DEBORAH SOLOMON
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presumably the reason he was left out of "Pioneering Cubism."
It
was a mistake, I think, to leave Gris out. The show would have
been more interesting if it had included the various other artists - Albert
Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Robert Delaunay, and particularly Leger - who
joined up with the Cubist vanguard in Paris in its formative years. Cubism,
unlike Surrealism, was never an official movement, yet in the early teens it
more or less functioned as one; there were group exhibitions, printed pam–
phlets, regular meetings at a cafe (the Closerie des Lilas). This aspect ofCu–
bism, its hold on a generation ofyoung artists, wasn't explored in "Pioneering
Cubism."
Rubin, of course, would argue in his defense that he wasn't trying to
chronicle the emergence of a movement. Rather he wanted to explore one of
art
history's most important collaborations, and at that he certainly succeeded.
Still, "Pioneering Cubism" seemed unnecessarily narrow.
As
we wandered
through the galleries comparing the Picassos to the Braques, we were sup–
posed to see that the two artists were carrying on a continuous "dialogue,"
and we did. Yet, one couldn't help wondering: didn't these painters talk to
anyone else in the course of their six-year alliance? One wanted to hear the
other voices, feel the fullness of history. One wanted the whole story. In–
stead what we got is MOMA's version of
BrieJ Encounter
-
an unnaturally
intense drama about two people who come together, achieve artistic ecstasy,
then go off in separate directions. For all of its painstaking scholarship,
"Pioneering Cubism" put a Hollywood spin on art history.
Which artist played a larger role in the Jounding oj Cubism?
In his es–
say for the catalogue, William Rubin makes it clear that he didn't want the
exhibition to turn into a competition. He's not interested in tallying up Picasso
and Braque's separate achievements and making one artist more important
than the other. Instead he presented them in a cloud of togetherness, as two
painters who lived in Montmartre, were constantly meeting in each other's
studios, and influenced one another to such a degree that at times they
couldn't tell their work apart. It would be naive to pretend, however, that
Picasso and Braque each contributed equally to Cubism; they didn't. While
the general public tends to think of Picasso as the leader, the impulsive genius
who came up with everything, scholars now know it was just the opposite.
It
was Braque who created what are considered the first truly Cubist pictures
(these are the landscapes from L'Estaque in which a profusion of tilting
houses and trees fill the canvas from end to end) and who defined Cubism's
fundamental approach. Picasso was the first to make a collage, but Braque
was the first to experiment with
trompe l'oiel
effects and to create a
papier
collier.
In what was perhaps his best-known comment about their collaboration,
Picasso once said, "Braque, he is my wife!" The remark is generally seen as
a compliment, a testimony to Braque's unending patience. Yet if we recall
