Page 33 - Studio International - May 1970

Four sculptors

part 2: Picasso

cubist

constructions

William Tucker

There is no doubt, to my mind, that the most
totally revolutionary of all modern sculptures
in concept, material and execution, are
Picasso's cubist constructions in wood, card-
board, paper, string and other materials, of
1912-14; and it is a strange paradox that
these most radical of works should be so
modest, drab, even furtive in presence; in con-
trast for example to the enormous attack,
vigour, and freshness that the Desmoiselles
d'Avignon has even today. It is true that these
constructions can be seen as the natural and
inevitable development from cubist collage,
but the inevitability is that of history and
hindsight—in the event Braque faltered as he
got to the point of three-dimensional collage,
and Picasso dropped this line of activity com-
pletely after a couple of years, returning to it
much later when the moment of urgency had
passed, with more facility and more ambition,
but less real success.
Leaving a knowledge of the development of
Cubism to one side, these constructions,
thought of as sculpture, or as painting, pure
and simple, are objects beyond the justifica-
tion of any traditional precedent. As paint-
ings, all that remains of the frame, the picture
rectangle, pictorial space itself, exists in the
relationships of those parts of the structure
which stand for depicted objects or parts of
depicted objects; these are physical relation-
ships, simultaneous with the illusioned ones,
the actual joining and fixing of wood, string,
and nails. Painting gives way to physical
making, and survives only to key or differenti-
ate existing parts: the picture surface has been
replaced by the frontal planes of real volumes,
although the orientation of the whole is still
pictorial, that is toward the spectator, back to
the wall, and the illusion of deeper volume, of
implied perspective, of modelled, rounded
surfaces is still consequently present. When
one considers the Musical Instrument of 1914,
the problem of representation is no longer an
issue; the internal ordering of the parts is so
much dominant to the schematic references
to reality; the point of departure may be
necessary for the artist, but it is no longer so
for us. It no longer helps to be able to
identify it as a guitar, mandolin or whatever
—it has become a completely self-sufficient
object.'
As sculpture, these constructions are probably
even more radical. Even if considered within