Page 37 - Studio International - May 1970

introducing welded iron as a medium of equal typical subject of cubist still-life not only has the
permanence and seriousness to the traditional character of a ready-made abstract construction, and
sculpture materials, I feel there is something of a formal 'kit of parts', as is discussed later in this
essay, but has also the character of a symbolic figure;
overblown, something insensitive and rheto-
this reading persists here.
rical about these pieces. By contrast the 2 Impressive as Boccioni's achievement is, I find there
earlier reliefs have an economy, a compact- is something cold and academic at the heart of it. He
ness, a proper relation of means to ends, that seems to me not so much a true innovator as an
becomes increasingly rare in Picasso's paint- extremely talented modeller, for whom the futurist
technique of breakdown into a multitude of small parts
ing and sculpture, though it long persists in
borrowed from Impressionism, and Picasso and
the graphic work, suggesting that, ultimately, Braque's Analytical Cubism, provided a vehicle for the
it is in drawing, in line, that Picasso's genius virtuoso extension of modelling into areas of material
lies. Compared to the Construction in Wire, for and subject that futurist literary theory had un-
example, the drawings for Le Chef d'Oeuvre covered.
3 While some of the most beautiful and important
Inconnu have a richness and variety both of
sculptures of this century, Duchamp's Ready-Mades and
design on the surface and of possible spatial Tatlin's Corner Reliefs, spring directly from Cubism, and
implication, that cannot be found in the demand more than formal acknowledgement here, both
sculpture. groups of work were made en route to an extreme
The source of one's unease in face of the Romantic position involving the identification of art
and life. Both the subject-matter and process of cubist
metal constructions seems to derive from two
construction— the object as subject, and its fabrication
factors: Picasso's use of the human image, and by the same processes as other use objects—carry the
his relation with the materials. In comparison seeds of the intellectual redundancy of art. Thus the
with Matisse, for whom the figure in sculpture Ready-Mades may be seen as unadulterated elements of
cubist still-life, and Tatlin was to devote his later years
was a point of departure, a schema, from
to the design and construction of useful objects. One
which he could elaborate with virtually
notes a strange parallel between the work of these
abstract freedom, the figure in Picasso's talented contemporaries, symbolized by the formal
sculpture tends to become the point of arrival: correspondence between the Bottle Rack and the
the most abstract and diverse assemblages of Monument to the Third International—both possibly
fathered by the Bottle in Space, with the medieval
parts are taken to the point at which they are
Tower of Babel imaged by Breughel and Patenir as a
resolved not through internal formal co-
remote ancestor.
herence but through the arbitrary imposition 4 If this seems unfair to the achievements of the Russian
of human 'signs'. Secondly, with regard to Constructivists, one might plead their own insistence on
material: I think it is possible to perceive in their separateness from the main stream of the European
the constructions of 1929-31 a certain gap tradition, on a Utopian new beginning (which would
also apply to the sculptural by-products of de Stijl and
between intention and execution; one senses
the Bauhaus: such as Rietveld's chair, surely one of the
a lack of directness, of technical resource—the most remarkable examples of construction in the 20s).
feeling that the artist is not 'in' the material— Nonetheless, Gabo and Pevsner, of the Constructivists
that is apparent neither in the cubist con- who left Russia, in spite of their announced intention
structions, nor in the metal constructions that to replace traditional sculptural volume with space, both
seem to me in retrospect to have been in effect carvers,
Gonzalez was to execute on his own. The
whose materials may have been novel, but whose
relation between Gonzalez and Picasso ap- penetration of actual space was usually bounded by the
parently has much in common with that confines of the conventional rectangular block. Their
which earlier existed between himself and most radical and exciting work in this period was
Braque—in both cases the volatile and im- probably in stage design (for the ballet 'La Chatte'),
as was the case with much of the most ambitious work
patient Picasso seems to have needed a
done by the Constructivists in Russia itself.
slower, more timid, but more patient and 5 It has been pointed out to me that the Cezanne paint-
technically more resourceful collaborator in ing is more tactile, in terms of the paint surface: however
order that both partners could mutually in- the image of the Picasso picture is more tactile in its
evocation of sculptural shape.
spire each other to produce work that would
6 As Gabo was virtually to do in his constructed steel
never otherwise have come into existence.
Head of 1916.
Whatever the conditions under which they 7 See the distinction between modelling, carving and
originated, Gonzalez's constructions of the construction made in the first essay in this series (Studio
1930s strike me as being by and large superior International, April 1970).
to those of Picasso, both in terms of the inven-
tive use of material, and in the creation of
symbolic, constructed equivalents for the 7
Glass and Dice 1914 Painted wood 9¼ x 81 in.
human figure. What they lack in presence
8
they more than make up for in the develop- Glass, Pipe and Playing Card 1914 Painted wood and
metal Diameter 131 in.
ment of the use of iron as a material equal in
9
potential to bronze, wood and stone : the Still-Life 1914 Painted wood with fringe
10 x 181 x 4 in.
material proper to construction as a mental
10
as well as a physical process in sculpture.? q Guitar 1914 Painted metal 371 x 26 x 74 in.
11
Woman's Head 1931 Iron, painted white
391 x 144 x 24 in.
12
1 The construction does have a strongly 'human' Pipe, Glass, Bottle of Rum 1914
Collage, pencil and gouache on cardboard
presence, though lacking in any specific reference: it
151 x 201 in.
could be a mask or head without defined features, or
Coll : Museum of Modern Art, New York
indeed a total figure. The stringed instrument as a Gift of Mr and Mrs Daniel Saidenberg