Picasso, photograph by Man Ray, 1932

Braving the torrential downpours of the Nor’easter last weekend, I ventured for the day to Philly to catch some shows. “Picasso and the Avant Garde in Paris” is a good show, not a great one but with the limited funds that museums have these days, they did a nice job culling works from their permanent collection to showcase a certain period in Picasso’s life. The show was also too large and could have done without the last three rooms as it began to lose its focus. Picasso’s oeuvre is just too vast and the viewer can become overwhelmed.

Study for "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon", 1907, watercolor on paper, 6 7/8 x 8 7/8 inches

Born in 1881, Picasso moved to Paris permanently in 1904 having already established his reputation in his homeland of Spain. While you may be familiar with Picasso’s interest in African art which was visible in works like his 1907 Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, perhaps like me you are unaware of the influence the cave paintings of Altimira in Spain had on him. It is when he first encounters this work that he sees himself as changing art from its traditional standards. He begins to break all the rules that have been in place since the Renaissance in regards to perspective and representation. In Self-Portrait with Palette from 1906 his portrayal displays a self-confidence and a sense of coming into his own. It’s almost as if he knows the greatness of his impact on art history before it occurs.

Self-Portrait with Palette, 1906, oil on canvas, 36 3/16 x 28 7/8 inches

Cubism “inaugurated art of the 20th century.”From 1907-1914 Picasso and Braque worked together on a daily basis and often their styles were indistinguishable. Objects were deconstructed into overlapping planes of monochromatic muted colors showing varied perspectives unattainable by the human eye. Painting was no longer a rendering of reality but a “reordering of reality.” As the handy audioguide pointed out, the splitting of the atom occurred in 1905 and x-rays were also in use at this time which certainly had an influence on the development of Cubism.

Juan Gris, Still Life Before an Open Window, Place Ravignan, 1915, oil on canvas, 45 5/8 x 35 inches

Cubism is broken down into two types: analytic and synthetic. Analytic was when artists broke down 3-d objects into fragments and synthetic took that a step further reassembling the fragments of analytic Cubism into a new kind of reality where bright color was used as well as illusionistic devices like wood grain, etc. Collage as an added element “highlighted the physicality of the artwork and its artificial nature, while radically rejecting traditional fine art notions of originality and purity. Juan Gris came into Picasso’s life at this time in the early 1900s. Gris added a great deal to Cubism –a heightened sense of color and an exploration of the relationship between interior and exterior spaces. Sadly, he died at 40 years of age. I really liked a small work on paper by Gris called The Table from 1916. It is an 8 x 10 inch work with wood grain, a glass, and newspaper on a table with a diagonal line dissecting the top left part of the paper with a seafoam green wave decoration, perhaps representing wallpaper or an awning. It is sweet and intimate and begs the viewer for close inspection.

Preston Dickinson, Cafe Scene (Portrait of Charles Demuth), c. 1912-1914

Also at this time American artists were flocking to Paris to be part of the art world there. The epicenter of this world were the salons of Leo and Gertrude Stein, patrons and devotees of emerging artists. An interesting work in charcoal and chalk on paper is Cafe Scene (Portrait of Charles Demuth) 1912-1914 by Preston Dickinson. It shows a typical cafe scene in Paris and conveys what it was like to be an American in Paris at that time.

Charles Sheeler, Pertaining to Yachts and Yachting, 1922

Another great work by an American artist on view is Charles Sheeler’s Pertaining to Yachts and Yachting from 1922. This work has the same crisp lines and flat planes that Sheeler is known for, but instead of painting industrial scenes, he uses this technique to depict a seascape with abstracted sails that merge into one another. It simply becomes a mass of form with highlights of blue, brown, and cream.

Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912, oil on canvas

Salon Cubism did not include works by Picasso and Braque because the dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler did not think they were as marketable as work by their contemporaries. The works on view are hung as they were in the Salon d’Automne of 1912 from floor to ceiling with sculpture placed at varied intervals. In this room one can see Marcel Duchamp’s famous Nude Descending a Staircase 2 which was infamous at its showing in the 1913 New York Armory Show. It garnered a great deal of attention due to the negative press it received internationally. It was rejected by the Paris salon because, “a nude does not descend the stairs, a nude reclines.”

Francis Picabia, Dances at the Spring, 1912

I loved a small Roger de la Fresnaye work Pitcher, Books, and Bottles form 1911-14, a crayon and charcoal on paper. This is a gorgeous work with simple abstracted geometric forms rendered in the most simplified fashion, however, the artist still uses shadowing on the pitcher so objects are indentifiable but not broken into planes; it is almost pre-Cubist. I also liked a Francis Picabia work made up of vibrant orange, browns, and peaches. Dances at the Spring from 1912 was based on a peasant dance Picabia saw in Italy on his honeymoon and it drew me in.

Fernand Leger, The City, 1919, 91 x 117 1/2 inches

There is a Leger room (odd in a show on Picasso, no?) which displays the monumental painting The City from 1919. It was shown in 1920 at the Salon des Independent when people believed that Cubism was a prewar concept that had died. This painting with its large size and bright colors emphasized that Cubism was indeed alive in full force.

Picasso, The Three Musicians, 1921, oil on canvas

The Three Musicians is one of Picasso’s most well-known works. He painted it in 1921 at a villa he rented in Fountainebleu. One of two versions it uses the idea of collage from Picasso’s earlier works. The figures and objects are rendered in flat overlapping planes.

One of my favorite works in this exhibition is a small gem of a work with a reduced palette of red, peach, light blue and white called Still Life with a Glass and a Pipe by Amedee Ozenfant. The composition is divided in half by a diagonal line leading the eye downwards to the right. A glass, which we see from the side and above at the same time casts a shadow on the stark white wall behind it and is outlined in a rusty red line which matches that of the table the objects rest on. A delicate representation of a pipe lays next to the glass; its curves contrast with the stark lines in the rest of the work. Stunning in its simplicity.

Salvador Dali, Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War), 1936

There is a section on the “Call to Order” movement in which artists wanted to return to more traditional techniques after World War II. The next room shows works by Surrealists whose work Picasso entered into a dialogue with in the 1920s and 30s; works by Miro and Dali are on view including Dali’s Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) from 1936. This intense work shows Dali’s frustration with the Spanish Civil War. The figure in the work is literally tearing itself apart. His attention to detail is perfection in its protest of the horrors of war.

Constantin Brancusi, Mademoiselle Pogany III, 1931

There is an exquisite Brancusi in the show, Mademoiselle Pogany III from 1931. The contrast between the smooth surface of the woman and the rough hewn texture of the wooden oak base gives the work “an electric charge.” In the same room is a sweet Sonia Delaunay work painted on a poem on Japanese paper. It includes her typical lovely bright colored arcs and interlocking forms.