[? DAVID GEOFF: ?] So today, we
have a lecture, "Abstraction
and Purity,"
and the reason I titled it
"Abstraction and Purity"
is because, you know,
we have been going
through the East Building
gallery
by gallery, room by room.
But in this case, I've conflated
two rooms.
We have two rooms
in the upper level.
One is titled by the wall
plaque, which I will proudly
show you in a second.
One is titled "Purity," and then
another room is titled
the "Birth of Abstraction."
So, those two rooms could work
together.
So, for the sake of time
and whatnot I've combined
the works and the themes
and the concepts in those two
rooms.
I've combined them
for this lecture.
This is one of the rooms,
of course.
This is the "Purity" room
that features works by Brancusi,
Leger, and Mondrian.
We'll be coming back to that
in a second.
So, here we are.
We're on the upper level now.
So we've gone ground level,
mezzanine, and now we're up
on the upper level.
So here is what we're talking
about.
If you go down below that, where
the Motherwell is,
that's the concourse.
You enter here,
this is the ground level.
Then you go to the mezzanine,
which we've been on.
And now we're up here.
So, now we're
on the upper level,
and you can enter
through different portals.
But this is the time I said
to you a couple of lectures ago
that eventually I'm going
to talk about staircases.
So-- and because we have been
talking about changes
in the building
during this three-year
renovation, and one of them
does affect staircases-- how one
negotiates the East Building
now.
When Pei originally designed
the building, he had three
spiral staircases.
One we still have,
which is this one.
That's the same staircase, just
two photos.
This is the one that still today
takes you up to the Tower
Gallery,
where we have changing
exhibitions.
Anne Truitt is currently
up there.
So that hasn't changed.
That staircase remains.
But in order to change
the logistics of the building,
it was necessary to get rid
of the other two spiral
staircases.
Now Pei was still alive-- he's
still alive.
He's 100.
He had assigned one of his best
architects, Perry Chin
to sort of oversee this.
So, you know, I think we did
say, you know,
do you mind if we--
[CHUCKLES] --destroy those two
staircases?
Maybe they took them somewhere.
I don't know.
And he was OK with that.
So now, we have
the remaining Pei staircase,
and this is the new staircase.
There are two of them.
And the reasons these were added
to the building
was, in fact, a very functional,
practical reason.
And that is to say,
in the original-- remember,
the building opened in 1978.
We were celebrating
the 40th anniversary.
In 1978, different building
codes and things were not
exactly what they are today.
And if you had been
in this building
prior to its renovation,
there was no way you could
evacuate this building on one
staircase from the very top all
the way to the bottom.
You would have to go down one
level, you might take a spiral
staircase,
and then be on the mezzanine.
And then you'd have to look
around and figure OK, where do I
go from here to get downstairs
because if I can't use
the elevator-- and, of course,
in an emergency that's not good.
So, each time you get to a level
figuring out, OK now where
do I go?
So, it was decided that there
had to be staircases that went
unbroken from the very tower all
the way to the ground level.
So, that's why these staircases
were created.
So here is-- and they're are
like works of art themselves.
They're just gorgeous.
That's not-- when I take people
up to the tower, I always have
them look over, unless they have
vertigo.
Some people won't look over
because it's really dramatic
the way it goes down.
So, these are
the new staircases.
So, we still have the one spiral
staircase that's where it always
was, which is for the Tower
Gallery.
And then these are
the new staircases that
go unbroken.
The same quarries were used.
We reopened the same quarries
for all the stone
from the original '78 building.
This is looking the other way,
down below up.
So, I think
these staircases kind of qualify
as "Abstraction / Purity."
So I thought this was
a good place to just mention
that.
But now we're going to get
into the collection.
And this is the room
as I mentioned.
As I said to you before,
there were certain--
you know, everything doesn't fit
always neatly into a little box,
and so when you're trying
to create a space that has
clear definitions
and demarcations,
it doesn't always work that way.
And it depends, of course,
on what we have
in our collection, et cetera.
Remember when I said when you're
in our Dada section,
it's called Dada and Beyond
because there's much more
beyond Dada
than there is of Dada
in that part.
And here, what Harry Cooper,
our curator of 20th century art,
was trying to do
was to bring together artists
whose emphasis was on certainly,
abstraction,
but beyond abstraction.
It was on this concept of a kind
of transcendental, spiritual,
theoretical purity.
And certainly Brancusi,
Mondrian, and Leger all qualify.
There are some other people
here--
Harry wrote his dissertation
on Mondrian,
so he's pretty hyped up
about Mondrian.
So, that's how this room--
and you notice, of course,
it was great because he said,
purity?
With a question mark,
as if to say, you know--
I don't know, not all of you
may agree with this,
but it works.
OK.
So, here's the room.
This is looking
towards the surrealism Dada room
back here.
But this is the room we're
talking about, featuring
the works of those three
artists.
I'm going to start with Brancusi
because he's among the greatest
artists of the 20th century--
certainly among the greatest
sculptors.
So here's a self-portrait
of Brancusi.
He took that with a camera which
had an automatic shutter,
from 1933.
This is a portrait of Brancusi
by Man Ray from 1930.
I like the photograph
on the left because you know
when you take
your first photography class,
the one thing they always tell
you is when you're shooting
somebody,
make sure nothing is coming out
of their heads.
So, like, move them over
so the tree isn't coming out
of their head or something.
But I think this is intentional.
I think
that's the Endless Column here.
This is a model
for the Endless Column.
And I think what Brancusi-- this
is my take on it--
Brancusi wanted to know he's got
so many ideas, they're popping
right out of his head.
So, I think this is kind of
intentional.
He's thinking
about the Endless Column.
Now, Brancusi is fascinating.
I mean, he's one of the greats.
And the more you read and study
Brancusi, the more admiration
you have.
Of course, he's from Romania,
and he literally sort of walks
to Paris from Romania.
He's poor, and he wants to go
to where things are happening.
And he has a very peasant,
simple kind of approach to life
and approach to sculpture
and even approach to tools.
I mean, you know, some artists
use very sophisticated tools.
Brancusi uses the saw, the ax,
and the hammer.
And they're not small.
They're big, cleaving, pounding
tools.
So you see him sawing here.
This is one of his hammers.
Here, working with an ax.
And he's working
on these big timbers.
This is in part--
part of the-- working
on the wooden version
of the Endless Column.
But all of the pedestals
that you see when Brancusi
sculptures are on pedestals,
they're on wooden pedestals.
He makes all those.
And he basically makes them
by chopping wood with an ax,
and then kind of roughly shaping
them.
So that's something to keep
in mind.
He's certainly an artist who
qualifies as a Purist
with a small "p,"
because there is a movement
called Purism.
He's not part of that, but with
a small "p" because he takes
very simple shapes, essential
shapes, the oval, the triangle,
the sphere, and then he deals
with specifically refined
essence-- quality, soaring,
flight, balance, harmony--
how do you actually portray
these things
in a very, simple direct way?
And even with something
like grace.
How do we show grace
in sculpture?
Elegance?
So these are the things.
He's got a very eastern
philosophy and approach
to things, really,
in that particular way.
So, some of his sculptures
look very simple,
but they require a lot of time
and effort and thought.
Especially thought-- meditation.
This is early Brancusi that you
don't see very often.
This is from 1906, 1907.
These are two busts of a child.
This is the same one, just two
different views.
And then there's this one here.
This is Torment 1 and Torment 2
from 1906, 1907.
You look at this of course,
and you see the date 1906, 1907,
and of course you realize
that everybody who's going to be
a sculptor in Paris
at the turn of the century
has to confront Rodin.
So, when Brancusi arrives
in Paris, Rodin--
as I've said,
and I've said this a million
times, those of you who've heard
me lecture--
at the turn of the century,
in the year, 1900, the most
famous artists in the world--
in the world-- and I'm not
saying the most famous sculptor.
I'm saying the most famous
artist in the world was Auguste
Rodin.
So if you were a young sculptor
coming to Paris--
and Rodin does not die
until 1917--
you had to deal with Rodin.
And so, as I've said to you
before, you could not
be neutral.
So, if somebody asked you,
so what do you think of Rodin?
You know, you would not say,
you know--
I've never really thought
of the guy.
He doesn't really come up
on my radar screen.
You would either say, Rodin?
Oh my God, he's God.
And, he's the greatest sculptor
since Michelangelo,
and I would love to work
with this guy
if I could be his apprentice
or assistant.
Or you would say, Rodin--
yes, he was great, but his time
has passed.
And he's a 19th century
sculptor, and a 20th century
sculptor has to go
in a different direction.
And much of what
Rodin was about--
touch, the skin
of the sculpture, the subject
matter, the heroism--
all of that is over with now.
We have to move
into the 20th century.
So Brancusi comes to Romania,
and he does his early work
like this and others.
It's very much-- you have
to deal with Rodin.
This is later,
like the abstract
expressionist-- well, not just
the abstract expressionist,
but many painters.
You have to deal with Picasso.
You can't ignore him.
So what a lot of artists do--
you've got to kill him.
It's like you got to kill
your father if you're going
to be liberated.
So, artists have to go
after Picasso--
I got to get this guy out
of my system.
And the same with Rodin.
So, this work owes a lot
to Rodin.
It has a kind of-- first of all,
it deals with emotion
and feeling.
It's a cast bronze work.
It has this beautiful kind
of surface and all of that.
There's a slight difference
here.
The one on the left
is a little bit lower.
It shows the arm coming across.
The folded arm coming just
below the breast.
The other one is a little more
truncated.
In any case, this is pretty
typical of Brancusi kind
of channeling Rodin.
The other sculptor who was
prevalent and important
at this time
was the German sculptor Wilhelm
Lehmbruck.
So that's Lehmbruck
on the right--
The Kneeling Woman from 1911.
And this is Brancusi's work
on the left, called The Prayer
from 1907,
which was a work commissioned
in Romania.
Actually, it was a work
for a grave monument in Romania
for a cemetery.
But it owes-- Lehmbruck was very
important at this time, as well.
And so Lehmbruck and Rodin
certainly affect Brancusi early
in his arrival in Paris.
One of the things that's debated
at this time-- and it will
become more and more important
as we get into the 20th century,
especially in sculpture--
is does the human figure have
anything left in it to say?
Haven't we exhausted
the human figure as a subject
matter in art?
Shouldn't we move beyond that?
What more can you say
about the human figure that
hasn't been said,
going back to the Greeks?
So, some artists will accept--
they'll say, yes, indeed-- let's
move beyond that towards a more
abstraction, et cetera.
Other artists will say no, it
still is a very potent vessel
for conveying ideas
and emotions.
So that's a debate at this time.
That Modigliani-- uh, not
Modigliani, but--
I'm thinking about Modigliani
because that's one
of the first people Brancusi
meets when he arrives.
That is a discussion,
the continuing relevance
or irrelevance
of the human figure in art,
and it plays out in sculpture
a lot.
So Brancusi meets Lehmbruck,
he meets Modigliani, Archipenko.
Jacques Lipchitz is there
at the time.
And he becomes part
of this circle that was mainly
in Montparnasse.
He looks to Rodin.
This is a work called Sleep
from 1908.
Rodin was
instrumental in dealing
with this--
what we call an Italian, going
back to Michelangelo-- the "non
finito" look--
that a work looked like it
wasn't finished, like a head
was emerging still
from the stone.
And notice here, Brancusi could
cast.
He could model clay, cast
bronze, and also carve stone
or marble.
This is a work today that's
in Romania.
So, there's this encounter
with Rodin.
So when Brancusi arrives,
he makes a certain splash,
and he comes to Rodin's
attention.
And Rodin, looking at some
of this early stuff, especially
stuff that looks like Rodin's
own work, he says, wow.
You know, you're talented.
Why don't you come work with me?
Come into my studio
and be my assistant.
And Brancusi says no.
You know, thanks I'm
flattered, but no.
And then he utters
the famous quote--
when people then ask Brancusi,
he later says, you know Rodin
asked me to become
his assistant, and I said no.
And they're all, oh my God.
What do you mean?
This guy so famous,
and you should work with him.
And Brancusi said,
a little acorn could not grow
under the shade of a huge oak
tree.
So he's young, but he's
smart enough and mature enough
to know that if I work
with this guy--
I'm young.
He's the most famous artist
in the world.
I'm never going to find
my own voice.
I'm going to just be so
overladen by Rodin
that probably I would become
a second rate Rodin,
and that's not what I want
to be.
So he says no.
Now, other sculptors did just
the opposite.
Antoine Bourdelle-- Bourdelle
was a sculptor who idolized
Rodin.
Same thing, Rodin says come be
my assistant.
Bourdelle is flattered.
He spends the rest
of his career,
basically-- at least
a good chunk of it-- working
for Rodin.
And what is Bourdelle today?
With all due respect,
he's kind of a second-rate Rodin
because he follows Rodin's
principles pretty closely.
Brancusi was smart.
He's young,
but he was smart to know
that that wouldn't be the case.
I give the parallel analogy,
always in music,
and that is with George
Gershwin.
When George Gershwin goes
to Paris, the composer he's
totally enthralled with
is Maurice Ravel.
And he wants to study
with Ravel, and he goes to Ravel
and says, gee you know,
could you take me
on as a student?
I would love to study with you.
And Ravel already recognized
that Gershwin had written a body
of work that was really
his own voice, and was new,
and he said to Gershwin--
he said,
why do you want to study
with me?
If you study with me,
you'll become
a second-rate Ravel.
You're already
a first-rate Gershwin.
And then he wouldn't take him
on as a student.
So that's a similar situation
here.
Brancusi will find
his own voice, and in so doing
he'll change the nature
of 20th century sculpture.
And that will be-- with just
a couple of exceptions--
a rejection of Rodin.
So, here is just a couple
of-- again, another installation
shot here of how we've installed
things.
So one of the things Brancusi
does, is he's concerned
with abstraction
with the essence of things.
And so, when you're concerned
with abstraction and essence,
you very often
work in a serial form.
You'll do a number of things
in the same sequence
of the same subject,
and you'll keep pushing
the ideas.
Can I make it more abstract?
Can I keep it-- you know,
this kind of thing.
We see this with Matisse,
the Back Series, right?
The Jeanette Series?
Those heads, where he just keeps
moving more and more
towards abstraction.
This is true for Brancusi,
in spades.
Almost every work by Brancusi
is part of a series.
And he just pushes them along.
So here on the left, the work
we have at the gallery,
is the Maiastra, 1911.
This is a bird form.
This is the one that we have
here.
There are seven versions
of this.
So there are seven
different versions
of the Maiastra.
The work on the right
is not in our collection,
but it's the next step
in his treatment of the bird
form.
This is called the Golden Bird
from 1919 to 1920.
There are four versions of that.
The one you're looking
at on the screen is in Chicago,
the Art Institute.
The Maiastra is very important
because it's the first sculpture
by Brancusi to begin to deal
with the abstracted form
of a bird.
And this bird, Maiastra,
is a Romanian bird of folktale
and a legend.
It's known as the Pasarea
Maiastra, so it's a very famous
bird, which means "master bird"
in Romanian fairy tale and folk
tale.
It was famous for its plumage
and for its song.
But, probably, that subject
of the Romanian bird
was fusing here
with the Russian bird, which
is the bird, of course,
of the Ballets Russes
and a Russian folklore,
The Firebird.
Because at the time
that Brancusi was working
on this Romanian legendary bird,
the Ballets Russes was mounting
their production of The Firebird
with the music
by Stravinsky, which
is a comparable Russian version
of this bird.
So there are two mythic birds,
and certainly, Brancusi knew
that Russian version.
The Firebird premiered
in the opera--
the Paris Opera-- in June 25,
1910, so it's
right at this time.
So there was a lot of buzz
about The Firebird,
and it may have affected
this choice here.
So the Maiastra is wonderful.
It's perched on its little base
here.
It's a golden color.
It's breast is swelling
because it's trying to sing.
Its beak is just
open a little bit.
In Brancusi, you've got to look
carefully
because every little nuance is
telling you something about how
he's thinking.
So his mouth is just kind
of opening,
as if he's ready to sing.
It's very subtle.
Each eye is a little bit
different.
The way he turns the neck--
the turn of the head
is very subtle.
It's very highly polished.
It's a reflective surface.
That surface
is a total rejection of Rodin.
That's one of the first things
he rejects
is Rodin's tactile working
in clay, and that sense
of the artist's touch,
and all of that is gone here.
This is a total rejection
of Rodin, in terms
of the surface, even though it's
a bronze.
He talks about what he--
it sits then, on a little base,
and then it sits on a larger
pedestal.
All of those
are created by Brancusi.
So, he's working
from this wooden pedestal
to this little marble cube
to the bronze sculpture,
and that works, of course,
vertically.
And that is related to something
we're going to spend
a little time talking about
today, and that is theosophy--
theosophical thought
about aspiration
and moving from the earthly
to the spiritual realm
in this sort of vertical realm,
and moving from base materials--
wood-- to more exalted
materials-- bronze.
That idea.
But I'll come back to that.
So talking about the Maiastra,
what he was trying to do,
he said about the pose,
Brancusi said, "I wanted to show
the Maiastra as raising
its head, but without putting
any implications of pride,
haughtiness, or defiance
into this gesture.
That was the difficult problem,
and it is only after much hard
work
that I managed to incorporate
this gesture into the motion
of flight."
So, he keeps talking about what
was the obsessive search
here is what he called,
"the essence of the work.
Essence.
What can I get down to that's
the bare minimum that will still
express what it is I want
to say."
And then that journey continues
with the Golden Bird.
So this, this is like, I don't
know, the grandfather,
the father.
And then we get to the Bird
In Space and that'll
be the, sort of,
where he's sort of heading.
In 1926, again, Brancusi says
"In art, one does not aim
for simplicity.
One achieves it unintentionally
as one
gets closer to the real meaning
of things."
So, there's this constant kind
of jettisoning
of the non-essential.
So here's the two Golden Birds
that way, the--
I'm sorry, the Two Birds
in Space that way.
Here, the Maiastra, here.
And we have a bronze--
this is actually brass, not
bronze--
and marble versions of the Bird
in Space.
So here they are.
On the left is the marble
from 1925.
On the right is the--
it's actually brass because
of the composition of the tin
and copper.
So technically, it's not bronze.
It's brass.
In any case, that's 1927.
This is where all those birds
are heading.
the Maiastra, the Golden Bird,
which are series, right?
7, 4-- he's already done
11 versions of the bird.
And then he's heading--
he's heading here.
The first-- when people saw
this, of course,
they said, either positively
or negatively, it was abstract.
And that really used to tick
Brancusi off, actually.
So he said, "I do not sculpt
birds, but flights.
There are those idiots who
define my work as abstract,
yet what they call abstract
is what is most realistic.
What is real is not
the appearance, but the idea--
the essence of things."
So this is not even supposed
to be a bird, so much as it's
supposed to be flight.
Or this sort of form,
piercing space in a certain way.
There are 16 versions
of this sculpture.
So this has the greatest number
within its series.
It's the purest expression
of his beliefs
and his aesthetic,
his philosophy.
It's this culmination of all
these years of thinking
about birds.
He was obsessed with birds,
with flight, et cetera.
And this is the sculpture
that, as you probably know,
in October 1926,
Brancusi was preparing
for an exhibition in New York
City at the Brummer Gallery,
and he was sending works
from Paris.
He was in Paris,
but he was sending work to New
York for the exhibition.
And his agent in New York,
who is kind of overseeing
the shipments,
was Marcel Duchamp.
So Duchamp was in New York
receiving everything to make
sure it got where it needed
to go for the exhibition.
And when the custom was-- when
this work arrived at customs,
it was all crated up.
They opened it, and they saw,
along with things
like the Maiastra
and other bronze weird things.
They saw all these weird shapes
and materials, and they refused
to allow it to enter the country
under the rubric of art.
The law said that works of art
were duty-free.
You could bring it
into the country
without paying duty if it was
a work of art.
If it was anything else,
you had to pay duty.
So, instead of allowing it
in as a work of art,
they imposed the standard tariff
for what was manufactured
objects in metal, and that was
a 40% of the sale price.
Now, at that time, that would
have been $240 in 1926,
which today would be about
$3,000.
So that was what they imposed
as the tariff.
This is so timely.
[LAUGHTER]
Somebody is going to suffer.
So Duchamp was mortified.
And Edward Steichen, who was
installing that exhibition,
helping with that-- he was
mortified.
Mrs. Whitney was mortified
by this, and she was friends
with Duchamp.
So, they had to release the work
because it was supposed to be
in this exhibition.
They couldn't just quarantine
it.
So they released it.
So they released it
under the title
of-- or under the category
of-- kitchen utensils
and surgical supplies.
[LAUGHTER]
That was the closest they could
get.
As close as they could get.
The show went on.
So, the exhibition in New York
took place.
And then that show traveled
to Chicago.
The government stuck
by its decision.
It didn't alter its decision,
and this is when Mrs. Whitney
said to Duchamp,
and wrote back to Brancusi,
you know, this would be a good,
kind of, a test case.
And I'd be willing to pay
for the lawyers
to test this in court--
whether this is art, what's not
art, should it be--
you know, all of that.
And so, that's what happened.
And this led to the very famous
Brancusi versus the United
States,
which is one of the most famous
art trials in American art
history.
That took place in October
of 1927.
There are certain trials you
always study in school--
Whistler Ruskin, one
of the big ones.
Brancusi versus the United
States, another biggie.
Richard Serra, with the Tilted
Arc-- that's a biggie.
Richard Serra, where one
of his works collapses and kills
a guy-- that's a biggie.
And then he sued--
that's a biggie.
The Rothko estate-- that one
is a biggie.
Altering the surfaces of David
Smith's sculptures--
that was a trial.
That was a hearing.
That's a biggie.
So all of these are big art
trials.
So, here we have a photograph
of Marcel Duchamp, Brancusi--
Duchamp, Brancusi, Tristan
Tzara--
the Dada guy, with his little
monocle-- and that's--
peeking out is Man Ray in Paris
in 1921.
And this is Edward Steichen,
the American photographer,
Self-portrait with Camera
from 1917.
He would eventually purchase
The Bird in Space.
He bought it out
of the exhibition.
Then he photographed it in 1927.
So, in an interview,
Brancusi talking about this sort
of all this fuss.
He said something-- he said
"If one has reproduced nature
realistically,
it is not creation.
An artist must create.
A reproduction of a horse
in marble or bronze is a corpse
of a horse.
There is something more
to a horse than the mere corpse.
There is the essence.
Or what do you call it?
The spirit, perhaps."
So this leads
to the famous trial.
I'm going to read to you
from the transcript in a minute.
This got a lot of press
coverage.
So this is an article in the New
York American, December 25th,
1927.
Sort of laying out the-- some
of the controversy.
This court case
is important in the world of art
and art law
because it's essentially
the first case that establishes
abstract art as works of art
under the law.
In other words, an artist isn't
just trying to pull a fast one.
So, in a certain way,
there were two precedents that
come out of this trial.
One is to recognizing
the validity of abstract art.
And then the other one
is recognizing the originality
of serial sculpture,
that it could change.
It wasn't merely being
replicated, but it was the work.
And they were independent works
of an original artist, who was
making changes along the way.
So, let me read you just a few--
I know, this is going to get us
way off time, but--
I'm not going to read
the whole transcript.
But it's
one of the great trials.
And this is, in fact, very
similar to the Whistler-Ruskin
trial, because you had
the artists who were
pro-Whistler, and the artists
who were anti-Whistler, they
were in favor of Ruskin--
et cetera.
It's very similar.
And some of the questions
are even the same.
So, here's the-- you have
Brancusi, he's the plaintiff.
Then you have three attorneys
for Brancusi-- you don't need
to know their names.
Three attorneys
for the government.
They are the defendant.
Then you had the judge, his name
was Waite, Judge Waite,
W-a-i-t-e.
And then you had witnesses
for and against Brancusi--
expert witnesses.
So Steichen-- Edward Steichen,
the photographer.
He's for Brancusi.
Jacob Epstein,
the American sculptor--
English-American-- he's
for Brancusi.
Forbes Watson was the editor
of Arts magazine.
They are the three witnesses
in favor of Brancusi.
The three against Brancusi
are Frank Crowninshield, who was
the editor of Vanity Fair.
William Henry Fox was, in fact,
the curator at the Brooklyn
Museum of Art.
He thought this was crazy stuff.
And Henry McBride was the art
critic for the New York Sun.
So those are anti-Brancusi.
So you got three and three, who
have to be then cross-examined.
So let me-- just a few things
here.
Here is Steichen being-- he's
on the stand,
and he's being questioned
by the opposition.
And so, it starts off, what
do you call--
and this sculpture
was in the courtroom as Exhibit
A, or Exhibit 1.
So, the lawyer says, what do you
call this?
And then Steichen says, "I use
the same term the sculptor did.
Oiseau, a bird--" first they had
to go
through the whole French thing.
You know, oiseau, it's oiseau,
and [MUMBLES]--
OK it's a bird.
And then the lawyer says, "What
makes you call it a bird?
Does it look like a bird
to you?"
And then Steichen says, "It does
not look like a bird,
but I feel that it is a bird.
It is characterized
by the artist as a bird.
"Simply because he called it
a bird, does that make it a bird
to you?"
[LAUGHTER]
This is actually the judge doing
the questioning.
"Yes, your honor."
"If you would see it
on the street--"
[LAUGHTER]
"--you would never think
of calling it a bird, would you?
If you saw it in the forest,
you would not take a shot
at it."
Like, if you're hunting birds
you would let this one go.
And then Steichen says, no
your honor.
And then he says "If you saw it
anywhere, had never heard anyone
call it a bird, you would not
call it a bird."
And then Steichen says, no sir.
OK.
So we got that, and then we go
through--
there has to be
all this discussion about what
it means to work in bronze
and replication and all of that.
And let me just pick out a few--
Epstein is good when he's
called.
So here's-- actually, this is
Steichen again because they have
to talk about the process
and Steichen has to explain how
a bronze sculpture is made.
And here's the questioning
of Mr. Atkin, "Have you ever
heard of Mr. Brancusi?"
This guy is a sculptor,
by the way.
Yes, replied the sculptor.
"How long is it since you have
heard of him in connection
with art?"
"I haven't heard-- I haven't
read of him for a number
of years."
"Where have you read of him?"
"In art publications."
"In books?"
"Art publications."
"Tell us just how many years
have you heard of Mr. Brancusi
as an artist."
"Mm, perhaps five years."
"But you know, as a matter
of fact, Mr. Atkin,
that Mr. Brancusi has done works
of art for over 25, years do you
not?
How many works of art
made by Mr. Brancusi
have you seen?"
"I haven't seen any."
"You have never seen any works
by Brancusi?"
"You said 'works of art.'
I have not."
"Have you seen any
of his works?"
"I have seen works like that--"
he points to the Bird
in Space-- "but I haven't seen
any works of art."
"In other words, you do not
regard them as works of art."
"I do not."
So, that's the other side
of the coin.
It goes on.
This is good.
This is when Steichen is on.
He's back on the--
this is the lawyer again,
against Brancusi.
"All breasts of birds
are more or less rounded--"
and this is Steichen testifying.
"Yes."
"Any rounded piece of bronze
then, would represent a bird?"
"That I cannot say.
Looks more like a keel
of a boat."
"If it were lying down,"
Epstein agrees, "and a little
like the crescent
of a new moon."
"Yes," Epstein says.
"If Mr. Brancusi called this
a fish, it would be then,
to you, a fish?"
"If he called it a fish,
I would call it a fish."
"If he called it a tiger,
it would change your mind
to a tiger?"
"Uh, no."
And then the lawyer goes on to,
again ask about his reputation
as an artist, and Steichen says
he's a great artist,
a great sculptor.
Everybody says so, et cetera.
So this goes on.
Then they say to Steichen
and another, "Did you buy this?"
"I bought that, yes."
This is Steichen.
"For what purpose?"
"Because I considered it a work
of art, I'd like to put it
in my home."
"If somebody came to buy,
would you sell it?"
"No."
"Do you sell other works
of art?"
"My own works, yes."
"But you bought this
for your own private collection
because of the fact
that you were a close personal
friend of Mr. Brancusi
and liked his work?"
"No, not because I was
a close personal friend,
but because I liked the work.
But he is a personal friend."
[LAUGHTER]
"No personal element in it
whatsoever."
"That did not enter at all
into your thinking?"
"Not at all," says says
Steichen.
So what does the judge finally--
I mean, I can't take up more
time--
what's the final verdict?
The verdict is in favor
of Brancusi.
They make the case
and the judge, who knows nothing
about art,
has to admit that they've proven
their case
and this is his final decision.
The most important part, he says
this, "There has been developing
a so-called new school of art
whose exponents attempt
to portray abstract ideas
rather than to imitate
natural objects.
Whether or not we are
in sympathy with these newer
ideas, and the schools which
represent them,
we think the facts
of their existence
and their influence upon the art
world
as recognized by the courts
must be considered.
The object now
under consideration
is shown to be for purely
ornamental purposes.
Its use being the same as that
of any piece of sculpture
of the Old Masters.
It is beautiful and symmetrical
in outline.
And while some difficulty might
be encountered in associating it
with a bird, it is nevertheless
pleasing to look at,
and highly ornamental.
And as we hold onto the evidence
that it
is the original production
of a professional sculptor,
and is in fact a piece
of sculpture, and a work of art
according to the authorities
above referred to,
we sustain the protest
and find that it is entitled
to free entry
under paragraph 1704."
[MURMURS]
So, it's a great trial.
The other trial I forgot
to mention that's a really great
one is the Robert Mapplethorpe
in Cincinnati, and that's a very
good one.
So here you see this difficulty
in America of accepting--
in the 19th century--
of accepting the nude figure,
and in the 20th century
is of accepting abstraction.
This is Brancusi's portrait
of Agnes Meyer
here, that we have
in the gallery, from 1929.
And this is a portrait of Agnes
Meyer by Charles Despiau,
a French sculptor, who had
already done her portrait
the year before in 1928.
A traditional bronze portrait
here that's at the Pompidou
Center in Paris.
When Brancusi saw this, he was
friends with-- obviously with
Mrs. Meyer--
he said to her, "I will show you
what a portrait of you
is really like."
And then he made this.
And this is a tough sculpture
because we're not even sure
exactly how it's representative.
It's just the head-- the head,
the torso.
If you're supposed to read
the pedestal as part
of the length of the figure,
it's really interesting.
Agnes Meyer was a journalist.
She was a scholar
of Chinese art.
She married Eugene Meyer, who
of course, became the owner
of the Washington Post.
And those two, the Meyers,
were very early supporters
of Brancusi.
Here's what we're talking about,
serial forms--
changing the materials,
changing the approaches.
We don't have one of the torsos
in our collection,
but this is the Torso
of a Young Man on the left
from 1917 that's in Maple.
Male torso, down below left,
is in brass, from 1917.
The one, the wooden one up here
is walnut, from 1923.
And this is plaster from 1923.
Now, these are all
partial figures.
And the one thing that all
20th-century sculptors--
except from Rodin,
and this is arguably
his greatest contribution
to 20th-century sculpture--
is the partial figure.
So, here you see Rodin's
male torso from 1887.
And here is Brancusi's
male torso.
And he may have rejected
everything about Rodin--
surfaces, approach,
sentimentality, romanticism,
realism--
everything.
But he accepted the partial
figure, and that really is
Rodin's--
one of Rodin's greatest
contribution to modern art,
carried on by Brancusi
and others.
Mondrian, of course
is part of Purity--
a very intense part.
And when one looks at Mondrian,
of course, many people just
see this because that's where he
ends up.
But the question is, how did
a guy who started here
end up here?
And with all of these artists
who are very committed
to abstraction, Kandinsky,
Mondrian, Brancusi--
you really do have to see
their career in sequence
and chronology.
Because only if you follow them
step by step
can you get into their head
and understand why each work is
changing something, to end up
in some place
that when you look at it, you
would say well, what the heck?
Who jumped out of bed that day
and decided to do this?
So there's a sequence that you
have to follow.
So this is Mondrian in 1902.
Truncated View
of the Broekzijder Mill
on the Gein River, 1902, 1903.
And then some 30 years later,
1930 Composition In Red, Blue,
and Yellow.
I mentioned to you a long time
ago that in the 20th century,
what we start to confront
are manifestos.
Everybody's writing a manifesto.
Now, the exception were Cubists,
they didn't have a manifesto.
The Fauves didn't have
a manifesto.
But almost everybody else did.
The Futurists did.
Blaue Reiter through the Blaue
Reiter Alamanach.
Die Brucke, et cetera.
So, that's
true with the movement that
is created by Mondrian
and his compatriot
from Holland, Theo van Doesburg.
And it's called either
Neo-plasticism--
that's actually the term
that Mondrian liked--
or De Stijl, in Dutch--
"the style."
Those terms are synonymous.
This movement is founded
in 1917, and runs till about
1931.
It's a Dutch movement.
It's based on pure abstraction.
But Mondrian is a deeply
spiritual man--
not in a traditional sense.
He comes from a Dutch Calvinist
family but he rejects
that Dutch Calvinist background,
and he seeks something much more
transcendental, more personal,
more universal.
And the one thing he's
interested
in his visual language
is to free his visual language
from any hint of nationalism--
the kind of nationalism that
caused the Great War, where
everybody was invested
in their nationality.
And it led
to this incredible kind
of conflagration.
So, he refines his elements,
looking for very simple
geometric shapes, lines,
the primary colors
against the neutral colors,
certain horizontal-vertical
intersection.
And he sees in these lines
and colors cosmic forces.
He's much like Kandinsky, very
spiritual
in this particular sense.
So, for example, vertical lines
tend to embody the direction
and energy of the sun's rays.
Those are celestial.
Horizontal lines are
terrestrial.
They're more of the earth.
They're of a lower realm.
He sees colors-- the three
primary colors as having very
specific significance.
Yellow is the sun--
the sun's energy.
Blue is infinite space.
Red will come forward when you
have blue and yellow meeting.
This is much like Kandinsky.
Colors will change, depending
on how they're juxtaposed
to each other.
Now these movements, surrealism
and futurism, De Stijl,
Blaue Reiter especially,
Constructivism, Supremacism,
in Russia--
these are all Utopian movements.
These are all artists who want
to make a perfect world
through art.
They're Utopian.
So they think that if we can
just take this stuff
on the right,
and through an understanding
and an embracing of this kind
of abstract art,
eventually the world will become
like this,
and we won't need the art
anymore.
The art will have been
the portal, or the path,
to a perfect world.
That's why De Stijl, especially
as a movement
across all disciplines--
architecture, furniture,
and interior design--
you know, the Rietveld Chair,
where actually if you put
the chair against the wall
you can't see it because it goes
against all the other red
and white squares that are
on the wall--
there's this perfect kind
of harmony.
So all of that is Utopian.
Now, where was some of that
coming from?
Well, it was coming
from some real interesting guys
and girls.
This, on the right,
is a photograph of M.H.J.
Schoenmaekers.
He's Dutch,
and he's a theosophist.
Now, I'm going to talk more
about theosophy in general,
but this is the theosophist most
closely associated with Mondrian
because, in fact, Mondrian lived
near him
went to hear his lectures.
And there's clearly
a close connection.
So, Mondrian's belief
that abstraction could serve
as a kind
of universal pictorial language
and all of that
was in many ways coming
from his inculcation
with theosophists
thought of this individual who
had started
as a Catholic priest.
And he developed what he called
"plastic mathematics,"
or positive mysticism.
So.
The word "plastic" is very
important to Schoenmaekers,
and that's why eventually
Mondrian calls his movement
Neo-plasticism,
and it deals with much of what
I've already said.
This idea that the--
there is an eternal world that
can be expressed
through opposites--
horizontal or vertical,
all this kind of cosmic.
And he went to the lectures
of Schoenmaekers.
I'm showing you the three most
influential texts here
by Schoenmaekers.
Man and Nature, from 1913.
The New Image of The World,
from 1915, and Principles
of Plastic Mathematics--
"plastic mathematics--"
from 1916 here.
Now, if we are creating
the great ball team
of theosophists, who are going
to who are going to draft?
Here they are.
This is the All-Star team.
You've got Schoenmaekers
in Holland, so we don't put him
up here.
But we've got Annie Besant--
she's English.
She's the great the theosophist
from England.
We've got the theosophist
that in addition
to Schoenmaekers,
Mondrian was totally
beside with.
He had a portrait of her
in his house.
And that's Madame Blavatski,
she's Russian--
Helena Blavatski is here.
Then we have the Englishman,
another great theosophist,
Charles Webster Ledbetter.
Then we have Rudolf Steiner, who
eventually effects
American theosophy in New York
City.
He's Austrian.
And then we have Henry Steel
Olcott who is in fact, American.
So it's a universal-- we've got
Russians.
We've got English.
We've got Dutch.
We've got Americans.
And at the turn of the century,
this theosophy falls into this
whole kind of category
of interest in new scientific
ideas-- electromagnetism, X-ray,
hypnosis, mesmerism--
what else-- clairvoyance.
All of these things are swirling
around.
Some of them are science.
Some of them are pseudo-science,
but everybody is seeking
this kind of transcendental kind
of world.
A lot of this is Eastern, coming
from Eastern theosophist,
Krishnamurti, and people
like this.
So, artists are just lapping
this stuff up--
that there must be a higher,
better place than where we have
been,
especially
in the post-war period.
And it was a desire to kind
of transcend normal human
consciousness.
So, you have it related
to things like intuition,
meditation, revelation.
You know, we have auras,
we have chakras, all this kind
of stuff.
That's very important.
Now, here is a photograph
of Mondrian on the left.
And it comes right around 1906,
1907.
For the longest period of time,
we weren't sure what the heck
was going on in this photograph,
but what most art historians
thought was that this was
Mondrian practicing yoga
because he was very
attuned to eastern philosophy.
So that was kind
of the general thought,
but now we know that's not true.
We know who took this photograph
now, and we know the background.
The photograph
is by a German phrenologist,
his name was Alfred Waldenburg.
Phrenology is the idea that you
could tell about a person's
character
through their bumps
on their head,
the size of their cranium,
and all this kind of stuff.
So now we pretty much know here
because this is another thing
Mondrian was very deeply
involved with, is
that one of the things
that Waldenburg talked
about in terms of how you read
somebody's skull and cranium was
related
to the size of their hands.
So you'd have to put your hands,
you know, like this.
And that's what's going on here.
That's what's going on here.
He's visiting Waldenburg,
the phrenologist, who actually
takes this photograph
of Mondrian
in this particular guise.
Now this book is by Annie
Besant-Leadbetter.
I don't know how many of you
saw-- we did a very small show,
I don't know, a yeah, two years
ago on Edvard Munch and we dealt
with some of this through Munch.
This is a very important book
called Thought-Forms by Annie
Besant.
And Thought-Forms
is a theosophical text
that everybody read, at least,
artists did.
And it was more specifically
related to the relationship
of color
to meaning and to spirituality.
So, in fact, in that show,
we even had a chart that shows
you the different colors that
meant you were this or that.
So, this is again, part
of theosophy--
that there are auras of color
that are around us.
And that if my color merges
with your color, then you know,
in Munch you see this agitation
a lot around figures.
It looks like they're being
electrocuted.
That's also electromagnetism,
all these things.
So that's part of what Mondrian
was absorbing here.
Here's the great Mondrian
that we have, and this is a very
important one.
It's the first time he shifts
the canvas to the diamond,
to the point,
instead of having it square.
This is Tableau Number 4;
Lozenge Composition with Red,
Gray Blue, Yellow, and Black.
That's the title.
This is 1924, 1925 that we have
here.
And this is Mondrian
in his studio in 1933,
with two
other important paintings.
Here's a similar diamond shape.
Ours is earlier,
this is the earliest one.
But this is Lozenge--
we can tell what this is-- it's
Lozenge Composition with Four
Yellow Lines from 1933,
and then we know what
that painting is.
It's Composition with Double
Lines in Yellow from 1934.
Mondrian's easy.
My students would always guess.
I said if you don't know
the title, just say "Composition
in red, yellow, and blue"
and I'll probably give you
a few points.
It's not like you got
to remember
some surrealist title, you know.
So Mondrian intended
that his paintings expressed
a spiritual notion
of these universal harmonies.
So the horizontal-vertical
intersection is important.
The primary colors,
the neutrals-- black, white,
and gray--
all of these things
come from a sort
of theosophical background.
Now, what's different
here is shifting it
to the point.
And when you do that, there's--
but you notice he doesn't change
the rectilinear nature of this.
There are no diagonals.
My God, I'd shoot myself if I
had a diagonal.
There are no diagonals, right?
He just shifts the support.
And as soon as-- he called
this cutting.
I'm cutting it now.
And by doing that, of course,
what it reinforces is this idea
that this is
a never-ending composition that
can extend to infinity.
Top, bottom, left to right.
It can just never end.
It can affect the environment,
that idea.
Now, the diagonal-- I joke
about it, but this is the reason
van Doesburg and Mondrian
actually fall out.
You know, we have these very
famous encounters with people--
I've had enough.
These guys are so close.
They create this movement.
They talk each day.
They're incredibly
on the same page.
And then van Doesburg creates
a composition one day where he
has it square,
but he has a diagonal.
He moves all the colors
so they're diagonal,
but it's in a square format.
End of friendship.
[LAUGHTER]
They never talk to each other
again.
They have this huge falling out,
and Mondrian says, OK, we're
done.
This is not what Neo-plasticism
is.
You want to go off and have
diagonals, great, go have
your own movement.
Knock yourself out.
But you're not part
of this movement anymore.
Now, again, I'm conflating two
rooms.
But in that Purist room
is this painting on the left
by an artist who doesn't get
his share of credit, Amedee
Ozenfant.
And this is Still Life
with Carafe, Bottle, and Guitar
from 1919.
Ozenfant forms a movement
with the great Swiss architect,
Le Corbusier,
and here's Ozenfant,
and this is Corbusier,
and this is Corbusier's brother,
Albert.
This is in Switzerland in 1918,
this photograph.
Ozenfant is essentially
a French Cubist.
He starts off with Cubism,
but when he connects with Le
Corbusier, who's an architect,
but also a painter,
I might add--
they are looking for something
pure.
Cubism is a little bit too
decorative.
It doesn't really-- in the case
of Mondrian, Cubism didn't go
far enough.
It stops short of the purity he
was looking
for-- the spirituality.
In the case of Ozenfant
and Corbusier, it's again,
it's something that's
too decorative in a certain way.
But you know I say that,
but here's you have to keep
in mind--
all of this
is still about Cubism,
in the sense
that Cubism is the parent of all
these.
These movements may reject
Cubism, but it's still
about Cubism.
You know, they're just going,
well, I don't like that.
I didn't like that.
They didn't go far enough.
It was too decorative.
Didn't have enough color.
You know, and then you'll see
these sort of offshoots,
so Cubism is the parent of most
20th-century abstract art forms,
even into Surrealism.
OK, so Purism.
We gotta have a manifesto.
If not a manifesto, then we have
to have a book.
And Ozenfant and Corbusier write
the book called After Cubism.
It's published in 1917,
and they've coined the term
for their movement Purism,
now with a capital P--
Purism.
And it's a movement that
is desirous of stripping away
a lot
of non-essential decorative
elements
and painting to get down
to a more architectural,
structural kind of feeling.
Powerful forms, especially
associated with architecture,
so that you look at bottles
and they look like the fluting
on a Greek column.
There's a kind of Classicism
that they both are seeking.
It's also, believe it or not,
and it goes that way,
but it also embraces
technology-- the machine,
mechanization,
clean, tubular, sort
of mechanized-looking forms
very often.
The other artist who will become
part of Purism is Leger.
So, Ozenfant, Corbusier,
and Leger are the three
great sort of founding figures,
in some way, of Purism.
So here's what Ozenfant said.
When they use color, they're
using color to build form.
It's not just a riot of color
like Fauvism--
that's more emotional.
It's very strictly monitored.
So Ozenfant says, "We affirm
that art must tend always
to precision,
and that the epoch of every sort
of impressionism was done with.
Even such as remained
and in Cubism--"
so they're linking Cubism still,
with the path--
"--we laid down the foundations
for a Purism that would bring
order into the aesthetic
imbroglio, and inoculate artists
with the new spirit of age
misapprehended by so many
of them."
See, nobody's getting what
the 20th century is about
according to these guys.
So Leger is one
of the great exponents
of Purism.
We have two magnificent Legers.
I don't know if they're
both up right now,
I think only one is.
This is The Animated Landscape
from 1921, Two Women from 1922.
Arguably, you could say
that after Picasso and Matisse,
Leger
is the dominant French painter
of the 20th century.
I wouldn't argue with that.
He's very important, at least
in French painting.
He creates the-- he's a big part
of Purism.
He creates
these clean, mechanized,
tubular, mechanical-looking
kinds of forms.
Everything is very ordered.
It has
a certain social connotation
about what's being portrayed
in terms of the subject matter.
It's a kind of view
of the urban world
and of the new sort
of machine age.
What he sees is a very positive
kind of idea.
It certainly is based on Cubism.
It's based on Cubism, there's
no question about that.
But it's just as much based
on other things.
He's looking at the primitivism
of Henri Rousseau.
He certainly
is aware of Mondrian,
Neo-plasticism, and his color
choice very often resides
within the three
basic primary colors,
with the black and white.
So there's very often
a Mondrian kind of feeling
of order.
All of this is very much--
here we have two figures
in both cases.
This is a mother and child.
Here these are two guys.
And it's all-- this is a sort
of suburban setting.
This is an interior.
So, he's giving you these two
different worlds.
The funny thing here
is this bull.
I don't know if that has
anything to do with Picasso,
to tell the truth, but it might
very well.
But it's a more-- it's almost
a humorous note in the painting.
Which does in fact,
bring us to Picasso, briefly,
in that same room.
Because in that room you have
a Picasso painting-- it's not
a painting, it's a collage--
that's very intriguing.
It's hard to think about it.
It's hard to really understand
it.
It's this one here.
And this is Guitar, 1926.
It's a collage.
It has wallpaper, carpet tacks,
nail--
a nail, paper string,
and charcoal on wood.
This is 1926.
This is one of the most famous
synthetic Cubist works
in Western art.
It's 1912.
This is Picasso's Guitar, Sheet
Music, and Wine Glass from 1912.
Today, this is in Texas, in San
Antonio.
Here.
This is considered by many--
this this collage here--
to be
the first self-consciously
modern work that used newspaper
down here.
So that starts
this whole Synthetic Cubist sort
of collage effect.
This-- well, I told you it--
this was charcoal wash
and pasted paper.
This is really the beginning,
and this is the end.
The reason this work is
important is because it's
Picasso, in some ways,
bidding farewell to Synthetic
Cubism.
To this whole tradition
to [? Poppia ?] [? Colai ?] that
rock was so instrumental
in developing.
So he gets down to-- now
he's paring down.
The reason this could hang
in a Purist room is because he's
really winnowing down
to the essence of things.
Although in this work,
this is a very strange work that
has been written
about because it's almost
aggressive to the viewer.
It has tacks coming out.
You could cut yourself, or prick
your finger.
And there are a number of works
at this time where Picasso is
creating, works that-- they seem
hostile to the viewer,
in a certain surrealist way.
So that's talked about a lot
in different ways.
The work is 1926.
Picasso is never a surrealist,
but he certainly relates
and knows about it.
Remember the Surrealist
Manifesto was 1924.
And Picasso does start to think
about a lot of ideas
and surrealism, and certainly
one of them
is hostility to the viewer.
Like, in surrealist film,
you know, you cut your eyeball.
That's pretty hostile.
When she's looking right
at the screen, and a razor blade
comes across her eye--
that idea.
Now I conflated, Abstraction
with Purity,
so this is the other room.
Birth of Abstraction,
we call it.
And here we come back
to Kandinsky.
Now we already embraced
Kandinsky with Blaue Reiter--
German expressionism-- this is
Improvisation Number 31,
subtitled Sea Battle.
This is a photograph
of Kandinsky from 1900.
We've talked about Blaue Reiter,
but of course, Kandinsky is
a pivotal figure in 20th-century
modernism because he, too--
by the way, Brancusi, Mondrian,
Kandinsky are all theosophists.
They all follow theosophy.
And we know that they all read
Madame Blavatski-- she's even
Russian--
and the various theosophists.
So when you see Brancusi and you
see, like I said,
a wooden pedestal, a marble cube
in a brass or bronze,
it's this theosophical sort
of affirmation of spirituality
on the vertical.
Things like that.
For Kandinsky, and Mondrian,
it's how specific colors evoke
certain states of mind,
et cetera.
And what you begin to get here,
especially in the most important
text of the 20th century by one
of the most important
aesthetic texts.
That's Kandinsky's Concerning
the Spiritual in Art--
it's actually subtitled--
Especially in Painting--
from 1911.
This is one of the chapters that
deals with movement.
So, in the concerning
of spiritual art in art
from 1911, Kandinsky lays
out his theory of painting
and of art, and he stresses
the importance of abstraction.
He talks about works.
They have two different parts.
They have an inner necessity--
they have their own inner core.
And then they have
this outer visual.
And then what allows us
to broach those two things
is the spiritual impulse
to try to broach
the actual physical work,
but then to unlock
its spiritual nature.
And the way of doing that is
through an understanding
of color, shape, and all of this
freed--
freed-- from having to just
respond to nature.
So this is again tied directly
also to Kandinsky love of music.
His friendship with Arnold
Schoenberg, and he
starts the title works as we
already head back here
with titles
like "improvisation,"
"composition," "impression--"
these are all musical terms.
And he wants his work to be seen
in this particular way.
There's a difference
between the improvisations
and the compositions.
Improvisations are a bit more
spontaneous
than the compositions, which are
a little bit more thought out.
But once you learn how to read
Kandinsky, it literally
is like reading a language.
They're hieroglyphs.
So once you know what you're
looking for--
these are waves.
These are boats.
These are cannons.
They're exploding.
This is where the battle is
taking place.
This ship is fighting this ship.
These are cannons.
You've got onion domes.
You've got cities.
You've got little ghost figures.
There's a whole-- I mean,
I can map it out
like hieroglyphs.
And as soon as you know
those forms--
waves, ghosts, boats, cannons--
you can get into the work,
and begin to see that they
have-- they're abstract,
but they have a kind
of universal, very often
apocalyptic concept.
The Great Flood, the deluge.
Apocalyptic kinds of scenes.
The great one that's in Chicago
is the one that's subtitled
Cannons.
You've got these forms that are
blowing out sort of
across the canvas.
And when Kandinsky was asked
about that-- that's 1913,
the same year--
he said, you know I didn't
intend to draw cannons.
He said, that was not
my intention.
He said, but he goes,
"Certainly, the talk of war
was so prominent,
and all-- everything was war
and war and war,
but when I looked
at this composition
I just felt I needed something
heavy down here.
I needed a form that was heavy.
Like a bass note.
I needed a bass note."
And that's how this form comes
about.
So Schoenberg-- remember,
Schoenberg even exhibits
with Blaue Reiter,
because he's a very skilled
amateur painter.
So, it's like composers
abandoning
the major-minor scale.
You know, that just locks us
into a certain set
of relationships.
Whereas, if you go
with Schoenberg and Woburn,
and Barriga,
to the 12-tone scale, then it
just opens everything up.
So what Kandinsky is saying,
in some ways, is why can't I
just do what a composer does?
Why can't I just put color
against color,
shape against shape,
the way a composer puts note
against note?
This relates to ideas
of synesthesia.
Kandinsky was probably
a synaesthete.
Other people in history--
David Hockney is a synaesthete.
Franz Liszt was a synaesthete.
Which is to say, that these are
people who could hear color
or in color, hear sound--
that kind of thing.
When Franz Lizst used
to conduct,
he would tell the orchestra,
I'm sorry.
It's got to be more purple.
And then they would, what
the hell does that mean?
Because he could hear purple.
It had to be more purple.
So, synesthesia
is a major concept here
throughout the early 20th
century.
It affects even later
American abstract expressionist
painting, the relationship
of the abstract expressionist
to jazz and other forms
of music.
Now, there is another offshoot
of Cubism and we have it
represented in the gallery.
Not always-- the works are not
always up.
But these are two works
by the Delaunays.
Sonia Delaunay, her full name
if using her husband's name,
and then her own name, Sonia
Delaunay-Terk, T-E-R-K. From
1914, called Solar Prism,
and Robert, her husband, Robert,
Delaunay, Political Drama from
1914.
These are among the founders
of yet another offshoot
of traditional Cubism
called Orphic Cubism.
Orphism.
O-R-P-H-I-C. Orphic.
Orphism, which is a term that's
coined by the poet Apollinaire
in 1912.
So, again, it has a firm.
He creates this whole, sort of,
literature about it.
It's related to Cubism,
certainly.
It's an offshoot,
but it's more
focused on pure, bright color,
and abstraction.
The biggest thing about Orphism
is it invests Cubist language
with greater and greater color
and abstraction.
They go back and they're
interested in all
those French theorists of color,
going back to the time
of Delacroix.
The 19th century-- Chevreule,
people like that.
They go back and re-read.
Even more recent, Paul Signac.
The Delaunays are are
pivotal in the development
of Orphism,
and also the Czech artist,
Kupka, that we'll talk about
in a second.
They're both very, very
important.
And here again, they were firm
believers that painting should
reflect music--
that it should exist on a kind
of synesthestic sort of level.
So these are works
by the Delaunays.
Here is Lyonel Feininger, who
is part of this group,
on the left.
The Bicycle Race from 1912.
And Frantisek Kupka, one
of the original founders
of the movement, who is Czech.
This painting on the right
is called Localization
of Graphic Motifs--
Localization of Graphic Motifs
Number Two, also from 1912.
Notice the dates-- 1912.
So we have the same idea,
like with surrealism,
or you know-- somebody writes
this is what painting should be.
And then a guy--
OK.
I'll try to create paintings
that reflect your philosophy.
And it's really Apollinaire
who's talking about this.
Kupka-- also the other thing
that this show's--
Kupka Czech.
Feinenger is German-American.
Delaunays are French.
Is the universality of this.
It cuts across a lot
of national boundaries
and borders.
Kupka is very important.
He is one of the co-founders
of Orphism.
He's had a direct influence
on Delaunay.
So he's dealing with a lot
of this even before Delaunay.
he's very impressed, Kupka is,
and you can sense it here
by the Futurists in Italy.
When he reads the first
the Futurist Manifesto in 1909,
he's blown away
by this advocation about speed
and motion.
And so you can see he starts
to create
these vortex-like images.
They become increasingly
abstract, but again, they're
full of color-- prismatic color.
They have motion, color,
a strong, again, often
relationship to music.
Feininger is also-- this is Bike
Race here--
indebted to the Futurists.
One of the things the Futurists
often showed was people racing
bikes--
the sense of speed,
and the revolution
of the wheels, and the after
images.
Anything that could move,
the Futurists started.
There's a great one
of a little dachshund who
is kind of running.
And he's creating all
these little after moments
because he's going so quickly
across this bound-- you know,
this grinds on a leash.
So that's what you're seeing
here, this conflation of how
motion now can be visualized
in a certain way.
Feininger, of course, he's
actually born in America.
He's born in New York,
but he comes
from a German-American family.
He goes to Germany very early
at the age of 16.
He studies in Germany.
He's actually associated who he
hangs for example,
if you go back to the Salzmann
Collection, there's a Feininger,
in there because he is part
of Die Brucke and Blaue Reiter,
at different times of his career
The Nazis come to power in 1933.
His work is declared
"degenerate" in that sense,
but he has the good sense
to leave Germany.
He was declared "degenerate"
in a kind of a tuneup
exhibition, what the Nazis used
to call "shaming exhibitions,"
and one took place in 1936.
After that, he and his wife
decided it's time to get out
of Germany, and they left.
And then he was included
in the 1937, the big "Degenerate
Art show" but again, he
is German-American.
OK, I think
that's good for Abstraction /
Purity.
Next time we're going to talk
about, I think,
Abstract Expressionism,
if I'm not mistaken.
So, thanks very much.
[APPLAUSE]
