Page 34 - Studio International - May 1970

the convention of relief, with modelled
shallow volumes giving the illusion of a deep
recession, they do things with material, pro-
cess and subject-matter that had simply never
existed as a possibility in sculpture before. The
human figure, in whole or in part, in bronze,
carved wood or stone, was even at that time,
even for the most advanced artists, the main
constituent of sculpture; and Picasso in this
brief assault demonstrated that sculpture
could not only do without these historic
sanctions on material and subject matter, but
gave sculpture a potential freedom, the im-
plications of which are still being worked out.
It was due solely to Picasso, and in particular
to the pieces we are now discussing, that it
became possible to literally 'make' a piece of
sculpture, for the first time in history—that is
to say, to assemble it out of parts, as a crafts-
man would a table or a chair. It is difficult to
exaggerate the importance of this discovery
for sculpture, because it is so commonplace to
us now, and because it has always existed as
fundamental to invention in all the arts;
`poems are made with words, not ideas', as
Mallarmé is notoriously supposed to have said
to Degas; poetry is the Greek poiesis, 'making' ;
the idea of the art-work constructed of parts,
related in a harmonious whole, is as old as the
discussion of art itself. Yet, until this point in
time, the possibility of the free arrangement of
parts to create an expressive whole had been
denied sculpture, by the insistence on a re-
stricted range of subject matter, and on
certain prescribed and durable materials,
with their incumbent processes and restric-
tions on form.
Both Brancusi and Matisse were working at
the same period within these accepted limits
of subject matter and materials. Though both
were effected importantly by Cubism, they
worked from within the conventions that
Picasso had burst open. And even if Picasso
lost interest or nerve in this direction after
1915, and left it to others to exploit his strike
until he returned to construction in the late
1920s, the significance of these pieces should
not be underrated. The barrier, after all, was
a mental, not a physical one; still-life was a
time-honoured subject for painting; there was
nothing physically new about his materials or
their mode of assembly; it needed the inspired
opportunism of Picasso, and, in retrospect it
could have been no one else, to cross the two
factors in an art object, to produce a new
strain that was to transform sculpture.
It is true that the implications of cubist
innovations in painting and collage were
already being explored by forward-looking
sculptors in Paris. Boccioni, Archipenko and
Laurens, among others, were using wood,
metal, cardboard, glass, as sculpture material,
and their handling of these materials is far
more sophisticated and assured than that of
Picasso. (But, whatever the relationship in
time, the authority of Picasso's constructions
lies partly in their consistency in the sequence
of Cubism, and partly in the directness of
response to the materials, the straightforward
crudity of construction unalloyed by pre-
conception of style or taste.) Equally
Boccioni's famous Development of a Bottle in
Space (1912) marks a breakthrough in the
subject matter of sculpture contemporary
with Picasso's first constructions.2 Clearly
Cubism was not only the vehicle for Picasso's
and Braque's concentrated and private effort
in painting and collage, but triggered off a
general outburst of activity in sculpture that
in many ways outstripped the ambition and
intentions of the authors of Cubism. None the
less many of these manifestations were more
declamatory than substantial; only Duchamp-
Villon and Lipchitz were to make cubist
sculpture of permanent quality, and their
approach to materials and subject matter was
conventional.3 In terms of its early impact the
lesson of Cubism for sculpture was in the
separation, clarification, and rationalization
of form; the introduction of construction as a
general and fundamental technique of making
sculpture had to wait until Picasso made his
second incursion into this field, this time using
iron and the assistance of Gonzalez.4
But because first Braque, then Picasso, with-
drew when cubist collage threatened to detach
itself completely from the picture surface, and
proceeded to put the discoveries of the pre-
vious few years into the making of pictures, of
oil paintings, the history of Cubism has been
written from the viewpoint of the develop-
ment of painting, the re-structuring of
pictorial space. Moreover in recent years the
reaction against Cubism in painting, the re-
instatement of Monet over against Cézanne,
has led to the survival of any 'cubist' elements,
whether in sculpture or in painting, being
regarded as wholly regressive. I would like to
try to correct this imbalance, to draw out
2
Houses on a Hill Horta de San Juan, summer 1909
Oil on canvas
254 x 32¼ in. Private Coll., Paris
3
Paul Cezanne
Rocky Landscape, Aix ?1885-8
Oil on canvas
25⅝ x 31⅞ in.
Coll: National Gallery, London
4
Georges Braque
Still-Life with Fish 1911
Oil on canvas
Coll : Tate Gallery
5
Female Nude Cadaques, summer 1910
Oil on canvas
38¾ x 30⅜ in. Coll : Philadelphia Museum of Art,
Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection
6
Juan Gris
The Teacups 1914
Oil, charcoal and pasted paper on canvas
25½ x 36¼ in.
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen,
Dusseldorf