Abstract art between the wars
|
Braque, Picasso and Gris came very close to abstraction in 1914, as can be seen through looking at a few histories of the art of that period. In his Vision in Motion Moholy-Nagy set side by side a Braque collage of 1914 and a Malevitch composition of 1921, showing a striking resemblance between the two works. This must have been accidental, since Braque never intended to go in for abstraction, while Malevitch had no use for figuration after 1913. For example when Braque said "Let us forget about things, and only consider relationships" he was certainly far from realising how close he was to Mondrian. Words often outstrip thought: did not Picasso once remark about Juan Gris that the disciple often sees things more clearly than his master?
Léger gave much more thought and time to the claims of an integral abstract art, and for a time, between 1913 and 1919, he seems to have been very strongly tempted by it. His admirable series of Contrasting Forms of 1913-1914 is not abstract art in the strictest sense of the term, but comes within an ace of it. I have no idea who or what deflected Léger from what would have been his normal evolution. Towards 1924 he interrupted his usual style of painting to produce some mural compositions which were entirely abstract and, indeed, very much in line with Neo-plasticism. Two of them were given prominent places at the Cercle et Carré exhibition in 1930.
During the nineteen-twenties, when it was directed by Léger and Ozenfant, the Académie Moderne turned out a large number of young abstract artists. Thanks to their youth they were not slow in pushing Cubism to its logical conclusions, and I know that they were not discouraged by Léger in their pursuit of abstract art. He wrote some years later, "Of all the different directions in which the plastic arts have developed in the past 25 years, abstract art is the most important as well as the most interesting. It is no mere freak of experiment, but an art with its own intrinsic value. It has proved itself and also satisfies a demand, since so many collectors are enthusiastic about it. It is therefore a tendency arising out of life. Maybe future generations will class this form of art as an artificial paradise, but I do not think so. The abstract programme is governed by that desire for perfection and for complete liberty which turns men into saints, heroes or madmen. It is an extreme position in which few artists or their supporters can thrive. The very idealism of the abstract programme is its greatest danger. Modern life with all its turmolland urgency, its dynamism and variety, has no mercy on this fragile, luminous creation rising from chaos. We should respect it and leave it alone, for it had to be done and is done and it will remain." But Léger asserted in the same work that the abstract experiment was already a matter for history and that it "has given all it had to offer."
Whether that is true or not, after 1920 Cubism returned once and for all to figuration. Braque imposed the rhythm while Picasso marked the frontiers of extravagance. Thus Picasso was able to cling to his title as an experimenter while Braque became the classic of the moderns. Gris died prematurely in 1927, having also failed to take the next step into abstraction. This step would have been harder for him than for the others, since he had already chosen the opposite direction, declaring that "Cézanne turned a bottle into a cylinder, but I turn a cylinder into a bottle."
In the same way Fauvism moved rapidly towards abstraction thanks to Matisse. Quite a number of his works of his most productive period -- for instance The Piano-lesson -- were well on the way to abstract painting, but the impulse petered out and Matisse became the most elegant figurative painter in the world.
Purism also stopped on the theshold. Although Ozenfant wanted "the utmost intensity and quality obtainable through the most economical means" he remained fundamentally hostile to abstract art.
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, supported Ozenfant in his Purist programme, but drew much closer to the Stijl theories in his architectural works. The retrogression of the great Cubists, together with the veto from the Purists, held up the popularisation of abstract art, which was still further threatened by Surrealism.
In spite of these strong waves of opposition in Paris itself, abstraction calmly went its own way and from time to time managed to score some minor victories. In December 1925 the Pole, Poznanski, organized a large exhibition called Art Now (L'art d'aujourd'hui) which was held at the Antiquarians' Syndicate headquarters at 18, rue de La Ville-l'Évêque. The abstract works exhibited included mural compositions by Baumeister, Brunet, Léger, Carlsund; paintings by Jean Crotti, Walter Dexel, Florence Henri; Marcelle Cahn, Francisca Clausen, Kakabadze, Reth, Sevranckx, Poz himself, as well as the Simultaneous Colours by Robert and Sonia Delaunay. Side b side with them were the Rayonists Larionov and Gontcharova; the l adaists Arp and Janco, and the whole Stjil group with Mondrian, Van Doesburg, Huszar, Vantongerloo, Vordemberge-Gildewart and Domela. Futurism was represented by Prampolini and Depero; the Bauhaus by Moholy-Nagy and Klee. Finally there were exhibits by most of the Cubists ( Gris, Picasso, Gleizes, Léger, Villon, Laurens, Lipchitz, Marcoussis, Metzinger) and of their sworn enemies the future Surrealists Max Ernst, André Masson, Joseph Sima, Toyen and Styrsky. Almost half of the entire exhibition consisted of abstract works. Some of the artists concerned have not exhibited since.
It was almost five years before another similar effort was made in support of abstract art. In April 1930 the Cercle et Carré exhibition was held at 'Galerie 23' (23, rue de La Boétie) with 130 exhibits by 46 artists. Some representational or hardly abstract paintings such as those of TorrèsGarcia and Ozenfant were admitted. The kernel of the group consisted of Mondrian, Kandinsky, Arp, Schwitters, Vantongerloo, Sophie Taüber, Pevsner, Huszar, Van Rees and Vordemberge-Gildewart, supported by a number of newcomers such as Buchheister, Pierre Daura, François Foltyn, Jean Gorin, Hans Welti, Germain Cueto, Eric Olson, Hans Suschny, Henri Stazewski and H. N. Werkman, all of whom sought expression through an integral abstraction. Among the other exhibitors were such artists as Léger, Charchoung, Baumeister, Fillia, Le Corbusier, Sartoris, Prampolini, Russolo, Marcelle Cahn and the American painter Stella, while César Domela, Otto Freundlich, Moholy-Nagy and Jean Xcéron, all members of the group, were absent.
Another noticeable abstention was that of Van Doesburg, who was invited to join the group at the outset -- it soon had eighty members -- but who curtly refused and decided to make a group of his own. He rallied round him Hélion, Carlsund and Tutundjan and published the one and only number of Art concret, a pamphlet whose main interest lies in its title. This is the first appearance of the term concrete art used instead of 'abstract' art which had been undisputed till then. As we know, the new expression was later favoured by Arp and Kandinsky, while the painter and sculptor Max Bill was also to make much of it.
In the following year (after Van Doesburg's death at Davos) Vantongerloo and Herbin got together a new group out of the ruins of Cercle et Carré. This group, Abstraction-Création, issued the first number of its Journal in 1952, the second in 1933, the fifth and last in 1936. It held its exhibitions in a hall at the back of a courtyard in the Avenue de Wagram, near the Place des Ternes. After the second world war the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles was founded on the same lines and at the same premises as Abstraction-Création, whose traditions were now carried on by an annual publication of the same format and style as the pre-war ones. I am tempted to smile when I recall that this series of groups and publications -- Cercle et Carré, Abstraction-Création and Réalités Nouvelles -- all originated in a visit paid to me at Vanves in 1929 by the Uruguayan painter Torrès-Garcia, which resulted in the founding of Cercle et Carré. I claim no particular credit for that, but it was one of those small things which sometimes lead to unexpected results, like those mountain echoes which come back so magnified that they sound like avalanches.
That period from 1920 to 1930 was rich in advance-guard reviews. There was hardly a European country without one and abstract art often had a prominent place in them. They were all in contact with each other and they exchanged contributors, so that a kind of International of abstract art came into being. Political developments snapped all these valuable links that stretched across the frontiers, and the network was never restored.
Here are the titles of some of those reviews, all memorable for their courage and independence: De Stijl, Mecano and The next call, in Holland; Het Overzicht and Ça ira at Antwerp; Anthologie at Lièe; Sept Arts and l'Art libre at Brussels; La vie des lettres et des arts, L'esprit nouveau, Les feuilles libres, Orbes, L'auf dur, Cercle et Carré, 391, Le Bulletin de l'Effort moderne and le Mouvement accéléré, all in Paris; Manomètre at Lyons; Zenith at Belgrade; Contemporanul and Punkt at Bucarest; Zwrotnica and Bloc at Warsaw; Ma at Vienna; Merz at Hanover; Pasmo, Disc and Stavba in Czecho-Slovakia; Der Sturm and G (Gestaltung) in Berlin; A.B.C. at Zürich.
Paris was the hub of all this activity, the centre in Paris itself being Montparnasse. It was a lively time, when on the same day, in front of the Dôme café you could meet Marinetti on a lightning visit to the capital, Gabo fresh from Berlin, Cendrars just back from America, Delaunay out for a spree, Arp trying to find somebody, Tzara and Ehrenburg sitting there with inscrutable faces; you could risk a few words with Hans Richter or argue with Van Doesburg of Kiesler, or listen to the international speechifiers making themselves drunk with their own eloquence, or you could even manage to be bored by it all.
|
||
