THE HISTORY AND CHRONOLOGY OF CUBISM Page: 8
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History and Chronology of Cubism:
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Orphism appeared before the public at the Salon des Inddpendants of 1913. As in the case of Cubism, Apollinaire tried to give the word as much of an allinclusive meaning as possible: 'On a déjà beaucoup parlé de l'Orphisme. C'est la première fois que cette tendance se manifeste. Elle réunit des peintres de caractères assez différents qui tous, dans leurs recherches, sont animés par une vision plus intérieure, plus populaire, plus poétique de l'univers et de la vie. Cette tendance n'est pas une invention subite; elle est l'évolution lente et logique de l'impressionnisme, du divisionnisme, de l'école des fauves, et du cubisme. Le mot seul est nouveau.' Generally speaking, however, although Orphism was regarded as a new school its derivation from Cubism was acknowledged. This had, of course, been made clear at the Salon des Indépendants by Delaunay L'Equipe de Cardiff which, by comparison with his more abstract works, appeared simply as a highly coloured and more mouvementé Cubist painting. Warnod noted in Comoedia that 'le cubisme et l'Orphisme sont de la même famille. Tandis que le cubisme vise au dessin intégral, l'orphisme est une recherche de peinture "pure", non pas qu'il soit question de couleurs pures, c'est-é-dire comme elles sortent du tube, mais de peinture considérée en dehors de tout autre chose'. Apollinaire, who in Les Peintres Cubistes had defined Orphic Cubism as being represented only by Delaunay, Léger, Picabia, Duchamp and Picasso in so far as his use of light was significant, now saw Orphic tendencies in Laurencin, Gleizes and Metzinger, and later (more understandably) in La Fresnaye. More often, however, the term was reserved for Delaunay and his disciples, Bruce, Frost, Sonia Delaunay and Alice Bailly, and for painters such as Picabia, Kupka and Duchamp who had all been originally classified as Cubists but whose work was becoming more abstract, although it had little or nothing to do with that of Delaunay. Léger, whose researches had always been more highly personal than those of the other Cubists with whom he showed, and whose art was now becoming more obviously divergent, is also sometimes referred to as an Orphist; this, however, is understandable since his work did have something in common with Delaunay's. At the Salon des Inddpendants all these artists were grouped together in Salle 45, together with the work of Morgan Russel and MacDonald Wright, who called themselves 'Synchromists' and somewhat pretentiously purported to be representatives of a new school which was to be the culmination of all European painting; they were, in fact, rapidly absorbed into the more vital Orphist movement.
Mondrian, who had felt the impact of Cubism even before reaching Paris, had first exhibited at the Indépendants in 1911, submitting his painting from an address in Amsterdam. At the same Salon in the following year, after he had come to Paris, his entries were included in the Cubist room, and by 1913 his work was beginning to attract special attention. In one review Apollinaire referred to 'la peinture très abstraite de Mondrian', and added in another, 'ses arbres et son portrait de femme offrent un grand intérêt.' Apollinaire was furthermore at pains to stress that while the work of Mondrian derived from that of Picasso and Braque, it was completely different in appearance (cf. Pl. 77b). This came about through the fact that although Mondrian made use of the Cubist grid-system of composition, he had already begun to develop a new form of painting which finally culminated during the war in the purely abstract idiom of De Stijl and Neo-Plasticism. In Russia, too, the abstract possibilities of Cubism were being explored and developed. Cubism was known there largely through the exhibitions organized by the painter Larionov, who kept in touch with all the most recent developments in Paris and Italy. Larionov had in 1911 invented Rayonism, a movement which had a strong abstract bias, although it was closer in many ways to contemporary Futurism than to Cubism. In 1913 Malevitch, whose work at this period showed traces of both Cubist and Futurist influence, launched the Suprematist movement which stood for a more purely abstract style than anything yet seen.
Mondrian, who had felt the impact of Cubism even before reaching Paris, had first exhibited at the Indépendants in 1911, submitting his painting from an address in Amsterdam. At the same Salon in the following year, after he had come to Paris, his entries were included in the Cubist room, and by 1913 his work was beginning to attract special attention. In one review Apollinaire referred to 'la peinture très abstraite de Mondrian', and added in another, 'ses arbres et son portrait de femme offrent un grand intérêt.' Apollinaire was furthermore at pains to stress that while the work of Mondrian derived from that of Picasso and Braque, it was completely different in appearance. This came about through the fact that although Mondrian made use of the Cubist grid-system of composition, he had already begun to develop a new form of painting which finally culminated during the war in the purely abstract idiom of De Stijl and Neo-Plasticism. In Russia, too, the abstract possibilities of Cubism were being explored and developed. Cubism was known there largely through the exhibitions organized by the painter Larionov, who kept in touch with all the most recent developments in Paris and Italy. Larionov had in 1911 invented Rayonism, a movement which had a strong abstract bias, although it was closer in many ways to contemporary Futurism than to Cubism. In 1913 Malevitch, whose work at this period showed traces of both Cubist and Futurist influence, launched the Suprematist movement which stood for a more purely abstract style than anything yet seen.
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