THE HISTORY AND CHRONOLOGY OF CUBISM Page: 2
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History and Chronology of Cubism:
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The reasons for Picasso's primacy, however, are obvious. In the years before 1907 Braque was almost unknown, whereas many people already saw Picasso and Matisse as leaders of avant-garde painting. Moreover, Picasso obviously had a more forceful and dynamic personality than Braque, and this had impressed itself strongly on influential critics such as Apollinaire, Salmon and Vauxcelles, with whom he was more friendly than was Braque. Then, although neither painter was exhibiting publicly in Paris after 1909, by 1914 Picasso had held one-man exhibitions in England, Germany, Spain and America, while Braque exhibited abroad more rarely, and then only in group shows. Finally, the Hommage à Picasso with which Gris made his sensational début at the Salon des Indipendants of 1912, must have had the character of a tribute to the chef d'école.
The importance of Braque's contribution to Cubism and his stature as an artist began to be seen and acknowledged only after the war. Kahnweiler linked the names of Picasso and Braque together seriously in Der Weg zum Kubismus, written in 1915 though not published until 1920, but general recognition of their collaboration dates from the Kahnweiler and Uhde sales of the early 1920's when their pre-war Cubism could be seen together in large quantities for the first time. Uhde, a young collector and dealer who had been on friendly terms with both painters since the early pre-Cubist days, in a book entitled Picasso et la Tradition Française, which appeared in both French and German in 1928, stressed the cardinal part played by Braque in his formation of Cubism. Uhde writes: 'La définition stylistique (du Cubisme) doit beaucoup à Braque', and summing up the differences in their characters, 'le tempérament de Braque était clair, mesuré, bourgeois; celui de Picasso, sombre, excessif, révolutionnaire. Dans le mariage spirituel qu'ils conclurent alors, l'un apportait une grande sensibilité, l'autre un grand don plastique'.
Vauxcelles's attack on Braque's first Cubist paintings serves to emphasize the new and radical use to which he had put his studies of Cézanne, for in 1908 Cézanne had already been an important influence on advanced painting for some time. Indeed, Vauxcelles, in a review of the Salon des Inddpendants of 1907, notes with satisfaction that 'L'influence de Cgzanne décroît', and adds, 'certains des salons antérieurs, ceux de 1904 et 1905 surtout, auraient pu porter comme enseigne . . ." hommage à Cézzane" '. The main influences seen by Vauxcelles in the work of the younger painters were those of Gauguin, Derain and Matisse, to which in 1910 he adds the influence of Picasso. During these years the most important of the established exhibitors at the Indépendants and the Salon d'Automne were Bonnard, Vuillard and Denis, while the small group of Neo-Impressionist painters under the leadership of Signac were also established and admired; by 1909 Vauxcelles was able to comment on the fact that it was no longer necessary to fight for the painters that he had christened the Fauves. After the large Cézanne retrospective exhibiton at the Salon d'Automne of 1907, his influence once again became paramount, although after 1909, following the lead of Braque, certain painters began to interpret Cézanne from a more formal and intellectual, and less immediately visual point of view. Vauxcelles refers to some of the painters of the Indépendants of 1910 who were working under the influence of Cézanne as 'géomètres ignares, réduisant le corps humain, le site, à des cubes blafards'.
But by far the greater number of paintings to be seen at both these Salons in the first ten years of the century were still sub-Impressionist in character, and it was as part of the final and conclusive reaction against Impressionism that the Cubist and pre-Cubist works exhibited in 1910 were greeted. Apollinaire in a review of the Salon des Indépendants of that year wrote: 'Si nous devions traduire le sens général de cette exposition, nous dirions volontiers -- et avec quelle joie -- qu'elle signifie: déroute de l'impressionnisme'. And to prove his point he cited beside the names of Matisse and two or three other painters who had been Fauves those of Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, Jean Metzinger, André Lhote and Marie Laurencin, all of whom were at some time or another involved in the Cubist movement. Reviewing the Salon d'Automne, Allard grouped together the work of Metzinger, Le Fauconnier and Gleizes, and using one of the paintings shown by Metzinger as an example, stated: 'ainsi naît aux antipodes de l'impressionnisme, un art qui, peu soucieux de copier un épisode cosmique occasionnel, offre dans leur plénitude picturale à l'intelligence du spectateur les élements essentiels d'une synthèse située dans la durée'. Of Gleizes' work he said: 'J'ai eu l'impression très nette à regarder sa toile d'une cure de sobriété après la débauche impressionniste'. Allard seems to have realized that the work of these painters was a reaction against Fauvism as well: 'assez d'affiches, de visions "qui s'imposent violemment", de "tranches de vie frémissante", assez de notations et d'anecdotes. Un beau tableau n'est qu'un juste équilibre, c'est à dire un accord de poids et un rapport de nombres. Que l'oeil du peintre soit sensible, mais non pas son pinceau'. La Presse, although hostile to the future Cubists, seems to have realized that something new was afoot when it referred to 'les folies géométriques de Mm. Le Fauconnier, Gleizes et Metzinger'. Shortly afterwards Metzinger published an article in the literary review Pan on the work of Picasso, Braque, Le Fauconnier and Delaunay in which he proclaimed a new type of painting which for the first time broke with hellenic traditions.
1910 is the year in which the Cubist painters, other than Picasso and Braque, came together as a conscious group, although many of them had known each other earlier. Metzinger and Delaunay had exhibited portraits of each other at the Salon d'Automne of 1906, when both were working in a Neo-Impressionist idiom, and by 1907 Delaunay had met Ldger and Le Fauconnier as well. Gleizes and Le Fauconnier became friendly in 1909 after a meeting at the home of a young socialist writer named Alexandre Mercereau, where Gleizes also met Metzinger and Delaunay for the first time in the following year, although these meetings did not lead to immediate friendship, and Gleizes knew little about their work. Léger appears to have joined the circle at Mercereau's later in the same year, probably introduced by Delaunay with whom he was becoming very friendly at this period. The painters also met at the Tuesday evenings held by the review Vers et Prose at the Closerie des Lilas. This café was the stronghold of the older generation of literary Symbolists, writers like Paul Fort, Stuart Merrill and Verhaeren, but many of the younger literary figures such as Apollinaire, Allard, Salmon and Mercereau (the last two on the staff of Vers et Prose) were to be seen there too. Allard had arrived in Paris from Lille in the spring of 1910 and his first contacts were with the future Cubists; because of this, his criticism is doubly interesting as representing their ideas unclouded by outside opinion. Older, more established painters like Signac and Sérusier also frequented these gatherings at the Closerie so that the atmosphere, though stimulating, was not particularly radical. Gustave Kahn, art-critic of the Mercure de France, entertained privately the same group of painters and authors.
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