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Lot Essay
Ostensibly composed in an austerely abstract manner, Lipchitz’s Tête of 1915 nonetheless powerfully, monolithically, evokes the human visage. The sculptor’s successful resolution in this work of these contradictory tendencies made it a key development in the evolution of his early cubist modernism. “Lipchitz’s Head is a complete, ‘organic’ entity,” Catherine Pütz has written, “seamlessly integrating material and content. It recalls human features and the proportions of a face, but in its expressiveness it is independent from the known, human world. It is a new object unlike any we have previously seen” (Jacques Lipchitz: The First Cubist Sculptor, London, 2002, p. 16).
Lipchitz was then only 24 years old. During the previous year his friendship with Picasso had converted him to Cubism. In a flush of enthusiasm, Lipchitz quickly went on to create sculptures that displayed a rigorously architectural interpretation of synthetic cubist syntax, emphasizing extreme verticality and layered rectangular planes. The resultant constructed sculptures had the appearance of mechanical devices; their rising, elongated forms reminded some of Gothic cathedrals. “I carried my findings all the way to abstraction,” Lipchitz wrote. He became worried, however, that “I had lost the sense of the subject, of its humanity, I had gone too far.” Such was the state of his concern that during the summer of 1915 the sculptor experienced “a kind of emotional crisis...I felt for a time I had lost my way” (My Life in Sculpture, New York, 1972, p. 26).
“Of the greatest importance in clarifying my ideas about subject and form in 1915 was the Head,” Lipchitz declared. “This was made after the moment of my emotional crisis, when I felt that in my exploration of abstract shapes I had lost sight of the human element, the relation to nature that has always been so necessary for me. In fact, the work was probably more than any other the means of bringing me out of this moment of despair. It is really a very simple structure, obviously in the same vein as the abstract architectural works that preceded and followed it. There is a large, vertical-rectangular mass that rises up the back of the head and then comes down in front as the forehead and nose. This rectangular plane is bisected almost at right angles by another plane that suggests the face diminishing at the bottom to form the neck and rising in a frontal curve to suggest the protruding line of the eyebrows. There is even an implication of the eyes in the shadows created under this protruding ridge. This is, then, clearly, a human head with even a feeling of monumental dignity. Yet the entire effect is achieved essentially by two interlocking sculptural planes” (ibid., pp. 33-34)
“With this work I entered into a period almost of euphoria,” Lipchitz continued. “I knew that I had discovered something, that I was on the right road to the realization of a kind of sculpture in which I had complete control of the vocabulary of cubist forms in the creation of works where the human subject or idea was uppermost... Now I had the balance between the non-figurative form and figuration for which I was unconsciously seeking” (ibid., p. 34).
Lipchitz was then only 24 years old. During the previous year his friendship with Picasso had converted him to Cubism. In a flush of enthusiasm, Lipchitz quickly went on to create sculptures that displayed a rigorously architectural interpretation of synthetic cubist syntax, emphasizing extreme verticality and layered rectangular planes. The resultant constructed sculptures had the appearance of mechanical devices; their rising, elongated forms reminded some of Gothic cathedrals. “I carried my findings all the way to abstraction,” Lipchitz wrote. He became worried, however, that “I had lost the sense of the subject, of its humanity, I had gone too far.” Such was the state of his concern that during the summer of 1915 the sculptor experienced “a kind of emotional crisis...I felt for a time I had lost my way” (My Life in Sculpture, New York, 1972, p. 26).
“Of the greatest importance in clarifying my ideas about subject and form in 1915 was the Head,” Lipchitz declared. “This was made after the moment of my emotional crisis, when I felt that in my exploration of abstract shapes I had lost sight of the human element, the relation to nature that has always been so necessary for me. In fact, the work was probably more than any other the means of bringing me out of this moment of despair. It is really a very simple structure, obviously in the same vein as the abstract architectural works that preceded and followed it. There is a large, vertical-rectangular mass that rises up the back of the head and then comes down in front as the forehead and nose. This rectangular plane is bisected almost at right angles by another plane that suggests the face diminishing at the bottom to form the neck and rising in a frontal curve to suggest the protruding line of the eyebrows. There is even an implication of the eyes in the shadows created under this protruding ridge. This is, then, clearly, a human head with even a feeling of monumental dignity. Yet the entire effect is achieved essentially by two interlocking sculptural planes” (ibid., pp. 33-34)
“With this work I entered into a period almost of euphoria,” Lipchitz continued. “I knew that I had discovered something, that I was on the right road to the realization of a kind of sculpture in which I had complete control of the vocabulary of cubist forms in the creation of works where the human subject or idea was uppermost... Now I had the balance between the non-figurative form and figuration for which I was unconsciously seeking” (ibid., p. 34).