JF Ptak Science Books Post 1765
"Suddenly I had entered a new world, a universe of ugliness".--Gelett Burgess, on entering the Salon des Independents Exhibition, 1910
One of the earliest recognitions of the great early masterpiece of Cubism, Picasso's Les Demoisselles d'Avignon, makes its appearance in the Architectural Record1, and by a most-unanticipated critic: Gelett Burgess (1866-1951). Burgess glides through an unexpectedly wide terrain of The Modern, and has quite a lot of interesting observations, including George Braque and Czobel, Friesz, Harbin, Metzinger, Derain, Chibaud, Matisse and--perhaps most significantly--Pablo Picasso. Burgess found his way to Les Demoisselles, and presents a photograph of what would become perhaps the great masterpiece of Cubism, the caption announcing it as a "study" rather than with any real title for the work. As is well known Picasso worked for some years on the painting (generally the work is assigned a date of 1907 though he worked on it for some years afterwards), spending time alternatively in great loneliness and also in the midst of crowds of the interested/supporters/friends/the curious, sometimes hoping for feedback of his major work from the visitors, sometimes not.
Burgess was known as an accomplished illustrator with a distinctive and distinguished style, as well as a humorist-poet, a poet whose best-remembered (and longest-surviving) lines run as follows:
"I never saw a Purple Cow,
I never hope to see one,
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one!"
And I think that it is in this style that Burgess concedes his opinion of Picasso's work, complete with a short bit of a poem at the end:
"And now for Picasso, of whom, here and there, one has heard so much. Picasso will not exhibit his paintings. He is too proud and too scornful of the opinions of the canaille. But he sells his work, nevertheless. That’s the astonishing thing about all of them. Who buys? God knows! Germans, I suppose."
Burgess makes his way through the exhibition with great drama, recording his vast disappointment at every move.
"I realized for the first time that my views on art needed a radical reconstruction. Suddenly I had entered a new world, a universe of ugliness..."
And so:
"What did it all mean? The drawing was crude past all belief; the color was as atrocious as the subject. Had a new era of art begun? Was ugliness to supersede beauty, technique to give way to naivété, and vibrant, discordant color, a very patchwork of horrid hues, take the place of subtle, studied nuances of tonality? Was nothing sacred, not even beauty?"
No artist mentioned escapes Burgess' dire appraisal.
Derain fares very poorly here, even held up as the great intellectual of the group:
"Look at his biggest picture, first, and have your breath taken away! He has been working two years on it. I could do it in two days. So could you, I’m sure. A group of squirmy bathers, some green and some flamingo pink, all, apparently, modeled out of dough, permeate a smoky, vague background..."
"Where is that subjective beauty that is his? In the cubical man? In the cylindrical cat? In the doughy bathers? But, as he is only an experimenter, the failure of his experiment does not prove the falsity of the principle involved. So much is already clear, though; these men are not attempting to transcribe the effect nature makes upon the eye, as do the impressionists. It lies deeper than that."
Matisse is at least recognized as having an expanded facility for color, and be considered "not be classed among the Wild Beasts of this Parisian menagerie", and does paint with an unmistakenable quality of something, but then not much else:
"When he paints his wife with a broad stripe of green down her nose, though it startlingly suggests her, it is his punishment to have made her appear so to you always. He teaches you to see her in a strange and terrible aspect. He has taught you her body. But, fearful as it is, it is alive—awfully alive!"
By the time we get to Picasso--coming at about the mid-way point of the article--there is not much left but exhaustion. But Burgess pulls it together to talk about the person of Picasso in very complimentary tones. Not so much for the art, though:
"The terrible pictures loom through the chaos. Monstrous, monolithic women, creatures like Alaskan totem poles, hacked out of solid, brutal colors, frightful, appalling! How little Picasso, with his sense of humor, with his youth and deviltry, seems to glory in his crimes! How he lights up like a torch when he speaks of his work!
I doubt if Picasso ever finishes his paintings. The nightmares are too barbarous to last; to carry out such profanities would be impossible. So we gaze at his pyramidal women, his sub-African caricatures, figures with eyes askew, with contorted legs, and—things unmentionably worse, and patch together whatever idea we may have…"
In the end, Burgess doesn't like what he sees, but does concede that there might be something-or-other there with The Moderns, something unidentifiable, that might indeed create a Renaissance. Then again, as Burgess says, "who knows?"
"Men must experiment in art and in life. Some may wander east or westward from the beaten track, some reactionaries may even go back southward along the trail of the past. But a few push north, ahead of the rest, blazing out the way of progress for the race. Perhaps these Wild Beasts are really the precursors of a Renaissance, beating down a way for us through the wilderness.
But there’s the contrast between their talk and their work! It doesn’t quite convince me yet. But, then, I’m not a painter, and perhaps none but a painter can understand. There’s my clue! And so, as a last resort, as the best way, too, I’ve bought a color box and brushes. I am going to try it out practically on canvas. That’s the only test. I’m going to be a Wild Beast myself! For, mind you, they do sell their paintings, and I may sell mine. Who knows!
Notes:
1. "The Wild Men of Paris", in The Architectural Record, May 1910. My quotes from this article are taken from The Cause of Architecture website, here, where I believe the author has transcribed the original.
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