ART “4”
“2”-DAY 22 January |
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Died on 22 January 1942: Walter Richard
Sickert, British Post-Impressionist Camden
Town Group painter, printmaker, teacher, and writer, born German on
31 May 1860. He studied under James
McNeill Whistler. — Sickert was one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century. He is often called a painter's painter, appealing primarily to artists working in the figurative tradition; there are few British figurative painters of the 20th century whose development can be adequately discussed without reference to Sickert's subject-matter or innovative techniques. He had a direct influence on the Camden Town Group and the Euston Road School, while his effect on Frank Auerbach, Howard Hodgkin and Francis Bacon was less tangible. Sickert's active career as an artist lasted for nearly 60 years. His output was vast. He may be judged equally as the last of the Victorian painters and as a major precursor of significant international developments in later 20th-century art, especially in his photo-based paintings. — Novelist tries to prove that Walter Sickert was really Sickert Hant Hought... make that sicker than thought: that he was “Jack the Ripper”, the 1888 murderer of 5 prostitutes. — LINKS — Brighton Pierrots — Les Vénitiennes (1904, 46x57cm) — St Mark's, Venice (Pax Tibi Marce Evangelista Meus) (1896, 91x120cm) _ Sickert first visited Venice in 1895. He painted St Mark's basilica several times under different conditions, possibly inspired by Monet's paintings of Rouen Cathedral, which he had seen in Paris. However, unlike Monet, he was not concerned with fleeting effects of light. Instead, he concentrated on the structure and mosaics, using the light to accentuate the sparkling gold pinnacles and to emphasise the spirituality of the basilica. This is Sickert's largest and most elaborate depiction of the front elevation. The title includes the Latin motto of the city. |
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Born on 22 January 1690: Nicolas
Lancret, Parisian genre painter, draftsman, and collector,
who died on 14 September 1743. — {Son style, Lancret l'ancrait dans
l'imitation de Watteau. Y-a-t-il des dessins de Lancret en craie? Et s'il
faisait une gravure, Lancret l'encrait?} His brilliant depictions of fêtes galantes, or scenes of courtly amusements taking place in Arcadian settings, reflected the society of his time. — He was, with Pater, the principal imitator of Watteau. After failing as a history painter he was influenced by Gillot's theatrical scenes as Watteau had been, and he spent the rest of his life painting fêtes galantes. — Lancret came from a family of Parisian artisans. After an apprenticeship with the history painter Pierre Dulin, and a term at the Royal Academy's school, he entered in 1712 the studio of Claude Gillot. Gillot, then director of scene designs and costumes for the Opera, probably introduced him to Jean-Antoine Watteau, with whom he developed a close stylistic affinity. In 1719 he was elected to membership in the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture as a painter of fêtes galantes, a category created two years earlier for Watteau. Lancret participated in the Exposition de la Jeunesse from 1722 to 1725, and exhibited regularly at the official Salons from 1737. He received a number of royal commissions (e.g., decorations for the Chateau de la Muette, the Louvre, and Versailles) and enjoyed the patronage of many prominent amateurs, including Frederick II of Prussia. Lancret gradually evolved an individual style, more decorative but less poetic and symbolic than Watteau's. Although he produced portraits and history paintings, his work is devoted primarily to aristocratic genre scenes- outdoor gatherings with themes of the dance, music, the hunt, and elegant repasts. Lancret's charming works are a perfect reflection of the spirit and customs of eighteenth-century French society. — Lancret was one of the most prolific and imaginative genre painters of the first half of the 18th century in France, and, although after his death he was long regarded as a follower and imitator of Antoine Watteau, his work is markedly personal and often innovative. He began training as an engraver but soon apprenticed himself to Pierre Dulin [1669–1748], a moderately successful history painter; by 1708 he had enrolled as a student at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Paris. At an unknown date Lancret entered the workshop of the genre and decorative painter Claude Gillot, who had been Watteau’s master. He then turned away from the history painting pursued by his friend François Lemoyne. Lancret’s move to Gillot is thought to have resulted from the increasing popularity of Watteau’s genre scenes of elegant figures in garden settings. Although Lancret never studied formally under Watteau — whom he probably met around 1712 — Lancret was strongly influenced by his work, particularly in his early paintings. In 1719 Lancret was received (reçu) into the Académie Royale as a painter of fêtes galantes, a category that had been created two years earlier especially for Watteau. Lancret’s morceau de réception, Conversation galante, depicts a garden scene peopled by figures dressed in commedia dell’arte costume. — Jean-Baptiste Descamps was a student of Lancret. — LINKS — Breakfast Before the Hunt (1740, 61x133cm; 1/4 size _ ZOOM to half-size _ ZOOM++ to full size) — End of the Hunt (1740, 60x135cm; 1/4 size _ ZOOM to half-size _ ZOOM++ to full size) — The Music Party (1740, 61x129cm; 1/4 size _ ZOOM to half-size _ ZOOM++ to full size) — Baigneuses (1740, 61x130cm; 1/4 size _ ZOOM to half-size _ ZOOM++ to full size) — Le Jeu du Cheval Fondu (1735; 600x940pix _ ZOOM to 1400x2193pix) — The Bird Cage (44x48cm; 916x1000pix, 180kb) _ Watteau's originality could be copied but not kept alive once Watteau himself was dead. He created a vogue, and this perhaps damaged his own art in the eyes of the next generation. Without Watteau the fête galante was soon to dwindle to triviality, but his example gave further impetus to the uncoordinated desire for freedom. The difficult balance between decoration and genre was to be held best in France by Nicolas Lancret, immensely successful during his lifetime, but who has perhaps suffered too much in reputation for his proximity to Watteau. Frederick the Great felt none of this, and collected both painters in quantity. Lancret did not attempt any psychological insight, but his eternal charm and his keen eye for contemporary manners led to pictures which occasionally are minor masterpieces. — Mademoiselle de Camargo Dancing (1730, 42x55cm; 790x1046pix, 189kb) _ One of the most celebrated dancers of her day, she was twenty when Lancret painted this portrait of her in character; it was immediately engraved. — Company in the Park (65x70cm; 980x1010pix, 192kb) — Fête dans un Bois (1725, 64x91cm; 770x1117pix, 176kb) — Luncheon Party (1735; 973x790pix, 74kb) _ The composition reflects Lancret's dependence on Watteau, under whom he had briefly studied about 1717. Watteau's profound poetic feeling becomes in Lancret no more than a picturesque and amiable evocation of the life of society. — Lady and Gentleman with two Girls and a Servant (1742, 89x98cm; 850x931pix, 118kb) — The Seat of Justice in the Parliament of Paris in 1723 (1724, 56x82cm; 718x1059pix, 136kb) — Winter (1738, 69x89cm; 800x1034pix, 131kb) — Summer (1738; 156kb) — The Swing (639x800pix, 36kb) — Le Moulinet (701x545pix, 51kb) — A Scene from Corneille's Tragedy Le Comte d'Essex (1734; 172kb) — The Marriage Contract (1738; 145kb) |
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Died on 22 January 1649:
Alessandro Turchi “l'Orbetto” “Veronese”,
Italian painter born in 1578 in Verona. — He gained his nickname l'Orbetto from guiding his father who took to begging after becoming blind ('orbo' in Italian). Alessandro Turchi first studied in Verona in the studio of Felice Brusasorci [1539 – Feb 1605] in which he is known to have been in 1597. After his master’s death Turchi completed Brusasorci’s Fall of the Manna and other commissions for local churches. In 1606 Turchi was appointed to decorate the organ shutters of the Accademia Filharmonica, one of the Verona's most prestigious institutions, and soon became a member of this cultural élite as successor to Brusasorzi. During these early years he may have visited Mantua and Venice, with his fellow student Marcantonio Bassetti. His early Veronese paintings, such as the Adoration by the Shepherds (1608), are ambitious, with many figures and elaborate backgrounds, echoing the local tradition of which Paolo Veronese was the most distinguished exponent. Moving to Rome about 1614 or 1615, Turchi was paid for work in the Sala Regia of the Palazzo del Quirinale in 1616–1617, where he collaborated with a team of artists, among them Giovanni Lanfranco and Carlo Saraceni. His part was to paint an oval medallion with the Gathering of the Manna in a style that suggests Lanfranco’s influence. Turchi soon found patrons for altarpieces and cabinet paintings, among them Cardinal Scipione Borghese who paid him for frescoes in the Casino del Barco at the Villa Pinciana (now destroyed) and acquired some works on slate the following year. By 1619 he had settled permanently in Rome. As a member of the Accademia di San Luca from 1618, Turchi took an active interest in the running of the institution; this culminated in his election as 'principe' in 1637 and his affiliation to the Virtuosi del Pantheon a year later. As well as painting altarpieces for Roman churches, Turchi's work also attracted collectors in France. His polished mythological and religious subjects were collected by art lovers. He continued to receive commissions for altarpieces for churches in Verona throughout his career but, if he returned, it was only for brief visits. — LINKS — The Lamentation (28x23cm; full size, 1010kb). _ a different The Lamentation over the Dead Christ (1617, 42x53cm; 803x1030pix, 109kb) _ Although often included among the ranks of the followers of Caravaggio in Rome, a grouping which the nocturnal effects of The Lamentation make plausible, Turchi was quite independent in his choice of sources and influences. Painted only a few years after Turchi left his native Verona and settled in Rome, these two versions (now respectively at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and at the Galleria Borghese) reveal a surprisingly strong classicizing tendency, despite the use of artificial illumination (a torch held by a winged adolescent) and dramatic contrasts of light and shade. Part of the Caravaggesque quality here, however, is a product of two very specific elements, the use of slate as a support and the artificial illumination. Since the natural color of the slate normally serves to produce extreme contrasts of light and shade, Turchi may have included an artificial light source to take advantage of those tendencies inherent in the support. If we put aside the strong use of an internal light source, which could have been inspired by any number of Roman or even northern Italian sources, there is no other apparent influence from such Caravaggesque painters as Gerrit van Honthorst, who specialized in nocturnal effects. Nevertheless, Turchi can hardly have failed to notice the attention the young Utrecht painter van Honthorst was attracting in Rome with his brilliant nocturnal effects at this very moment. Furthermore, as a northern Italian, he was certainly familiar with the various nocturnal scenes popularized by the Bassano family. When it came to the rendering of the figures, however, it is to the famous Pietà (1600, 156x149cm; 1040x1003pix, 128kb) by Annibale Carracci that Turchi turned. In 1617 this famous painting, made for Cardinal Odoardo Farnese, was still in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. From this important and unusually lovely canvas by Annibale, Turchi borrowed the idealized pose and classical rendering of the body of his dead Christ. This strongly classicizing quality probably accounts for the later attribution of the picture to Annibale himself in the 1700 inventory of the Borghese collection. — Bacchus and Ariadne (115x148cm, 770x1035, 130kb) _ one of several versions (this one now at the Hermitage) |
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Born on 22 January 1889: Willi
Baumeister, Stuttgart German writer and abstract painter
who died on 31 August 1955. |
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Died on 22 January 1919: Carl
Olof Larsson, Swedish painter, illustrator, and printmaker,
born on 28 May 1853. — He came from a poor family and studied (1866–1876) at the Konstakademi in Stockholm, supporting himself throughout this period. Axel Tallberg was one of his teachers. From 1871 to 1878 he contributed illustrations to the comic journal Kaspar and the Ny illustrerad tidning. From 1875, for several decades, he was a prolific book illustrator, his most renowned work in this field being his drawings for Fältskärns berättelser (‘The Barber-surgeon’s tales’; 1883–1884) by Zacharius Topelius, and the Rococo-inspired watercolors for the Samlade skaldeförsök (‘Collected attempts at poetry’; 1884) by the 18th-century Swedish author Anna Maria Lenngren. It was only later, however, that Larsson produced most of his own prints. — Larsson was born in 'Gamla stan', the old town in Stockholm. His parents were extremely poor and his childhood sad and miserable. When he was thirteen his teacher at the school for poor children urged him to seek admission to the 'principskola' of the Stockholm Academy of Fine Arts where he got accepted. During his first years at the 'principskola' he felt socially inferior, confused and shy. In 1869 he was promoted to the 'antique school' of the same academy. There Carl Larsson became more sure of him self and he even became a central figure in student life. After several years as an illustrator of books, magazines and newspapers Larsson spent several rather frustrating years in Paris as a hardworking artist without any success. The turning point in Larsson´s life came in 1882 when in Grez, a Scandinavian artists' colony outside Paris, he met Karin Bergöö [1859-1928], who would soon be his wife. One could almost call it a metamorphosis in Carl Larsson´s life. In Grez, Larsson painted some of his most important works — now in water-colors. Carl and Karin Larsson reared eight children and Karin and the children became Larsson´s favorite model. In 1888 the young family was given a little house, named "Lilla Hyttnäs" in Sundborn, by Karin´s father Adolf Bergöö. Through Larsson´s paintings and his books this house has become one of the most famous homes in the world. The descendants of Carl and Karin Larsson now own this house and they are happy to be able to keep the house open for tourists each summer from May until October. Larsson considered his monumental works, for instance the frescos in schools, museums and other public buildings, to be his most important works. His last monumental work Midvinterblot (1915), intended for the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm was rejected by its board. In Larsson's memoirs Jag he declared his bitterness at this rebuff of the painting which he considered his best: "The fate of Midwinter Sacrifice broke me! This I admit with a dark anger. And still, it was probably the best thing that could happen, for now my intuition tells me — again — that for all its weakness, this painting will be honored with a far better place after my death." After being sold to Japan, Midwinter Sacrifice was brought back to the Nationalmuseum for the Carl Larsson exhibition in 1992. In 1997 the National museum bought it. — Gustaf Fjaestad and Carl Wilhelmson were students of Larsson. — photo of Larsson ^ — LINKS — Självporträtt (1895; 1122x763pix, 149kb) _ full length, at the easel. — Framför spegeln (1900; 1128x465pix, 80kb) — Självporträtt MED TACK IGEN TILL MINA VANNER I SUNDBORN (1916) — Midvinterblot (1915, 640x1360cm; 506x1132pix, 93kb) _ detail (440x460pix, 29kb) _ This prodigious painting, which Carl Larsson intended for the east wall in the upper hall of the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, was rejected by the museum's board of directors in 1916. After many years of discussion and debate, and with the publication of numerous books and articles within the Swedish artworld, the painting, with the help of very generous private donors, was finally bought from Japan by the National Museum in 1997. The story of how the painting arrived in Japan is a long one, but worth mentioning is the fact that the painting had previously been offered to the National Museum for free and was again rejected. According to Carl Larsson, Midwinter Sacrifice is his most important painting. It is a magnificent, resonant work of art that exemplifies the 30 years Carl Larsson spent decorating the hall of the National Museum in Stockholm. The painting depicts King Domalde in front of the temple in Uppsala, about to sacrifice himself in the belief that this will bring greater future harvests and general well-being to his people. The story is attributed to Adam of Bremen, a chronicler who lived in the 12th century. — October (The Pumpkins) (73x54cm, Oct.1882, 1125x824pix) _ This watercolor was painted in Grez, a small country village just south of Paris, where Carl Larsson went in May 1882, after several bad years in Paris of sickness and starvation. In Grez Carl Larsson discovered simple open-air motifs and watercolors. It was here Carl Larsson also found his happiness in the Swedish artist Karin Bergöö, who became his wife the following year. October is one of two watercolors — the other is November — with which he made a braketrough in 1883 at an exhibition in Paris, where he was awarded a medal. Pontus Fürstenberg of Gothenburg bought both of them for 2000 francs. — November (1882; 1122x827pix) — Breakfast in the Open (1910; 748x1106pix) — Lisbeth at the Birch (1910, 100x70cm) _ very similar to a detail of Breakfast in the Open. — De Mina (1893, 45x33cm; 1400x1000pix, 605kb) _ They include a woman, four children, a dog, eight ducks, a house, and some indistinct trees. — A Fairy, or Kersti, and a View of a Meadow (1899, 45x32cm) — Roses De Noël (50x35cm) — Solrosorna (46x26cm) _ Despite the title, not the sunflowers but a girl is the main subject. — A Young Girl with a Doll (1897; 1129x722pix, 136kb) — On the Grass (1902; 864x1133pix, 310kb) — Brita och jag (1895) — Spegelbild med Brita i knäet (1895) — MIN FADER OLOF LARSSON (1903) — Konvalescens (1899) — Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1918) — 47 portraits at Project Runeberg — 31 images at Webshots |
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Born on 22 January 1879: “Francis” François Marie Martínez Picabia,
French Dadaist-Surrealist
painter who died on on 30 November 1953. — “Francis Picabia” was born François Marie Martinez Picabia, in Paris, of a Spanish father and a French mother. He was enrolled at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs in Paris from 1895 to 1897 and later studied with Fernand Cormon, Ferdinand Humbert, and Albert Charles Wallet. He began to paint in an Impressionist manner in the winter of 1902–03 and started to exhibit works in this style at the Salon d’Automne and the Salon des Indépendants of 1903. His first solo show was held at the Galerie Haussmann, Paris, in 1905. From 1908, elements of Fauvism and Neo-Impressionism as well as Cubism and other forms of abstraction appeared in his painting, and by 1912 he had evolved a personal amalgam of Cubism and Fauvism. Picabia worked in an abstract mode from this period until the early 1920s. Picabia became a friend of Guillaume Apollinaire and Marcel Duchamp and associated with the Puteaux group in 1911 and 1912. He participated in the 1913 Armory Show, visiting New York on this occasion and frequenting avant-garde circles. Alfred Stieglitz gave him a solo exhibition at his gallery “291” that same year. In 1915, which marked the beginning of Picabia’s machinist or mechanomorphic period, he and Duchamp, among others, instigated and participated in Dada manifestations in New York. Picabia lived in Barcelona in 1916 and 1917. In 1917, he published his first volume of poetry and the first issues of 391, his magazine modeled after Stieglitz’s periodical 291. For the next few years, Picabia remained involved with the Dadaists in Zurich and Paris, creating scandals at the Salon d’Automne, but finally denounced Dada in 1921 for no longer being “new.” The following year, he moved to Tremblay-sur-Mauldre outside Paris, and returned to figurative art. In 1924, he attacked André Breton and the Surrealists in 391. Picabia moved to Mougins in 1925. During the 1930s, he became a close friend of Gertrude Stein. By the end of World War II, Picabia returned to Paris. He resumed painting in an abstract style and writing poetry. In March 1949, a retrospective of his work was held at the Galerie René Drouin in Paris. Picabia died in Paris. — Picabia was born into a family of mixed parentage, French mother and Spanish father. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and at the École des Arts décoratifs of Paris. Up to 1908 he painted landscapes in the manner of Corot and the Impressionists, especially Sisley (Landscape/Paysage, Riverbank / Rivière, Bank at Poissy / Bords de l'eau à Poissy.) Then, influenced by Matisse's Fauvism on one hand, and by Cubism of Braque and Picasso on the other, he tried to combine both movements and created bright-colored Cubists pictures unlike the somber monotone paintings of Cubism founders. (Young Girl/Jeune fille, Star Dancer on a Transatlantic Cruise / Danseuse étoile sur un transatlantique) In 1910 Pucabia met the Duchamps brothers, Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Jacques Villon, and Guillaume Apollinaire. The friendship with Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), a pioneer in the use of ready-made art, and G. Apollinaire, an Avant-garde poet and critic, significantly influenced Picabia's following works. In 1913, Picabia went to the United States for the first time and showed his abstract paintings at the international exhibition "Armory Show." The pictures had success and brought him fame. During his second stay in NY in 1915, together with Marcel Duchamp and painters of US Avant-garde, they formed the NY society of Dadaists. The group published the periodical 291, to which Picabia contributed. On January 25th, 1917, Picabia published the first number of his periodical, which he called 391 to remind of the American group's 291. In 391 he published his first "Mechanical Drawings". Leaving away the geometrical abstractions, Picabia started a series of compositions, in which colored copies of technical drawings suddenly obtained shapes of human figures (Ici, C'est Ici Stieglitz. 1915; Young American Girl in a State of Nudity, 1915; Parade Amoureuse, 1917). These "mechanomorphs" full of humor, teasing Dadaist sarcasm, demonstrate the paradox of visual perception, which could find a mimesis image in an abstract technical drawing. In the same year he went to the USA once more and there published further numbers of his periodical, assisted by Marcel Duchamp. In Europe 391 was published until 1924. In 1918 Picabia moved to Switzerland, where he joined the Zurich group of Dadaists and published a book entitled Poèmes et dessins de la fille née sans mère. He took active part in the activities of the group and went on with his "mechanomorphs" (L'enfant Carburateur, 1919). He contributed to "Dada" issues. In 1920 he published a periodical, Cannibale, and in 1921, together with Breton and others, he dissociated himself from "orthodox" Dadaists and switched his allegiance to Surrealism. In the beginning of the 1920s Picabia was interested in 'constructing' collages, for which he used all kind of materials (Feathers. 1921; Straw Hat. 1921, Woman with Matches. (1923-24) In 1927 Picabia's period of so-called 'transparencies' started. The artist was looking for alternative methods to depict three-dimensional space without traditional rules of perspective. He developed this approach in his works, in which flat images of different scales overlay and interlace to show an object from a variety of viewpoints. When an eye accommodates to intersections of different planes and foreshortening, an illusion of three-dimensional space really appears, as in Hera. (1929) and Adam et Ève (1931). In 1934, the transparent images were forced out by heavy brutal shapes of pseudo classicism. Exaggerating the manner of the self-taught Primitivists and Kitch stylistic, Picabia parodied the "high" genres of allegory, portraiture and Mythological scenes (Spanish Revolution, 1936; Self-Portrait, (1940, Nudes on a Sea Beach, 1941). During the World War II (1939-1945) Picabia lived in Switzerland and in the south of France. After the end of war he returned to Paris, where he came into contact with the Existensialists. In his late works abstractions alternate with the grotesque. Picabia also worked for the theatre, designed decorations for festivals and Gala-shows. He left literary works – poems and verses, art critics, articles on theory of art. Picabia's art is appreciated by those who like irony, play of words, combination of different styles and modes. — LINKS (The titles of many of his paintings have no recognizable relation to their content) — Self-Portrait (1940, 58x48cm) — Self-Portrait (1946, 21x16cm) — Self-Portrait (1923 drawing, 25x21cm) — Self-Portrait (1903 drawing, 25x20cm) — Portrait de Cézanne - Portrait de Rembrandt - Portrait de Renoir - Nature Morte (1920, momie d'un singe?) — I See Again in Memory My Dear Udnie (1913, an abstraction that doesn't resemble anything) — Ici C'est Ici Stieglitz (1915) — Amorous Parade (1917, une espèce d'alembic biscornu?) — La Fille Née Sans Mère (1917, portion d'une machine à vapeur?) — La ville de New York aperçue à travers le corps (1913, 55x75cm) — Lever de soleil (1924, 31x24cm) — Vierge à l'enfant (1935, 160x130cm) — Très rare tableau sur la terre (1915, 126x98cm including artist’s painted frame) _ In 1915 Picabia abandoned his exploration of abstract form and color to adopt a new machinist idiom that he used until about 1923. Unlike Robert Delaunay or Fernand Léger, who saw the machine as an emblem of a new age, he was attracted to machine shapes for their intrinsic visual and functional qualities. He often used mechanomorphic images humorously as substitutes for human beings; for example, in Ici C'est Ici Stieglitz (1915), the photographer Alfred Stieglitz is portrayed as a camera. In Very Rare Picture on the Earth a self-generating, almost symmetrical machine is presented frontally, clearly silhouetted against a flat, impassive background. Like Picabia’s own Amorous Parade (1917) or Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1923), the present work might be read as the evocation of a sexual event in mechanical terms. This dispassionate view of sex is consonant with the antisentimental attitudes that were to characterize Dada. The work has also been interpreted as representing an alchemical processor, in part because of the coating of the two upper cylinders with gold and silver leaf respectively. Not only is Très rare tableau sur la terre one of Picabia’s earliest mechanomorphic works, but it has been identified as his first collage. Its mounted wooden forms and integral frame draw attention to the work as object — the picture is not really a picture, making it “very rare” indeed. Thus, an ironic note is added to the humorous pomposity of the inscription at upper left. — The Child Carburetor (1919, 126x101cm) _ Picabia abandoned his successful career as a painter of coloristic, amorphous abstraction to devote himself, for a time, to the international Dada [more] movement. A self-styled “congenial anarchist,” Picabia, along with his colleague Marcel Duchamp, brought Dada to the New York art world in 1915, the same year he began making his enigmatic machinist portraits, such as The Child Carburetor, which had an immediate and lasting effect on American art. The Child Carburetor is based on an engineer’s diagram of a “Racing Claudel” carburetor, but the descriptive labels that identify its various mechanical elements establish a correspondence between machines and human bodies; the composition suggests two sets of male and female genitals. Considered within the context created by Duchamp’s contemporaneous work The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1923), The Child Carburetor, with its “bride” that is a kind of “motor” operated by “love gasoline,” also becomes a love machine. Its forms and inscriptions abound in sexual analogies, but because the mechanical elements are nonoperative or “impotent,” the sexual act is not consummated. Whether the implication can be drawn that procreation is an incidental consequence of sexual pleasure, or simply that this “child” machine has not yet sufficiently matured to its full potential, remains unclear. Picabia stressed the psychological possibilities of machines as metaphors for human sexuality, but he refused to explicate them. Beneath the humor of his witty pictograms and comic references to copulating anthropomorphic machines lies the suggestion of a critique—always formulated in a punning fashion—directed against the infallibility of science and the certainty of technological progress. The Child Carburetor and Picabia’s other quirky, though beautifully painted, little machines (which he continued to make until 1922) are indeed fallible. If they are amusingly naive as science fictions or erotic machines, they are also entirely earnest in placing man at the center of Picabia’s universe, albeit a mechanical one. |
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