So, Paris around 1906 has already seen a
lot of upheaval and new ideas coming up
in art. Fauvism for example was the
latest new art movement it was gay, it
was colorful and bright, and one of the
critics at the time said that it was
done by the ”Fauves“ by wild people,
and Cubism came right afterwards. So it
was already a time where artists and
the avant-garde in general was searching
for new ways of expression and to leave
behind centuries really of tradition. And
Cubism I guess was deeply inspired by
African works of art that were swept to
the European continent through the
history of colonialism of
course and who became then available
for artists to see in ethnographic
collections, in private collections. And
also in 1906 there was this fantastic
great retrospective of the late painter
Cézanne, who had just died in 1906. So I
would imagine that the entire artistic
avant-garde of Paris went there to see
the oeuvre of Cézanne on display. And in
our first two rooms we actually show
these two influence influences,
primitivism, so-called primitivism, and
the influence of Cézanne on the
development of Cubism. So basically
artists had this deep desire to do away
with detail and bring out something that
was more expressive because it was
clearer and design, structured, and then
cubist. Louis Vauxcelles for example who
had dubbed Fauvism done by the Fauves, then
said, oh, this is like there are all these
small cubes and that's what gave Cubism
its title or its name. So that was a
very fitting term at the time, but of
course Cubism developed further from
something that was like “geometricized”
if you could call it that way,
into something that posed basic questions
about how do we show things, objects, on a
two-dimensional canvas? How do we deal
with something as old and traditional as
perspective? And how can we recreate a
different sort of perspective? How can we
deal with space in a different way and
do away with all the illusionistic
meanings that have dominated art history
for almost five hundred years basically
since the Renaissance.
So Cubism at first is this desire to
reduce, and to construct a different view
of the world, on the two-dimensional
canvas. It becomes more and more abstract.
And then around 1911
there's this incredible moment where the
works are so abstract that Picasso and
Braque, who are the founders of Cubism
and who've really pushed the entire
cubist language forward, where they
decide, we need to introduce something
that anchors the work in real life,
something that is recognizable. So
Picasso, he introduces these signs. For
example you have like a circle and it's
overlaid by parallel lines, which gives
you the impression of a sound hull,
of a guitar with strings.
And then you have other signs like the
banderilla for example so that's an
attribute that he gives his “Aficionado”.
Braque at the same time introduces
letters, stenciled letters, because he was
trained as a decorative painter, so he
knew the technique, and he introduces
these letters into the painting,
into the canvas, and that opens up a
whole field of possibilities for the
combination of lettering and words, and
then also kind of like leads into the
development and the invention of collage
and the Papier Collé, where, incredibly,
they introduce things from the outside
world, from day-to-day life,
like an oil cloth for example or just
faux bois, wood imitation paper, into the
art context, which was unheard of.
Nobody's ever done something like that.
And then in 1914 there's this incredible
moment where Picasso decides not only to
use the precious material of bronze to
cast something as mundane as an
absinthe glass, but when he decides to
also introduce a real-life object, which
is the absinthe spoon with
which this beverage of the avant-garde
or of the Bohemians was prepared. So you
have this real-life object in an already
revolutionary sculpture. And moments like
this really make Cubism something that
is almost mind-boggling because you have
a succession of moments over just a few
years where art and what it can mean and
how it is made and what it deals with is
revolutionized and the very foundations
are shifting. So it's not a temple
anymore but it's more like a workshop
and the windows are blown wide open
and you see through them like the
possibilities of everything that the
20th century then works with and then
develops and uses like a sort of like
they mine cubism for its possibilities.
So we basically follow the chronological
development of Cubism. We start with the
influence of Primitivism then we head on
to the almost simultaneous and reception
of Cézanne in the works of Picasso and
Braque. We show in the primitive section
not only Picasso and Braque, but also
André Derain, who had
an early interest in African sculpture.
For example he was one of the first to
discover these objects in the Musée de
Trocadéro. We show the works by
Delaunay and Juan Gris that already in
around 1910 show the Cubist aesthetic
and so we follow not just what Picasso and Braque do in their like
artistic bubble and they only show of
course at the gallery of
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, so it's a
rather intimate circle that knows about
these works at first, but we then take it
into the what was termed “Salon Cubism”, so
the first instances were Cubism was
received by the other, the broader
avant-garde, who showed their works in
the annual salons in Paris. So that's
something that already kind of like
perks up in the third room and then we
follow the Eclat de monde de la forme,
this this moment when Picasso pierces
the closed form with this work. The
famous portrait of his lover Fernande
Olivier at the time for example breaks up
the
outlines of her figure into these
faceted surfaces that become very
typical for Cubism of course. And then in
the fourth room we commit ourselves to
showing how the stenciled letters are
introduced in the works, how these signs
pop up and that basically give hints for
the viewer to make out what is really
shown in the work, because sometimes the
figures are so abstract. The fifth room I
would say is the creative center of the
whole exhibition.
it's an asymmetrically shaped room and
we bring together works from Picasso
with his famous Kahnweiler portrait
and also the famous portrait of Gertrude
Stein, for example, with portraits of
writers and critiques of the time by the
Salon Cubist's like Albert Gleizes. And also
we deal with the artistic
collaborations that were instigated by
Kahnweiler for example between Max Jakob
and Picasso or Blaise Cendrars and Sonia
Delaunay. In the sixth room we
basically take a very close look at
materials, how they are dealt with in
Cubism, and color. So the reappearance of
color is the most astounding thing in
Cubism because it was kind of like
seeping away until 1911 because the
Cubist's were so concerned with form and
shape and perspective that they had to
reduce the color in their works and then
in 1912 there is this moment where
color flares up and becomes one of the
most central aspects for painters like
Delaunay and Fernand Léger.
In the seventh room we follow the
story of the invention of the Papier Collé
and also that constructions. And these
are just amazing works, because Picasso
basically takes a few pieces of wood and
combines them into something that looks
so mundane, but also so breathtakingly
beautiful and it is just a revolutionary
object. In the 8th room we show like
the masterpieces of Salon Cubism and one
of them is our famous “Hommage à Blériot”
by Robert Delaunay, and it's shown right
alongside – due to the
cooperation with Centre Pompidou – 
with the work of his wife Sonya Delaunay,
which were both created for the
Salon of 1914. So that's the rather
colorful and and big affair, because
these formats and also the subjects of
the works of the Salon Cubist's are so
different in kind than what Picasso and
Braque are doing: They are not small and
intimate, almost concerned with just like
still live figure and landscapes, so, very
traditional subjects for the painters,
but they are concerned with everyday
life, with the Eiffel Tower for example,
or with the newly introduced electric
lighting of the Paris boulevards. And
what is very special about our
exhibition of that we also take a very
close look at the chapter of war. So the
outbreak of the First World War is
usually considered as a breaking point, as like
an interruption that really
disperses Cubism. But what you can see is
that Cubist painters continued working
in the Cubist idiom for a while after
that. So some of the Cubist painters, for
example Braque, they are
drafted for the first world war, Léger
also, but Picasso who is of Spanish
origin and Juan Gris, who is also of
Spanish origin, they remain in Paris and
they continue working. So what we're
trying to show is how the Cubist
languages then also applied during the
years of fourteen to seventeen, which
gives the whole idea of Cubism an even
wider scope. And I find this very
compelling because these works they
contribute something to the whole
idea of Cubism that also brings it to an
end at the time when Picasso decides to
move on because his imagination has
changed and his way of expression is
rapidly changing in the context of his
work with Jean Cocteau at the Ballet
Parade.
I think you can safely say that 20th
century art as we know it would not have
existed if cubism hadn't taken place. So
as I already mentioned, Cubism is
something like that's
mined by almost everyone who comes after
the Cubist's, because there are so many
things that you can take up and develop
further, be it the introduction of
everyday materials into the artistic
context or just the basic revolution,
that you don't have to to create
something on the two-dimensional canvas
that even remotely looks like what
you're seeing with your eyes. There's an
entirely new world within
ourselves, within our imagination to
comprehend the world and to then
depict it. So this sort of freedom is
something that only Cubism gave the art
world and that was liberating for so
many others. On this very basic level
even it's opening up a whole new range
of possibilities, that they for
example used colors that were made for
everyday use, for example the colors that
you used to paint your house, it was
called “Ripolin” house paint. That is
something that is unheard of before,
because everything was like part of the
art context or are part of everyday life.
There was nothing in between. And what
the Cubist's do brilliantly is merging
these worlds and bringing them closer
and closer together.
