90
PARTISAN REVIEW
ists and have profited from cubism. But I have argued the. limitations of
such a view even with my friend Apollinaire, the man who really gave
cubism its place. To me cubism seemed to limit pictorial expression
unduly. To persist in that I felt was to impoverish one's vocabulary.
If
the employment of forms not as bare of associations as those the cubists
used was to produce 'literary painting,' I was ready to accept the blame
for doing so. I felt painting needed a greater freedom than cubism
permitted. I felt somewhat justified, later, when I saw a swing toward
expressionism in Germany and still more so when I saw the birth of
surrealism in the early twenties. But I have always been against the idea
' of schools and only an admirer of the leaders of schools. Cubism was an
emphasis on one aspect only of reality-a single point of view-the
architectural point of view of Picasso- and of Braque in his great years.
And let me say in passing, Picasso's gray cubist pictures and his
papiers
coltes
are in my opinion his masterpieces.
"But please defend me against people who speak of 'anecdote' and
'fairy tales' in my work. A cow and woman to me are the same-in a
picture both are merely elements of a composition. In painting, the
images of a woman or of a cow have different values of plasticity,-but
not different poetic values. As far as literature goes, I feel myself more
'abstract' than Mondrian or Kandinsky in my use of pictorial elements.
?
'Abstract' not in the sense that my painting does not recall reality. Such
abstract painting in my opinion is more ornamental and decorative, and
always restricted in its range. What I mean by 'abstract' is something
which comes to life spontaneously through a gamut of contrasts, plastic
at the same time as psychic, and pervades both the picture and the eye
of the spectator with conceptions of new and unfamiliar elements. In
the case of the decapitated woman with the milk pails, I was first led
to separating her head from her body merely because
r
happened to
' >
need an empty space there. In the large cow's head in
M oi et le village
I made a small cow and woman milking visible through its muzzle be–
cause I needed that sort of form, there, for my com osition. Whatever
7
else may have grown out of these compositional arrangements is secon–
dary.
"The fact that I made
u~e
of cows, milkmaids, roosters and pro–
vincial Russian architecture as my source forms is because they are part
of the environment from which I spring and which undoubtedly left the
deepest impression on my visual memory of any experiences I have
known. Every painter is born somewhere. And even though he may later
respond to the influences of other atmospheres, a certain essence-a
certain 'aroma' of his birthplace clings to his work. But do not misunder–
stand me: the important thing here is not 'subject' in the sense pictorial
'subjects' were painted by the old academicians. The vital mark these
early influences leave is, as it were, on the handwriting of the artist.
This is clear to us in the character of the trees and card players of a
Cezanne, born in France,-in the curled sinuosities of the horizons
