Jennifer Goff

Eileen Gray


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with Jean Metzinger, Fernand Léger, Robert Delauney (1885-1941) and Henri Le Fauconnier (1881-1946). After exhibiting at the Salon des Indépendents in 1911 and then as a group at the Salon d’Automne where their work caused a sensation, Gleizes was introduced to Picasso by Apollinaire and he joined the Puteaux Group. Influenced by the ideas of Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) and Henri Bergson (1859-1941), both of whom Gray read, Gleizes began to represent an object which was viewed from numerous viewpoints. This technique became known as relative motion. Gleizes believed that to understand the space of Cubist painters one needed to examine the German mathematician Bernhard Riemann’s (1826-1866) mathematical series theorems. He also stated that the only way to understand this treatment of space would be to include and integrate the fourth dimension whereby physics, space and time are unified to create a continuum or fourth dimension. Cubism with its multiple viewpoint perspective achieved, in their opinion, a better representation of the world. Gleizes argued that one cannot know the external world; therefore he didn’t attempt to analyse or describe an actual visual reality. Instead he said that one can only know sensations. He sought to synthesise the world through sensation, using volumes to create the structure of objects. As a result he simplified his forms and modulated their shape and their colour in relation to one another. Gleizes’s theories on the notion of ‘Translation and Rotation’ are where flat planes are set in motion simultaneously in order to create space and their relationship with the subject matter.

      Apollinaire helped create the phrase ‘Orphic’ Cubism. After Gleizes and Lhote it was Robert Delauney who became its foremost practitioner. This philosophical notion about the passage of time, or simultaneity, was a concept which was also espoused by the Italian Futurists. The later phase of Cubism became thus more colourful and decorative and had many foreign adherents.

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      3.16 Charcoal drawing, circa 1934, paper, pencil © NMI

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      3.17 Charcoal drawing, circa 1920, paper, pencil © NMI

      The success of the new art movements and the successful reign of internationalism in the Paris arts was also in part due to the powerful xenophilism of the upper middle classes and of the enlightened aristocracy. The presence of such large numbers of foreign artists transformed the art scene in Paris by serving to increase the gap between the official art and independent art (represented by the Salon d’Automne and the Salon des Indépendants). These foreign artists were to contribute enormously to the emergence in France of the avant-garde art movement.