effec t on the course of its own medium. This rusty ti n gui tar is t he po in t
from which Ru ssian C onst ru ct ivism, via Tatlin, begins its co urse ; in th e 'Vest, it
in it iates a tr aditi on which r u ns to David Smith and Anthon y C aro, that of assem bl ed,
welded m et al scu lpt ure.
But in th e m ean tim e, the paintings of Braqu e and Pi cass o were m oving rap id ly
toward s ab stracti on - or rather , to th at point wh er e onl y eno ug h sig ns of the r eal world
rem ain ed to su pp ly a ten sion between the reality o u ts ide th e pain tin g an d th e
complicated m edita tions o n visual lan gu age within the fram e. As thi s happened, th eir
styl es moved tog ethe r and b ecame, at least to th e casual eye, almost ind istinguish abl e.
(It goe s without sa yin g th at close looking di sp els this: the re is a great d eal of differenc e
b etween th e ope n , alm ost impressi on ist ic brushmarks and ge n tle shading of Braqu e
and Pica sso's tighter , harsher fact ure, jagged an d cornpr essed.) B y 19 II th ey we re
painting like S iames e twi ns, as a com parison of two ima ges of gu itar ists, Braque's The
Portuguese and Picasso's "Ma Jotie, " will show (plates 15, 14). There is no way of
rea ssembling a view fro m th ese paintings. Solid, appreh en sibl e reality has vani shed .
They are metaphors of relati vity an d connection ; in th em , th e world is imagin ed as a
network of fleeting events, a t wit ch in g ski n of nuances. Fragments of lettering (B AL,
JvlA J OLI E, a ba r bill readin g 10.40 , a musical clef) and clu es to re al t hi ng s (th e strings
an d so u n d- hole of the guitar in Braquc' s Portugucscs materiali ze bri efl y in th is flux, th e
wa y th e ba ck s of car p see n in a bro wn pond, flicking away from the surface , s h im mer
in t he water. This sta ge of C u b ism had somet h ing in common with the molecular vie w
of th e world th at found its gra n dest m od ern rea liza tion in Seura t's GrandeJ a/te and
M onet's waterlilies. But neither Picasso no r Braque wa s in teres te d , as M on et
s u p re m ely was , in the effec ts of light. Their paintin gs of 191 I h ave very little air in
th em , an d the con ti n uo us vibra tio n and tw inkl in g of brush -strok es aga in st the
13 Pa b lo Pica sso The Factory, Horta de Ebr» 1909
Oil on canvas 20f x 23t ins
Herm itage, L eningrad (ph oto Gira ud on)

14 Pablo Picasso "kIa]o/ie" Paris (winte r 1 9 I 1 - 1 2)

Oil on canvas 3 9 ~ x 25~ ins

C ollection, The M useum of M odern Art, New York,

Acquire d th rough th e L illie P. Bliss Bequest

15 George s Braq ue The Portuguese 191 1

Oil on camas +6:1- x 32:1- ins

K unst muscu m, Bask (ph oto Gira udon)
13 Pablo Picasso The Factory, Horta de Ebro 1909
Oil on canvas 20} x 23t ins
Hermitage, L eningrad ( p hoto G iraudon)

14 Pablo Picasso 'iHaJ olie" Paris (winter I 9 I I - I2)

Oil on canvas 39 ~ x 2 5~ ins

Co llection, The Mu seum of Mod ern Art, New York,
Acquired through th e Lillie P. Bliss Bequ est

IS Geo rges Braq ue The Portugnesc 191I

Oil on cam as +6t x ] 2+ ins
Ku nstmuseurn , Basic (p ho to G irnudon)

I
 l

I I I

32 I THE MECHANICAL PARADISE

discontinuous ge ometry of their structure is set forth, not as light, but as a property of
matter - that plasma, the colour of guitar backs, zinc bars, and sm oke rs ' fingers, of
which the Cubist world was composed .
No painter had ever produced more baffling images . As description of a fixed form,
they are useless. But as a report on multiple meanings, on process, they are exq u isite
and inexhaustible : the world is set forth as a field ofshiftin g relationships that includes
the onlooker. Braque and Picasso were not mathematicians. There is nothing
Euclidean about the "geometry" that underlies these works of 191 I ; to the extent that
their broken lines and altering angles are geometrical at all, they represent a geometry
of allusion, incompletion, and frustration . Still less were they philosophers. But to
study works like Braque's Soda, 191 I (plate 16), is to sense that they, in the sphere of
pain rin g, are part of tha t grea t tide of modernist thought which included Einstein and
the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. "The misconception which has haunted
philosophic literature throughout the centuries," Whitehead wr ot e, "is the notion of
independent exi st ence. There is no such mod e of existenc e. Every entity is only to be
understood in terms of the way in which it is interwoven with the re st of the universe ."
One would be surprised to learn that either Braque or Picasso had read these lines;
nevertheless, they are a useful subtext to this phase of Cubism.
Paintin g could not have gone much further in this direction without shedding all
clues to th e real world. This, neither Braque nor Picasso wanted to do. "I paint forms
as I think them, not as I see them," Picasso once remarked, but he st renu ous ly denied
that he had ever pain ted an abstract picture in his life; the d emands of sensuous rea li ty
were always too strong. So the next stage of Cubism recoiled from the abstractness of
those paintings Of1 91 1. Braque had already begun to stress the material density of his
paintings with "ordinary," non-art materials, mixed with the paint to produce a
gritty, sand papery surface - sand , sa wdust, or iron filing s. Characteristically, Pi casso
pushed this to an extreme by taking an identifiable slice of the real world, a piece of
oilcloth printed with a design of caning and meant to cover a cafe table, and sticking
it in one of his still-lives (plate 17). And so collage - " glueing" - was born. The
idea of making a picture by cutting and pasting was not new. It had existed in folk
art throughout the nineteenth century, and many middle-class nurseries had their
decorative scre ens covered in cherubs, animals, flowers, and the like , cut from
patterns and magazines . Picasso's originality lay in introducing collage te chniques
into an eas el painting. Ifh e had used real chair-caning, the effect might not have been
so startling. By using a printed image of caning, Picasso was placing a product of mass
m anufa cture in the midst of its traditional opposite, the hand-made obj ect. R eal chair­
caning was at least a craft product, and came from the same orde r of thin gs as a
painting. But the oilcloth in this still-life of 19 12 opened art to the industrial present in
a quite unprecedented way.
In linking Cubism back to the real world that it had almost quit in 191 I, collage gave
Picasso and Braque bold er and clearer shap es to play with ; and these things were
emblems of modernity based on industrial ma ss production - newsprint, product
packaging, department sto re wallpaper, and so forth. Occasionall y they were mildly
"f 16 Ge orges Braque Soda
Spring 191 I
Oil on can vas I 4l ins dia meter
) Collection, The Mu seum of Modern Art ,
f New York, Acquired throu gh th e Lillie P.
).
Bliss Bequ est
~

s
1

17 Pablo Pica sso Still Life mith Chair Caning 19 12

lOt x I J:l- ins

C olla ge
Mu sce Pi casso, Pari s (photo Giraudon)
34 / TI-IE M ECHANI CAL PARADISE

ironic allusions to a craft past that had been rend ered less accessible by mechanization
and the growing cost of labour: Br aque, who had been a housepainter' s apprentice in
N ormand y, thu s "quoted" the techniques of painting fake wood grain and imit ation
marble in his own paintings. Their paintings and collages now assumed a br oader,
more cogent, almost classical air; and in this th ey were joined by Juan Gris, in whom
Cubism found its Piero della Francesca -a mind of the coolest anal ytic al tempe r. Gris
did not like to use found obje cts. They wer e too chan cy for him ; the y could not
possibly ha ve the deducti ve finality of a painted shape, whose exact profile, hu e, and
tone had been arrived at through lon g' reflecti on . Neverth eless, he saw the world of
chea p production and mass production as a sort of Arcadia, a pastoral landscape that
could be contained on th e top ofa studio tabl e. A painting like Still-Life (Fant omas},
19J5 (plate 18), is a veritable anthology of his pr edilections: the calm shifts betw een
opacity and transparency in th e ove rlapping planes, th e catalogu e of peintre­
dccoratcur effects - wood grain, wallp aper dad o, fake marbl e ; the newspaper, th e pipe,
and the pap erback thriller. With Gris's desire to extra ct a measured poetry from
ordinary mod ern thin gs, one is again in the world of Apollinaire's Zone:

Ya ll read handbills, ca tal ogu es , post ers th at shou t a lit loud:

H er e' s this morning's poetry, and for pr ose you've go t the newsp ap ers,

Si xp enn y detect ive novels full o f cop s to ries,

Bi ographies o f big sho ts, a th ou sand differ ent titl es,

L ett ering on billboards and walls,

D oorplates and pos ters squawk like parrot s.

C ubist Paris is reced ing toda y. It died even faster than Matisse's Co te d' Azul',
buried und er high rises and drugstores, bulld ozed flat to m ake way for Beaubourg and
th e Hailes developm ents, the victim of sixti es chic and the relentless kitsch­
modernism of le sty le Pomp/doli. It is still th ere, only in pockets : the glass and iron city
of small arcad es, the marble city of cafe table s, the place of zinc bars, dominoes, dirty
chess boards, and crumpled newspa per; the br own city of old paint and pipes and
pan elling; histor y to us now, bu t once the land scape of th e modernist d ream . It was an
inward city, whose main produ ct was rever ie. Onl y one major Cubist wanted to mak e a
public styl e of his work . He was F ernand L eger (1881- 1955), and his work was a
sustained confession of modernist hope. L eger believ ed, as one cannot ima gine
Br aque doin g, that he could make images of th e machine age that would c ut across the
barri ers of class and educa tion - a didactic art for the man in th e stree t, not highly
refined, but clear, definite, pragmatic, and root ed in everyday experien ce.
L eger was th e son of a Normand y farme r, an instincti ve socialist who became a
pra ctisin g on e in the tr enches of World War 1.

I found mysel f [he wrote of his militar y service] on a level with the wh ole of the F re nc h
people ; m y new co m p anion s in the E nginee r C orps wer e min e rs, na vvies, wo rk ers in m et a}
and wood . Amo ng th em I di sco ver ed th e F re nc h peopl e . . . th eir exac t se nse of useful realiti es,
and of their ti m ely applicati on in th e mi d d le of th e life-and -d eath drama into which we had
been plunged . M ore than th at: I found th em poets , in ven tors o f eve ryday p oet ic ima ges - I am

:l

18 Ju an Gris Fantomas 1915

v Oi l on canvas 234 x 2 8~ ins
:l N ation al Ga llery of Art , Washington D C , C hester D ale Fund
1

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e
)'

.1

"

:I

36 I THE MECHANICAL PARADISE

th inking of th eir colourful and adaptable use o f slang. On ce I had got m y teeth into that sort o f
realit y, I never let go of obj ect s again .
H e painted his fellow soldiers, in The Cardplayers, 1917 (plate 19), as th ou gh they
were automata, made from tubes, barrels, and linkages; the forms of m echanized
warfare - Leger confessed that his great visual epiphan y in the trenches had been "the
br eech of a 75-millimetre gun in the sunlight, the magic of light on white metal" - are
applied to th e human body, and even the insignia and medals on these robots might as
well be factory brands. It may all look more auster e to us than it was m eant to. What
interested L eger ab out the machine was not its inhumanity - he was not a Kafka or a
Fritz Lang - but its adaptability to systems, and this is the underlying th em e of his
grandest social image, Three Wom en, 1921 (plate 20). With its geometrically simplified
bodi es and furniture, as deliberate as an Alexandrine, it is one of th e supreme didactic
paintings of French classicism, embodying an idea of society-as-machine, bringing
harmony and an end to loneliness. This philo sophical har em , though dealing with a
subj ect not unlike that of Picas so's Demoiselles, is far from it in spirit. In stead of Picasso's
fragmented vision of les belles dames sans merci, we are offered a metaphor of human
relationships working as smoothly as a clock, all passion sublimated, with the binding
energy of desire transformed int o rhym es of shap e.
There were some artists to whom this mechanical age was mo re than a context, and
ver y much more th an a pretext. They wanted to explore its ch aracteri sti c ima ges of
light, structure, an d dyn amism as subjects in th eir work. The most gifted of them in
the Ecole de Paris, and still the least appreciated today, was Rob ert D elaunay
(1885-1941). For him, the mast er-image of cultur e was the Eiffel Tower, which he
viewed with real ecstasy as an ecume nical object , th e social cond en ser of a new ag·e. H e
was not the onl y one to think so . The first regular radio broadcast system had been
installed on th e Tower in 1909 ..« La tour if!' Uuroers s'adresse," Delauna y not ed on his
first stud y of it, dedica ted to his wife and fellow painter Son ia T erk, in that year - and
som ething of th e spirit of Delaunay's renderings of th e structure finds its way into
Vincente Huidobro's EUTel Tower, written in 1917 and dedicated to D elaunay :
Eiffel Tower
Guitar of th e sky
Your wir eless telegra ph )'
Draws word s to you
AS;1 rose-arbour draws be es
In the night th e S ein e
No lon ger flows
Telescop e or bugl e
E iffel Tower
And a beehi ve o f word s
Or th e night's inkwell
At the dawn' s base
A s pide r with wir e feet
S pins its web with clouds
a
S

n
g

19 F ernand L eger The Cardplayers 1917

Oil o n ca nv as s ot x 76 ins
K roll e r-Miill er M useu m , O tte rlo
n

n
LS

d
o

20 Ferna nd Leger Three Wall/ell (Le Crand Dejeuner) 1921

O il on canvas 7 2 ~ x 99 ins: Co llection, T he Mu seum of Mo dern Art,
New York, M rs. Simon G uggenheim Fu nd
38 / TH E MECHANICAL PARADISE

Do
re
nu
fa
sol
la
ti
do
We arc high up:

A bird ca lls

In the ant enn ae

Of the wireless

I t is the wind
The wind fr om Europe
Th e electric wind

Something of hi s spirit ; but not all. For D elaunay avoided the pastoral imagery that
colours Huidobro's lines: the rose-arbour, the beehive, th e bird in the thicket of
antennae. He wanted a pi ctorial sp eech that was en tirely of this century, based on
rapid interconnection, changing viewpoints, and an adoration of "good" technology,
and the Tower was the supreme practical example of this in th e daily life of Paris. His
friend and collabora tor, the poet Blai se Cendrars, remarked in 1924 that

N o formula of art kn own up to now can pretend to give pla stic res olution to th e Eiffel Tower.
Realism shrank it; the old law s of Italian persp ective d iminish ed it. Th e Tower rose over
Pari s, slend er as a hatpin. When we retreated from it, it dominated Paris, st ark and
perpendicular. Wh en we cam e close, it tilted and leaned ov er us . S een from the first platform
it co rkscre we d around its own axis, and seen fr om the top it coll ap sed into itself, d oing th e
splits, its neck pulled in . . . .

Delaunay must have painted the Tower thirty times, and he was almost the onl y
artist to paint it at all - although it makes a modest appearance in an oil sketch by
S eurat, and crops up now and again in the backgrounds of the Douanier Rou sseau .
The Red Tomer, 1911-12 (plate 2 1), shows how fully Delaunay could reali ze the
sen sa tion s of vertigo and visual shu ttling tha t Cendrars described. The Tower is seen,
alm ost literally, as a prophet of the future - its red figure, so reminiscent of a man,
ramping among th e silvery lead roofs of Paris and th e distant puffballs of cloud. That
vast gr id risin g over Paris with the sky reeling through it became his fundamental
im age of modernity : light seen through structure.
Delaunay extended thi s image into almost pure ab straction with a se ries of Windows
- th e sky seen through another kind of grid , an ordinary casement, with glim pses of
th e Tower appearing briefly to locate th e scene in Paris. Guillaume Ap ollinaire
illu strated th ese m elting, lyri cal ima ges with words :

Raise the blind

And see how th e window opens

21 Rob ert D elaun ay Th e Red T OIPer 1 911 -1 2

Oil on canvas 49t x ] 6 ins
Solomon R. G uggenheim IVluSC UlTI , Ne w York
 40 I TH E MECH ANI CAL PARA DISE

If hand s cou ld weave light, thi s was don e by spiders

Bea u ty pallor unfathom abl e indi gos

F ro m th e red to th e green all the yellow di es

Par is Vancouve r H yer es M ainten on

N ew York and th e W est Indies

T he window ope ns like an orange

T he beautiful fruit ofl igh t.

For both R obert and Son ia D elaunay, th e em b lem o f thi s "beautiful fruit ," thi s
s u ffus ing ene rgy that sim u ltane ou sly irradiat ed all ob jec ts, was the disc. This was th e
b asic un it of Robert Dela un ay's am b itio us all egory of mod ernity, hi s H omage to
Bleri ot, 1914 (pl at e 22). In it, all hi s favo urite em b lems of n ewn ess (T owe r, radio
tel egraphy, av ia tio n ) are swept tog eth er into a paean to th e m an h e calle d ,
sign ifican tly, Ie grand Constructcur>- th e grea t C on structor - a phrase m eant to suggest
not onl y th at pion eer flyer s had to scratch- b u ild th eir craft but tha t a new co n cep tion
of th e world , a different n et wor k of id eas, was bei ng asse m b led from th eir flights. B y
flyin g th e Chann el, Bleri ot had " co ns t ructe d " a brid ge more imposin g than an y
ph ysical st ruc t ure co uld b e. Homage to Bleriot is almost a religi ous painting, an an geli c
con ce p tio n of m od ernism, with its box-kit e b iplane floatin g pa st th e E iffel T ow er in a
glo wing rnand orla of col ou r and th e smalle r, Bleriot-ty pe monoplane rising to meet it ,
lik e a ch erub; whil e the dis cs that stood for IMe intellcttual, pien d'tunore in D elaun ay' s
sy m bolis m be come ass imi late d to th e circ les of aircra ft prop ell ers , radial engi ne s,
F re n ch air- force cocardes, an d s poked wire wh eels .
Nothing dates more visibl y th an im ages d rawn from technolog y or fashion , and th e
fac t that D elauna y' s en th us ias m for th e new em bod ied its elf in obj ects now so
ob viously old remind s us of the age , almost the antiquity, of hi gh ea rly mod ernism.
Museums, with their neutral white walls (the clean box is th e Aleph of art history ,
co n tain ing a ll possibiliti es simultan eou sly) an d their fee ling of a per petual present,
tend to mak e art seem newer t han it is . You ha ve to pinch you rse lf to remem ber that
wh en th e paint was fres h on th e D elaunays and Cubist Pi cassos, wom en wore hob bl e
skir ts an d rod e aro u n d in P anh ard s and Bedeli as . That feeling of di sjuncture - th e
sens e of the old n ess of mod ern art - beco mes acute whe n yo u reflect on the on ly major
ar t m o vement (apart from la pittura metafi sica, wh ich wa s not so mu ch a m ovement as
th e sho rtl ived st ylisti c meetin g of d e C hi r ico and C ar ra) that came o ut of Italy in th e
t wentieth ce n t u ry.
F u t urism was the inv ention of F ilippo Tomm aso Marinetti (1876-1 944), part
lyrical genius, part organ gri n de r, and , in lat er years, part Fascist dema gogu e. H e was

b y hi s ow n accou nt th e m ost m od ern man in hi s own country. By any ima ginable

stand ards h e was a si ng u lar creatu re, sired, as it were , b y G abriele d ' Annunzio o u t of

a turbin e, inheriting the tireless and rep etitive en ergy o f th e latter and th e

opportunisti c dand yism of th e for me r. F or M arinetti wa s th e firs t international agent­

. provocateur of m od ern art . His id eas affected th e en tire E uro pea n auant-garde : not

onl y in Ital y, but as far afield as Ru ssia , where th e F uturist wor ship of th e ma chine an d

 o
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I,

n
;y
Iy
Ie
la
it,
r's
~s ,

he
so
111 .

ile
he
or
as 22 Rob ert Delauna y HOII/age /0 Blcriot 1914
he Oil on canvas 76t x 50t ins: Ku nstmu seurn, Basle,
Emanuel Hoffmann Fo undation (photo Hans Hi nz)
Ht

ole
of
he
nt­
lOt
nd
42 / T H E M E CH ANI CAL P ARA D IS E

its P ro me thean sens e of te chnology as the solven t of all soc ial ills became a central
issue for th e C on structivi sts afte r 19 13 , and as near as Switzerla nd, where the F u turist
techniqu es of si m u lta ne ous so u n d-poe ms, nonsen se verse, co n fro nta tion, and
pamphleteerin g were in cor porat ed into Dada durin g the wa r. Much of the m yth of
modern ar t was crea ted by pac kaging , and Marinetti was an ex pe rt at pa ckagin g. H e
de vised a scenario of con fro n tatio n in whi ch eve r y kind of human beha viour cou ld
e ven tually be seen as "ar t," and in th is way he be came the Italian godfat her of all later
perform an ce pieces, happenings, and actes gratutts. H e pro po sed a film to be called
Futurist L ife, which wo uld include suc h seq ue nces as "How a F u turis t slee ps, " and a
" futuri st st roll - stud y of new ways of walkin g," featurin g' th e " ne u tra list walk," th e
" in ter ven tionis t walk, " and th e "F uturis t m ar ch. " In I 9 17, he wro te ske tc hes for one­
acr ballets in which a gir l execute d the " D anc e of th e Ma chine-Gun" and th e "Dance
of th e Aviatrix :"
T he danseuse must form a continual palpita tion of blu e veils. On her chest, like a fl ower, a
large celluloid propeller ... her face dead white und er a white hat shapeel like a monoplane ...
she will shake a sign prin teel in red: 300 meta s- 3 spins - climb. . . . T he danseuse will heapup a
lot of green cloth to simulate a green mountain, and then will leap over it.

H e con cei ved a "Var iety Theatre, " " born as we ar e fr om elec tr icity . . . fed by sw ift
actuality," whose purpose would be to wrap the audie nce in a thund er ou s se nso riu m ,
"a th eatre of ama ze me nt, record-breaking, and bod y-m ad ne ss," er otic and nihilist,
who se her o wo u ld be " the ty pe of th e ecce n tr ic American , th e impression that he giv es
of exc iting grotesquerie, of fr igh te ning dyn amism , his cru de jokes, his eno r mo us
brutalities . .. ." Su ch fantasies of absolute modernity wou ld go d eep in to th e stream of
th e «oant-garde in the 1920S, affecti ng Fra nc is Pi cab ia, G eor ge Grosz, Vladi mi r
T atlin,]ohn Heartfield , and, in fact, nearl y eve ryo ne wh o was inter est ed in pro jecting
violent, ironi c, and cinematic im ag es of that gr eat condense r of moral chaos, th e Ci ty .
M ari netti's ver ba l images o f it predict what collag e would lat er do in the realm of th e
eye , summ on ing' up a d em ented co n tinu u m of movement, noise, imperiou s ad s,
flash ing lights at nightfall :
.. . nostalgic shadows besiege the city br illiant revival of streets that channel a smoky swarm
of workers by da y two horses (30 metres tall) rolling golden balls with their hoofs G l O C O NDA
PU RG AT IVE WATER S crisscross of t rrr trrrrt Elevated trrrr trrrrr overhead trrr omb one
whissstle ambulance sirens and firetr ucks transformation of the stree ts in to sp lend id cor rido rs
to guide push logic necessity the crowd toward trepidation + laught er + music-h all
upro ar F O LIES-BE RGER E E l\ l PIRE CRE ME-E C LIPSE tu bes of mercury reel red red blue violet
huge lett er- eels of gold purpl e diamond fire Futurist defiance to the weepy night .. ..
Marin erri, T he Variety Theatre, 19 13.

M ar in etti 's enemy was th e past. H e atta cked history and m emory with op eratic
zea l, and a wid e ran ge of objects and cus to ms fell under his disapproval, from
G io vanni Bellini altar pieces (o ld) to tango-teas (insufficientl y se xy), from Wa gner's
Parsifal (moonshine) to th e in er ad icable I tali an love of pasta - wh ich Marin etti
condemned as passeiste in 1 9~ 0 , on the ground s that "it is h eavy, b ru talizi ng, and gro ss
 THE IvI ECH A NI CAL PARA DISE I 43

. .. it indu ces sceptici sm and p essimism. S paghetti is no food for fighters. " E ven th e
im age o f th e G I OCO NDA P UR G ATI VE W A T ER S in th e passa ge quot ed above is proto­
Dad a, in which a brand n ame (the M ona Lisa has been used to adve rtise all sorts of
pr od uc ts fro m I talian hairpins to Argentin ian jam) is pressed into service to ind icat e
t hat Leonardo 's po rtra it, alon g with th e rest of the R enaissance, gives Marinerti th e
shits - thi s, six years before M ar cel Ducharnp 's scurrilous LHOOQ , th e m ous tache
on th e Jltlona Lisa.
'W ith ever y reason, Marinetti calle d himself fa ca.fl'eina dell'Europa, "the caffein e of
E ur ope ." T h e nam e " F ut ur ism" was a brilliant ch oice, ch alle nging bu t vague ; it
co u ld sta nd for any anti-h istori cal cape r, but its cen tra l id ea - t r um pe ted forth ove r
an d over again b y M arinetti an d his grou p - was that technology had cr eated a new
kind o f m an, a class of ma chine visionaries , co m posed of M arine tti and an yon e else
who wanted to join. The m achin e was ab out to redraw th e cu lt ural m ap o f E urop e (as
indeed it was, th ough not in th e wa y the Futurists h oped) . M achinery was power; it
was freed om fr om hi st ori cal restraint. Perhaps th e Futurists would not hav e loved th e
fu ture so much if th ey did not come from a country as technologically backw ard as
Ital y. "Multicoloured billboard s on the gree n of th e fields, iron bridges th at ch ai n th e
hills togeth er , surgica l train s that pi erce th e blue bell y o f th e mountain s , eno rm ous
turbin e pipes, n ew muscl es of the earth, may you be praised b y th e Futurist poets,
si nce yo u des troy th e old sickly cooing se nsi tivi ty of th e ear th !" This would become
the cr edo o f every Italian property developer o f th e sev enties, and the progre ssive
d estru ction of th e It alian co un trys ide an d the an nihi lation of Ital y's coastline are th e
prose ex p ress ion of th at O edipal brutality wh ose poetry was Futuri sm .
f
O f all m achin es, the car was the most poet icall y charged. It formed the cen tra l
im age o f th e F irst Futurist Man ifesto, publ ish ed in Le Figaro in 19° 9 :

We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness.

Co urage, audacity and revolt will be essential ingredients of our poetr y.

We affi rm tha t the world 's magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty ; the beaut y of

speed . A racing car whose hood is ado rne d by great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath - a
roaring car that seems to run on shra pne l - is mor e beautiful than the Victory of Sam athrace.
We will glor ify war - the world 's onl y hygiene . ...
We will sing of great crowds excited by wor k, by pleasure, and by riot ; we will sing of the
mult icolour ed, polyph onic tides of revoluti on in the modern capitals. . . .

Th e problem for the arti st s wh o gathe re d aro u n d M arin etti before World War I
was how to tran slate this kind of vision into paint . The first possibility seem ed to be
th e techn ique o f breakin g light and co lour down into a field of stipp led clot s, whi ch
deri ved fr om French neo-Imp ressi onism and had be en wor ked into a system und er
the nam e of Di visi on ism by Italian pain te rs in th e nin et ies. Divisio nis rn, for you ng
s ar tists of th e Futurist temp er , had two com me ndab le features. F irst , it offered a means
of an aly zing ene rgy and so sk irting th e inherent immobility of paint on canvas .
s S econd, it was load ed (s urp risi ng ly eno ug h) wi th political implication s, bein g wid ely
44 I THE IVIECHA NI CA L PA RADISE

regarded as the styl e of anarch ist s and soc ial reformers . Pa ul Signac, Se ura t's closest
follower, had been a commi tte d, th ou gh non -violent, ana rc hist. For a paint er at work
in the 1900S in Ital y, Divisioni sm was the ra dica l sty le par excellence. T he mos t gifte d
of the young Futurist art ists, Um berto Boccioni - soon to fall off his horse and d ie
durin g a ca valr y exercise in Verona in 1916, in th e war th at he and M arin etti had
praised as th e hygiene of civiliza tion - resorted to it on a her oic scale in The City Rises,
19IO-11 (plate 23), his paean of joy to indu stry and heavy constr uc tion. Boccioni had
frequented th e outs kir ts of M ilan, where new ind us tr ial co ns tr uc tion was in full
sw ing : "I am nau seat ed by old walls and old palaces," he wrot e in 1907 . " I want th e
new, th e ex pressive, th e formi da ble." Formi da ble is th e word for T he City R ises, with
its mu scula r red horse d issol vin g und er th e power of its ow n ene rgy, in a sh imme r of
lambent brush - st rokes ; th e stra ining cables and twist ing, mann er ed figures of
workmen co nta in more th an a m em or y of its ap parent source, T in toretto's Raising of
the Cross in th e Scu ola d i S . M ar co, Venice.
But th e probl em of paint ing m ovem ent rem ained ; an d to so lve it, th e F uturists
resorted to Cubism and to pho tog ra phy. They we re intrigued by th e new techniqu e of
X- ray photograph y, whi ch saw throu gh opa q ue bo dies and so looked like C u bist
transparen cy and ove rlap. But espec ially they drew on primi tive cinematography , and
on the sequential photos whi ch had been taken in th e 1880s by tw o pion eer s,
Eadweard Mu ybrid ge in England an d E tienne-J u les M ar cy in F rance . By givi ng th e
successive positions of a figure on one pl at e, th ese images in trod uce d tim e into space.
The body left the memory of its passage in th e air. Fo ur cent uries be fore, Leo nardo
had bought birds in the Florentine mark et an d let th em go in or der to observe the beat
of their wings close up for a few seconds. N ow th e cameras of Mu ybridge and M arcy
could describe this world of unseen mo vem ent; in fact, M arc y went so far as to m ake
what might now be seen as a precursor of F uturist sc ulp ture, a bronze m od el of a
bird's successive wing positions - long since lost. Some of Giaco mo Ba lla's paintings
were almost literal transcriptions of th ese pho tograp hs, Dyn amism ofa Dog all a Leash,
1912 (plate 24), was a glimpse of bouleva rd life, possi bly de rive d from a photograph ic
close-up, with a fashionable lad y (or at least, h er feet) tro tt ing her dachs h und - th at
low-slung', modern animal, the spo rts car of th e dog world - along th e pavement. I ts
modesty and humour were not to be repeate d in th e mo re amb itio us painti ngs of
moving cars that Balla mad e from 191 3 (plate 25). In the m, th e boxy bug-eyed old cars
- whi ch seem so inappropriat e to Ma rin et ti' s Mr. T oad-li ke rant ings abo ut speed and
cos mic po wer - ar e merged int o a ge ne ra l imagery of rapi d tran sit , ofglin ts an d sp ira ls,
persp ecti ves with st accato inter r u ption s, C ubis t transpar encies, and thru sting
inexor abl e dia gonals.
The spectator, Boccion i declared in one of th e F uturist manifest! ( 1912), " m us t in
fut ure be placed in th e ce ntre of th e pictu re," ex pose d to th e who le sur ro un di ng
jabb er of lin es, plan es, light, and noise tha t F ut urism ext rac te d fro m its mot ifs . T his
meant doin g away with th e pa inting as prosceniu m , " the sma ll sq uare ofli fe art ificially
com pressed ." Boccioni thu s described th e aims of one of his paintin gs, The Noise of
the S treet Penetrates the House; 19 11 :
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O il on canvas 6 ft 6l ins x 9 ft r o] ins: C ollecti on , The M useum of
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26 Gino Severini DynamicHieroglyphic ofthe Bal Tabarin 191 2

Oil on canvas with sequins 63§ x 6q ins

Collection, T he Museum of Modern Art, New York,
Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest

;q G iacom o Balla Dynatnisin ofa D og Oil a L eash 1912

Oil on canvas 35t x 43t ins : Albri ght-Knox Ga llery,

BUflalo, Bequest ofA . Conge r G oody ear

25 G iacomo Ball a Spe eding A u to [A ru o ell co ur s e , il l/de d e c it esse } 1913

Oil on card 23+ x 38} ins: Ga llery of Mo dern Art , Mi lan

48 / THE ivIECHA NI C AL PARADIS E

In p ainting a person o n a balcon y, seen from in sid e th e room, we do not lim it th e scene to wh at
th e sq ua re frame of th e wind ow renders visibl e ; but we try to render th e sum total of visual
sen sation s which the p er son on the balcony ha s ex pe rienced : the sunbath ed crowd on th e
street , th e double row of ho uses that stretch to righ t and left, the beflow er ed balconies, e tc .
This impli es the simultan eou sn ess of the env iro n me n t and, therefo re, the di slocation an d
dism em berm ent o f obje c ts, th e scatt er ing and fusion of d etails, freed from accep ted logic.

That Futurism could not have realized itself without a C u b ist vocabulary of
"dislocation and dism emberment" is be yond doubt. Boccioni's leaning houses come
straight from Delaunay's E iffel Towers. But th e difference between the emotional
temper ature of Cubism an d Futurism was extrem e, and one painting that su m s it up is
Gin o Se verin i' s Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin; 1912 (p late 26), wh ich is
filled wi th a kind of louche frenzy.
Painted from mem ory in Ital y, Severini's bi g can vas is not so mu ch a scen e as a nod e
of associations, fra gm entar y but charged with intense evo cative power. Severini
attempted to set forth th e jerky, swooping rh ythms of Edwardian pop music in these
jagged shapes ~ the n er vou s pink petticoats, th e tossing wedges of purple skirt (each
stiffly em b roidered with seq u ins to catch the light) , the crumpled face of a presumabl y
drunk milord in mono cle an d boiled shirt, th e sna tch es oflettering, th e gay , twinklin g
nati on al pennants (America n, French, Japan ese, and, of course, Italian) slung in th e
backgr ound, and th e Boschi an sexual jok e of th e naked girl, an othe rwise unrecord ed
cabaret act at the Tabarin, descending on wires, sitting astrid e a huge pair of
emascul ating scissors . It all looks like a ma chine, sligh tly out of co nt rol: a machine iT
piaisir, reflecting the fr en eti c and marion ette-like qu ality of public ente rta inm en t th at
other ar t ists were be ginnin g to di scern in ma ss cu lt ure .
F or by no means all E uro pe an art ists before W orld War I felt th e sim ple optimism
abo u t th e machin e that th e Futurists clu ng to. Some saw it as threatening and
dehum anizing. The id ea th at man's creation s co u ld rise against him and eventually
destroy him was on e of the fundamental m yths generated b y the Industrial
Rev olution , and given ear ly memorable form as fiction by M ar y Shelley in
Fi anleenstein, 1818. Almost a ce nt ury later, it gave Ja cob Epstein th e id ea for hi s
Vorticist sc u lp t ure, The Rock Drill, 1913-14 (p late 27) : a sort of bron ze arthropod ,
mount ed on the legs and bit (or penis) of a pn eumatic drill. " T h is," E ps tein later
wrot e, " is th e sinister arm oured figure of toda y and tomorrow. Nothin g human, only
the terribl e Frankenstein's m onster into whi ch we have transform ed ou rselves."
Epstein never developed th e possibilities of thi s ima ge in other sculptures, and he
performed a sy m b olic cast rati on on The Rock Drillb y di scarding its m achine sec tion­
legs, peni s, and mechanical torso - and keeping on ly its thora x an d ma sk ed head.
N evertheless, the analogies between ma chin e acti on and sexuality wer e, aroun d this
tim e, b ein g exp lored by tw o othe r artists, ver y di st ant in temperam ent fro m Epstein:
Francis Pi cabia and Marcel Du ch amp, Having been made by man, th e m achine had in
their view become a perverse but su bstan tially acc ura te self-portrait.
The m achine, as Picabia put it in one of his titl es (p late 28), was La Fille Nee S ails
J\!Iere, 1916-17, the Dau ghter Born without a M oth er - a modern counterpar t to the

27 J acob E ps tein The Rock Drill 1913-14

Bron ze 28 x 26 ins: Tate G allery, Lo ndon
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28 Francis Picabia La Fille N ee SrI/Is ;Hcre 1916-17
Warercolour, metallic paint and oil on board 30 x 20 ins
Private C ollec tio n , London

29 Francis Picabia J See Again ill J1ilelllOlJ' NI)/

DearUdnie 1914, perhaps begun 1913
Oil on canvas 8 ft 2~ ins x 6 ft 6~ ins
Collection, The Mu seum of Modern Art, New York,
Hillman Periodicals Fund

J
 T H E M ECHAN ICAL P AR A DI S E I Sf

m yth of th e Virgin Birth, in whi ch C hri st, th e son, was born wi thout a fath er.
Ma chinery not on ly parodied th e Virgin Birth but other att ri b utes of Cathol icism as
we ll : th e ritu als of ten d in g it , for inst an ce, sugges ted a Ma ss. B u t its main field of
mimi cr y was sex. T he re was alread y a po we r ful, th ou gh obscure , und ercurrent of
me chano-s exual im ages in F renc h ex pe rime n tal wr itin g. Thus Alfred j arr y (1873­
1907), autho r of the Ubu tr ilog y, wr ote a fan tas y of m echa nical po wer in 1902 in wh ich
th e he ro, lc Surnuilc or Superman, wins an im possible race from Pari s to S iberia,
ped allin g h is b icycle non- st op aga ins t a five-s eate r cycle whose five rid er s ha ve th eir
legs all linked tog ethe r with m etal rod s (a p ro ba ble so urce for th e mutu all y lin ked ,
me chanical Bac helors in Du cha mp's La rge Glass) . Both mach ines ar e racing ag ains t a
locomotive. Le S uruuil« wins both the race an d th e girl, daughter of an Amer ican
ind ustr ialist, who is rid ing in th e train. B ut he ca nno t love th e girl ; he is alre ady too
mech anical for tha t ; and so a sc ien tist builds S upe rma n a/ a ut cui] electriq uc, literall y an
elec tric cha ir , to inspire love in him by m eans of jolts fro m an immen sely pow erful
ma gneto. (The electr ic cha ir h ad be en brought into service in Am eri ca in th e lat e
ni n eteenth century, an d it was still an ob jec t of won der an d curios ity to the F re nc h:
ph ilosoph y mad e co ncre te .) Strapp ed in, zap pe d by 11,000 volts, th e Superman falls
in love with th e cha ir and the ma gn et o falls in love with him . T h e m ech ani cs of sex
ha ve preva iled ove r sen timen t .
Pica bia an d Du charnp kn ew jarry 's work intimately. Pica bia was obses sed by
ma chines, part ly becau se t he ir efficiency and p re dic tabi lity were in suc h soo th ing
co nt ras t to th e ne uro tic vaga ries of hi s ow n life, but mainl y becau se he sa w m yth in
th em . In 1915, on a visit to N ew York, he d eclared th at "upon co m ing to Ameri ca it
fla shed on me that the gen ius of th e m odern world is in ma chinery and tha t through
m achin ery art ough t to fin d a m ost vivid expression ... I m ean sim p ly to work on an d
on until I attai n th e pinna cle of mech anical sym bo lism ." Pi cabi a wan ted to lau gh th e
15
id ea of tra d itional pa int ing to d ea th: he eve n ex h ibite d a st uffed m onk ey labe lled
Portrait of Ceza nne, Portrait 0./ Rembrandt, Portrait 0./ Renoir - b u t painting was th e
onl y objective outlet h e cou ld fin d for his m achine fan tasies. (Th e subjective on e was
ostentat iou s consumpt ion of mach ine s. Pi cab ia was ri ch and ow ne d , at one time or
another, sco res of cars a nd a t least a dozen yac h ts, as th ou gh he we re tr yin g to co nvert
him sel f in to a m echani cal ce n ta ur . H e eve n had a ra cin g car ins ta lled on top of a tow er
he owne d in th e S outh of France, and atta ched th e chass is to a radi al ar m, so th at he
could whiz round and ro u n d like a man in a cen trifug e, ad mi ring th e landscap e. )
In 1914, Pi cabi a painted a lar ge im age of a sexual enco unter he h ad had on a tran s­
atl anti c lin er wi th a ballet dan cer nam ed U d n ie N ap ier kowska, ca lled J See Again ill
JH cI/lolY JHy Dear Udnie (pl at e 29). I n it , th e m em or y of sex u al pl easure, expre sse d in
th e blossoming, p etal-l ike for ms, is inex trica b ly fu sed with ma chine sy mbol ism, an d
its pr op er su b tex t was wr itten by th e no velist joris Hu ysmans in Lit-Ba s, 1891: "Look
at th e mac hine, th e pla y of p isto ns in th e cy lin ders: th ey are stee l Rom eos inside cas t­
iron Juli ets. T he ways of human ex p ression are in no way different to th e back-and ­
forth of our ma chin es. T h is is a law to which one mus t pa y h omage, unless on e is eithe r
im potent or a sain t ."
52 I THE MECHANICAL PARADISE

Picabia was neither: he had, as little Alex in A Clockwork Orange would say, a flair
for the old in-out. Mechanical sex, mechanical self. No wonder Picabia's machine­
portraits still look so very sardonic . A large gear is labelled man, a small one woman; by
the inexorable meshing of cogs, one dictates the movement of the other. The machine
is amoral. It can only act; it cannot reflect. Nobody wants to be compared to a
mechanical slave . In order to realize the shock value ofPicabia's images, in all their
debunking and elliptical cynicism, one needs to see them in the context of a vanished
society. Today there is nothing about sex that cannot be said or represented; the
public is all but shockproof. In Picabia's time, however, it was not. Most sexual
imagery outside plain pornography (which, by definition, was not "art") was based on
the vaguest kind of "natural" metaphors - butterflies, grottoes, moss, and so forth .
Victorian pornography had been the first kind ofdiscourse to assimilate the imagery of
the Industrial Revolution to the description of sex . "Believe me," exclaims the
narrator of The Lustful Turk by "Emily Barlow," "I had not now the power to resist
the soft pleasure he now caused me to taste by the sweet to-and-fro friction of his
voluptuous engine ... that terrible machine which had so furiously agitated me with
pain." Machines were the ideal metaphor for that central pornographic fantasy of the
nineteenth century, rape followed by gratitude. But to bring machines into the realm
of art was another thing, and Picabia's effort to set forth human relationships as
mechanical processes, with its sardonic accompanying imagery of poking, stiffness,
reciprocation, cylindricality, thrusting, and, above all, "meaningless" repetition, was
very daring.
The definitive mechano-sexual metaphor, however, was created by Marcel
Duchamp (1887-1968). In the years before he gave up the public production of art
in favour of chess (and the secret construction of his last work, Etant Donnees,
1946-66), Duchamp ran variations on the available styles of the French auant-garde,
without contributing much to them : his Fauve works are clumsy and derivative, his
Cubist paintings not much more than formal exercise. His celebrated Nude
Descending a Staircase No.2, 1912 (plate 30), based on Marey's sequential photos, is
no more advanced as either idea or form than any other Cubo-Futurist painting of the
time, and if it had not been the passive focus of the public hoo-ha over the Armory
Show in New York in 1913 (where it became the butt of cartoonists and was guyed as
"an explosion in a shingle factory"), it might never have been thought one of the
canonical images of modernism. But it did open the way to the Large Glass, or, to give
it its full name, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, which Duchamp
worked on for eight years and left unfinished in 1923 (plate 31).
One might suppose, from reading what has been written about it, that the Large
Glass was the Grand Arcanum of modern art: it may be that no single work in the
entire history of painting has evoked more cant, jargon, gibberish, and Jungian
psycho-babble from its interpreters. Manifestly, the Glass must be a rich field for
interpretation, because nothing on its surface is accidental (apart from the accepted
accidents, like the dust that Duchamp allowed to accumulate there and then preserved
with fixative, or the network of cracks that appeared in the twin panes after a trucking
30 Marcel Duchamp Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 1912
O il on canvas 58 x 35 ins: Philadelphia Mu seum of Art,
Lou ise and Walter Arensberg Collection
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 THE J'vIE CHANICAL PARA DI SE I 55

accid ent). Everything is there b eca us e D uc ham p wanted, or put, it there. "There was
nothin g s po n ta ne o us abo u t it ," he remarked in 1966, "which of course is a gre at
obj ection on the part ofa esthetician s. They wan t the s u bco ns cio us to spe ak by itself. I
don 't. I don 't care . S o th e Glass was th e opposite of all th at. "
So wh at is the Glass? A m achine: or rath er, a p roj ect for an unfinish ed co n trap tion
that could nev er be built be cause its us e was n ever full y clear, and because (in turn ) it
parodies th e lan guage and th e form s of sc ie nce without th e slig h tes t r egard for
sc ie n tific probab ility, seq ue nce, cause an d effect. The Large Glass, care fu lly painted
and outlin ed in lend wire on it s transparent panes, looks ex p licit. But if a n eng ineer
were to use it as a blu epr int h e would be in de ep trouble sinc e, fr om th e viewp oint of
technical system s, it is sim p ly ab surd : a highbrow version of th e popular "impossibl e
ma chines" that were being drawn , at th e tim e, by Rub e G oldberg. The n ot es
D uc ha rn p left to go with it, collecte d out of orde r in th e Green Bo x, ar e th e most
scra m b led ins tr u ctio n m anual ima ginabl e. But they are delib eratel y scra m b led. F o r
instance, h e talk ed abo u t the ma ch in e in the Glass ru n ni ng on a m ythical fue l of h is
ow n inv ention call ed " L ove G as o line, " which pas sed through "filter s" into "feeble
cy lin de rs " and acti vated a "d esire m otor" - none of which would ha ve mad e much
sens e to H enry F ord. B u t the La rgeGlass is a m eta-rna chine ; its aim is to tak e on e awa y
from th e rea! world of m ach in ery into th e par all el wor ld of all egory. In the top half of
th e Glass, th e nak ed Bride perpetuall y di sro be s herself; in the bottom sec tio n , th e
po or littl e Bac he lors, depi cted as empty jackets and uniforms, are just as perpetually
g rin d ing awn y, signalling th eir fru stration to the girl above th em . It is a sard onic
pa rod y of th e et ernall y fixed de sire K eats d escribed in his Ode 0 11 a Crcciau Urn -«

Bold L o ver, never, nev er cans t th ou kiss,

T ho ug h winni ng ncar the gOOl ! - yet, d o not g rieve;

S he can no t fad e, though th ou hast not thy bl iss ,

F o r ever wil t th ou lo ve, and she be fair !

In fact, th e Large Glass is an allego ry of P rofan e L o ve - whi ch, M arce l D ucharn p

pr es cien tly sa w, would be t he only sor t left in th e tw en tieth cen tury. I ts bas ic text was
written by Si gmund Freud in T he Int erpretation 0.1 Dreams, 1900: "The imposing
m echanism of the mal e sex u al apparatu s lend s itself to symbolizati on by eve ry sort of
indescribabl y complicated ma chinery ." But to D uc ha m p, who had reason to know,
th e mal e mechanism of th e La rge Glass was not a bit imposin g. T he Ba ch elors ar e
m er e un iforms, like marionettes. Ac cording to D uc ha mp's notes, th ey try to ind ica tc
th eir de sire to the B rid e by concertedl y ma kin g th e Chocol ate Grinder turn, so that it
gr inds out an ima ginary milk y stuff like se m en . T h is sq u irts up throu gh the rin gs , but
can no t ge t into th e B r ide's half o f th e Glass because of th e proph yla cti c bar th at
se parate s th e panes. And so th e B rid e is co n de m ne d alwa ys to tease, whi le th e
Bac he lo rs' fate is en d less ma sturbati on .
In on e se ns e th e Large Glass is a glimpse into Hell , a peculiarly m od ernist H ell of
repetiti on a nd lon elin ess. B u t it is also pos sibl e to se e it as a d ecl aration of free d om , if
one remembers th e c rus h ing taboo s against ma sturbation tha t wer e in force wh en
3 I Marcel Du champ Tile Bride S trijJJml Bare I~ ) I Her Bachelor». Etcu
(L arge Class} 1 915 ~2 3
O il and lead II ire on gL1ss 109+ x (19 ins
I' h iladel phi a M uscum o f Art, Be qu es t a t" K ath erin e S, D re ier
56 I T H E M ECH A NI CA L PARADIS E

D ucha rnp was yo ung. For all its drawba cks, onanism was the on e kind of sex that
could not be controlled by th e State or the Parent . It freed people from th e obli gati on
to be grateful to someone else for their plea sures. It was a symbol of rev olt again st the
fam ily and its authority. Its sterile an d gratuitou s functionin g has made it a key image
for an aoant-garde that tended , increasin gly, tow ards narcissism . " Frigid people
reall y make it ," rem arked And y Warhol , the Dali of the seventies . So did this frigid
work of art. The Large Glass is a free ma chine, or at least a defiant ma chine ; but it was
also a sad m achin e, a testament to indifferen ce - that stat e of mind of which Duchamp
was the ma st er. Ind eed, h is finely balanced indifference was the di vid e between the
late mach ine age and th e tim e in which we live . The Large Glass was very rem ote fro m
the opt im ism that accompanied th e belief that art still had the power to articulate the
plenitud e oflife, with whi ch grea te r artists but less sophisticate d men than Duchamp
gr eeted the ma chine in th ose lost da ys befor e W orld W ar I. "When I look ed at the
earth, " G ertrud e Stein recalled of her first flight in an airc ra ft,

I saw all the lin es of cub ism mad e at a tim e wh en not any painter had ever go ne up in an
airplan e. I saw there on th e ea rth th e min glin g line s of Pi casso, com ing and going, de velopin g
an d de stroyin g themselv es, I saw the sim p le soluti on s of Braque, yes I sa w and once more I
kne w that a creato r is co n te m po rary, he und er st and s what is con te m po ra ry wh en the
co n te m po rar ies do not ye t kn ow it , but he is co n te m porary an d as th e tw entieth ce n tury is a
cent ury whi ch sees th e earth as no- on e has eve r see n it, th e ear t h ha s a sp le ndo r that it ne ver
has had, and as every th ing d estroys itself in th e twen tieth cen tu ry and n oth in g continu es, so
then th e twentieth ce n tury has a sp len do r wh ich is its own .

That spl endour of th e new age would soo n be less evide nt. Aft er 1914, ma chiner y
was turn ed on it s in ventor s and their children. Afte r for ty years of contin uous peace in
E urope , th e wor st war in hi sto ry cancelled th e faith in good technology, the
ben evolent machine. The m yth of the F ut ure went into shoc k, and E uropean art
mo ved into its years of irony, di sgu st, and protest.