DOI issue:
Obsah
DOI article:Čapková, Helena: The Japanese Cubist Body - mapping modern experience in the pre-WWII Japanese artistic network
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51716#0131
Cubism in the Centre
The French art cri tic Louis Vauxcelles (1870
— 1943) coined the term Cubism after seeing the
landscapes Georges Braque (1882 — 1963) had
painted in 1908 at L’Estaque in émulation of Paul
Cézanne (1838 — 1906). Vauxcelles called the geo-
metrie forms in the highly abstracted Works “cubes”.
It has been firmly established that some of the key
inspirations of early Cubist works were linked to
Primitivism and non-Euroamerican sources. The
stylization and distortion of Pablo Picasso’s (1881
— 1973) masterpiece “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”,
painted in 1907, came from Afričan art. However, a
number of scholars hâve pointed out the ironie fact
that régions and art scenes producing these admired
“exotic” inspirations such as Japan were excluded
from the Modernist narrative. They produced rigor-
ous pièces of scholarship about Japanese modernism
and its interaction and impact on Euroamerica, yet
the significance and fruits of these exchanges re-
mained on the periphery of studies of Modernism
and its prevailing Western art framework. Alfred H.
Barr, Jr. (1902 - 1981), in his notorious diagram on
a jacket of 1936 exhibition catalogue “Cubism and
Abstract” art classified “Japanese prints” as belong-
ing to an “archaic, primitive and exotic” area. 5
The Cubist painters rejected the traditional artis-
tic goal of mimesis that art should copy nature and
they went on to emphasize the two-dimensionality
of the canvas. They reduced and fractured objects
into geometrie forms, and composed them within a
shallow, only mildly structured space. In early Cubist
work up to 1910, the subject of a picture was usually
discernible; during “high” Analytic Cubism (1910
— 12), also called “hermetic”, Picasso and Braque
so abstracted their works that they were reduced
to just a sériés of overlapping planes and facets,
mostly in subdued tones of browns, greys, or blacks.
During the winter of 1912 — 13, Picasso executed a
great number of papiers collés, the new technique of
pasting coloured or printed pièces of paper in their
compositions. This move initiated the emergence of
Synthetic Cubism, in which large pièces of neutral
or coloured paper allude to a particular object. The
two formulators of Cubist language inspired many
followers who adopted it and developed it further,
such as Fernand Léger (1881 - 1955), Robert (1885
7. Ishii Hakutei, “Metefnger” sketch from the Independent exhibition
published in Asahi neivspaper on 29"' July 1911.
— 1941) and Sonia (1885 — 1979) Delaunay, Juan
Gris (1887 — 1927), Roger de la Fresnaye (1885
- 1925), Marcel Duchamp (1887 — 1968), Albert
Gleizes (1881 — 1953), Jean Metzinger (1883 — 1956)
[Fig. 1], and a Mexičan, Diego Rivera (1886 — 1957).
Though primarily associated with painting, Cubism
also exerted a profound impact on twentieth-century
sculpture and architecture. The major Cubist sculp-
tors were Alexander Archipenko (1887 - 1964),
Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876 - 1918), and
Jacques Lipchitz (1891 — 1973). In sculpture we can
find resonance of Cubist mode in the work of one
of the Japanese students of the Bauhaus, Nakada
Sadanosuke (1888 — 1976).
The liberating formai concepts initiated by Cu-
bism also had far-reaching conséquences for Dada
and Surrealism, as well as for ail artists pursuing
abstraction in Germany, Holland, Italy, England,
5 BARR, A. H., Jr.: Cubism and Abstract Art (pAto and ed.). New
York 1936, jacket illustration.
123
The French art cri tic Louis Vauxcelles (1870
— 1943) coined the term Cubism after seeing the
landscapes Georges Braque (1882 — 1963) had
painted in 1908 at L’Estaque in émulation of Paul
Cézanne (1838 — 1906). Vauxcelles called the geo-
metrie forms in the highly abstracted Works “cubes”.
It has been firmly established that some of the key
inspirations of early Cubist works were linked to
Primitivism and non-Euroamerican sources. The
stylization and distortion of Pablo Picasso’s (1881
— 1973) masterpiece “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”,
painted in 1907, came from Afričan art. However, a
number of scholars hâve pointed out the ironie fact
that régions and art scenes producing these admired
“exotic” inspirations such as Japan were excluded
from the Modernist narrative. They produced rigor-
ous pièces of scholarship about Japanese modernism
and its interaction and impact on Euroamerica, yet
the significance and fruits of these exchanges re-
mained on the periphery of studies of Modernism
and its prevailing Western art framework. Alfred H.
Barr, Jr. (1902 - 1981), in his notorious diagram on
a jacket of 1936 exhibition catalogue “Cubism and
Abstract” art classified “Japanese prints” as belong-
ing to an “archaic, primitive and exotic” area. 5
The Cubist painters rejected the traditional artis-
tic goal of mimesis that art should copy nature and
they went on to emphasize the two-dimensionality
of the canvas. They reduced and fractured objects
into geometrie forms, and composed them within a
shallow, only mildly structured space. In early Cubist
work up to 1910, the subject of a picture was usually
discernible; during “high” Analytic Cubism (1910
— 12), also called “hermetic”, Picasso and Braque
so abstracted their works that they were reduced
to just a sériés of overlapping planes and facets,
mostly in subdued tones of browns, greys, or blacks.
During the winter of 1912 — 13, Picasso executed a
great number of papiers collés, the new technique of
pasting coloured or printed pièces of paper in their
compositions. This move initiated the emergence of
Synthetic Cubism, in which large pièces of neutral
or coloured paper allude to a particular object. The
two formulators of Cubist language inspired many
followers who adopted it and developed it further,
such as Fernand Léger (1881 - 1955), Robert (1885
7. Ishii Hakutei, “Metefnger” sketch from the Independent exhibition
published in Asahi neivspaper on 29"' July 1911.
— 1941) and Sonia (1885 — 1979) Delaunay, Juan
Gris (1887 — 1927), Roger de la Fresnaye (1885
- 1925), Marcel Duchamp (1887 — 1968), Albert
Gleizes (1881 — 1953), Jean Metzinger (1883 — 1956)
[Fig. 1], and a Mexičan, Diego Rivera (1886 — 1957).
Though primarily associated with painting, Cubism
also exerted a profound impact on twentieth-century
sculpture and architecture. The major Cubist sculp-
tors were Alexander Archipenko (1887 - 1964),
Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876 - 1918), and
Jacques Lipchitz (1891 — 1973). In sculpture we can
find resonance of Cubist mode in the work of one
of the Japanese students of the Bauhaus, Nakada
Sadanosuke (1888 — 1976).
The liberating formai concepts initiated by Cu-
bism also had far-reaching conséquences for Dada
and Surrealism, as well as for ail artists pursuing
abstraction in Germany, Holland, Italy, England,
5 BARR, A. H., Jr.: Cubism and Abstract Art (pAto and ed.). New
York 1936, jacket illustration.
123