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PARTISAN REVIEW
how Picasso treated his wives, the comment acquires new meaning. Picasso's
marriages were far from being partnerships of equals; as we now know
all
too well, the artist was an abusive husband who eventually tired of each of
his wives, and left them. And so it was with Braque. Their creative
relationship was furiously one-sided. Picasso took all of Braque's ideas, ev–
erything Braque had to offer. Then, in 1913, when Picasso had drained
Braque of his discoveries and pushed Cubism as fur as he could, he stopped
spending time with
him.
Why
was the carpet green?
Stepping into "Pioneering Cubism" was a bit
like stepping onto a golf course. Synthetic green carpet stretched before us in
every direction. It isn't unusual for museums to dress up their premises for a
temporary exhibition. The Metropolitan is notorious for draping its walls in
red and gold fabrics that seem more fitting for a bordello than a museum. Yet
richly colored walls and carpets aren't something we expect to find at the
Modern. Over the years the museum has been associated with simple decor:
blonde wood floors, pristine white walls, an occasional swatch of industrial
gray carpet. This is appropriate. For modernism is, among other things, a
renunciation of visual excess.
Nonetheless, the miles of green carpet in "Pioneering Cubism" struck
me as a good idea. You might not think that the color of carpet could make
any difference in the way we experience a show, but in this case it did. Sig–
nificantlyand peculiarly, the carpet made us realize that green was one of the
more common colors in the Cubist palette.
Green? Generally when we think of Cubist compositions, we think of
tans and browns and sooty grays, of weathered monochromes. Yet
"Pioneering Cubism" began and ended on an unmistakably green note.
Among the earliest pictures in the show were several groups ofJandscapes
(by both of the artists) in which hills and trees are depicted as chunky blocks
of green.
It
isn't surprising that landscapes would be green, but portraits and
stilllifes?
Woman with a Fan,
which Picasso painted in 1909, shows a stony
female figure presiding over ajumble of dark green objects (they include her
hat, her fan , and the chair she's sitting in). Braque's
Musical Instruments
of
1908, in which a green table takes up half the background, similarly surprises
us with the earthiness of its tones. It's as if the two artists were trying to
bring the landscape indoors. The shade of green they use most often isn't the
exuberant green of the South, of Cezanne's sunny Provence. Rather, it's
duskier, more expressive. It evokes the forest interiors of Delacroix, the
deep, mossy tones of Courbet, the emotionalism of nineteenth-century .paint-
ing.
As
"Pioneering Cubism" progressed, and the heavy forms of the early
years were splintered into shards, the green tonalities promptly gave way to
the somber, grayed-over palette ofAnalytic Cubism. Yet, even in Cubism's
most classical moments, patches of green can sometimes be spotted amid the
