'Facets Of Cubism' At The Museum Of Fine Arts, Boston

In 1907, he captured the attention of the art world with his revolutionary painting, "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," often considered not only the seminal Cubist work but the first "Twentieth Century" painting. Combining the influences of the recently deceased Paul Cezanne and African art with his own "primitivizing" ideas, Picasso flattened figures with masklike faces, simplified them aggressively with sharp contours, and compressed them into a very shallow pictorial space.

The elongated, ovoid face and exaggerated features of "Head of a Woman," 1907, a watercolor and tempera study for "Demoiselles," was based on African masks Picasso had observed in Paris's extensive ethnographic collections.

After meeting in 1907, Picasso and Braque experimented together with abstract forms and flattened space, independent of pure description. They collaborated on some pieces, while at the same time enjoying a friendly and aesthetically challenging rivalry.

Picasso's ink and charcoal "Head of a Man," 1908-09, with its deep, dramatic black eye cavities that convey an aura of mystery and power, seems hewn from a block of wood.

His "Head of a Woman," 1909, the first Cubist sculpture, is a three-dimensional counterpart to his similarly faceted drawings and paintings of the time. "The rhythmic wave of hair and the bony contours of the face give her a universal quality," observe the exhibition organizers, "while the down-turned head, deeply shadowed eyes and tightly pursed lips convey an intimate sense of melancholy pensiveness." This moving portrait of Picasso's muse and lover Fernande Olivier perhaps hints at Olivier's premonition that within a couple of years she would be dumped by the artist for another mistress.

For Picasso and the Cubists who followed, still life was a favorite subject. It offered an excellent means for exploring dimension and space and was a subject, as opposed to landscape, that the artist could completely control. One of Picasso's early efforts in this genre, "Still Life with Sugar Bowl and Fan," 1909-1910, is a virtual homage to Cezanne. The apple motif, shifting perspective and open brushwork of this watercolor suggest the debt the Cubists owed to their revered predecessor.

In an oil painting of 1910, "Portrait of a Woman," Picasso offered a tantalizing but vague view of the subject, whose hair and long face merge with the background but never completely disappear.

"Man with a Guitar," 1913, evolved from a studio experiment that began with a drawing of an abstract figure on a large canvas with a real guitar suspended in front of it. The two elements were linked by adding silhouette arms clipped from a newspaper. A series of sketches show that the artist envisioned this curious construction serving as a model for a wood sculpture, but he apparently changed his mind and depicted it in this oil on canvas instead. By this time, color had been added to Picasso's Cubist arsenal.

Henri Laurens, an underappreciated Frenchman, created some of the most interesting Cubist sculptures, such as "Man with Pipe," 1919. Collection of Charlotte and Irving W. Rabb. ©Artists Rights Society, New York / ADAGP, Paris. Photograph ©Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

While Picasso continued to work in the Cubist manner after World War I, he also dabbled in Neoclassicism and Surrealism, sometimes combining all three in one work. His restless, wide-ranging vision led him to try all manner of styles and subjects for the remainder of his career, but, as this exhibition documents, his contributions were central to the invention of Cubism.

Braque (1882-1963), Picasso's ally in launching Cubism, was born into a family of French housepainters. Soon after settling in Paris he joined Andre Derain, Matisse and Maurice de Vlaminck in the Fauve movement, which emphasized painting in bright, intense colors.

Braque's career changed course after he met Picasso in 1907 and viewed "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" in the Spaniard's studio. They embarked on the collaborative and inspirational, yet competitive, relationship out of which came Cubism.

While working together in the Pyrenees in the summer of 1911, Braque and Picasso evolved a means of clarifying their forms in concentrated, but more legible compositions. "We were like two mountain climbers roped together," Braque later recalled.

When their dealer commissioned each of them to make a large print, they produced complementary pyramidal still lifes of a café table. In Braque's "Fox," 1911 (named after a bar in Paris), and Picasso's "Bottle of Marc," 1911, both drypoints, a kind of linear scaffolding indicates distance and holds the image together, while an associated structure of cubes and planes adds volume to the composition.

The next year Braque elevated collage from folk work to high art when he pasted charcoal and printed paper pieces onto various backgrounds. Utilizing inexpensive, ready-made industrial materials in works such as "Fruit Dish and Glass," 1912, he contravened the disciplines of academic art. As the exhibition organizers note, "By conflating 'high' and 'low' culture, Braque helped to initiate a central theme in Twentieth Century art."

After being wounded in World War I, Braque devoted himself solely to Cubism for the rest of his career. By then his association with Picasso was pretty much over.

An example of Braque's postwar work, "Pipe and Basket," 1919, suggests his increasing tendency to undertake formalist exercises detached from the reality of the world.

Another important figure in the exhibition is Leger (1881-1955), born in Normandy, the son of a cattle merchant. While working as an architectural draftsman in Paris, he studied painting and soon came to know a number of future Cubist artists. His art grew out of his admiration for the manner in which Cezanne defined forms and depicted volume in space.

After meeting Braque and Picasso in 1910, Leger created a series of paintings that combined Cubism's planed division of space in images reflecting his fascination with the power and speed of modern machinery. Leger's awareness of the increasing pace of the mechanized world is reflected in "Still Life," 1913, an opaque watercolor and oil composition filled with a jumble of loosely drawn blocks and cylinders that pulse with energy.

His elevated interest in intense colors is suggested by "The Factory," 1919, and his continuing concern with rounded tubular forms is reflected in "Two Figures," 1920. Some of Leger's most memorable art is characterized by solid sculptural forms and eye-catching colors, executed with riotous enthusiasm of enduring appeal.

Some of the most interesting Cubist work was created by three sculptors, Ukrainian-born Alexander Archipenko, Parisian Henri Laurens and Lithuanian native Jacques Lipchitz. Arriving in Paris in 1909, Lipchitz (1877-1964) created decorative figures, but after encountering Picasso and Gris, he adopted Cubist forms. His early, semiabstract work gave way to less abstract, more legible figures, such as his clarinet-playing "Pierrot," 1919. Elements of Cubism appeared throughout the sculptor's long career, which concluded in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Laurens (1885-1954), who was self-taught, learned about Cubism from his close, longtime friend Braque. His direct carving in stone led to fascinating results such as "Man with Pipe," 1919. In this austere, yet witty, asymmetrical piece, Laurens created an image that combined rounded and faceted forms with intriguing results.

Archipenko (1887-1964), another independent spirit with innovative ideas, switched from conventional figurative sculpture to modern, idiosyncratic work a few years after moving to Paris in 1908. His "Two Nude Figures," 1919, a watercolor, suggests the Cubist manner of his sculptures. After emigrating to the United States, Archipenko established a school and studio in Bearsville, N.Y.

"Facets of Cubism" offers rewarding insights into this watershed movement. Picasso, the driving force behind Cubism, said that he wanted people to experience art directly, to see and judge it for themselves. This welcome show offers a focused opportunity to do just that.

Other phases of Picasso's career can be seen in a complementary exhibition, "Degas to Picasso: Modern Masters," on view through June 18. In conjunction with the two shows, the MFA is offering a series of Modern art lectures starting in late January. They can be attended either as a four-session course or single sessions.

The Museum of Fine Arts is at 465 Huntington Avenue. For information, 617-267-9300 or www.mfa.org.

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