Page 50 - Studio International - January 1966

Commentary from Houston and New York

by Dore Ashton

Houston thirty feet high), Sweeney has presented some
Most often historical anthologies dim the impact of hundred and fifty works, each within its own ambience.
works of art and distort the spirit in which they were That is to say, many of the paintings are suspended by
created. But the Houston Museum of Fine Arts wires from the ceiling and are literally surrounded by
circumvents tedious historical didacticism in an clear space. Others are disposed generously on white
exhibition organised by James Johnson Sweeney walls so that the viewer is able to isolate and enjoy each
called The Heroic Years: Paris 1908-1914. With work as though it were a solitary moment of inspiration
characteristic aplomb, Sweeney mounts this exceptional instead of a product of history.
history of modern art as though it were not history at all, The heroic years in Paris, as they emerge in this
but the living incarnation of Apollinaire's New Spirit. exhibition, were bustling with comings and goings,
Abetted by Mies van der Rohe's grand space (Cullinan influences and cross-influences, parties and confer-
Hall with its gently-curved walls and ceilings more than ences, publications and gossip. Most of the painters
and sculptors represented were well informed about
the latest ballet (Diaghileff), the newest theatre
The Heroic Years: (Jacques Copeau's Theatre du Vieux Colombia), the
Paris 1908-1914
The Exhibition in most advanced fashions in ladies' raiment (Paul
the Cullinan Hall Poiret) and the newest in art criticism (Apollinaire).
The Museum of Fine Arts
Houston The presence in the exhibition of a group of fetching
gowns designed by Poiret; marvellous Leon Bakst
gouache costume designs for the Ballets Russes ;
letters and old photographs of major personages and
illustrated books; adds to the impression of seething,
passionately avant-garde activity.
But as ebullient as all these mementoes are, in the end
it is in the paintings and sculptures of the period that
the timeless spirit of the new asserts itself.
Below Although the works in the exhibition begin in 1908,
Frank Kupka
Localisation des Mobiles the powerful residue of events in the immediately
Graphiques 1912 preceding years is readable in them. The year before a
Oil on canvas
79 x 76 in. major Cezanne retrospective had stirred the young
On loan to The Heroic Years
from Mr. and Mrs. Jan Mladek painters at the Salon d'Automne. His letters to Emile
Washington D.C. Bernard had been published at the same time in the
Mercure de France, including the famous letter in
which he counsels the young painter to treat nature
through the cylinder, the cone, and the sphere. At the
same time, Henri Bergson had attracted a lot of atten-
tion with his Creative Evolution, also published in 1907.
Bergson's impact should never be underestimated.
Many contemporary statements ring with his after-
image, and it is certain that Apollinaire had assimilated
Bergson before he wrote his initial discussion of
cubism, The Three Plastic Virtues, in 1908. ('It is
necessary to embrace the past, the present and the
future in a single glance of the eye,' he wrote.)
The year 1908 then is largely reflected in the way
Robert Delaunay, André Derain, Raoul Dufy and a few
others set about assimilating the principles of Cezanne.
Even Picasso seemed to have been greatly impressed
by the Cezanne show: his silvery Still Life of that year
is still relatively conventional in its spaces, and its
volumes are distinctly fashioned after Cezanne's.
But at the same time Picasso worked on his explosive
Dancer, certainly one of the most powerful paintings
in the exhibition. Here, the fierce power of his taut lines
delineating movements surmised through his experience
with African sculptures announces the line of expres-
sionism followed out ever since. (Visitors to Houston
have an opportunity to see a great many African
sculptures in the neighbouring St. Thomas University,
where Dominique de Mend has assembled a group of
major works from all over Africa.)
The new spirit in more abstract forms is amply
illustrated in the years following. Beside Bergson's
influence, there were a host of publications in which
artists could follow the radical approaches to new
science. Kupka, for instance, was to write in his book
'The ideas and conceptions of contemporary artists
are manifestly influenced by the results of moderr