.jpg?w=1)
拍品專文
With increasing industrial production, rising immigrant populations and the proliferation of advertising, post-war mass modernity was fragmented and international in scope. Artists were attempting to reconcile the relationship of humans to their changing urban environment. Building upon the Baudelairean notion of “the painter of modern life,” Gleizes, among other artists, explored the city as the epicenter of modernity.
World War I marked a major turning point for Gleizes, who underwent profound personal and artistic changes between 1914 and 1920. Prior to the war, he had been deeply involved with the Parisian avant-garde, as a participant in the important Section d’Or exhibition of 1912 and co-author with Jean Metzinger of Du cubisme. In 1914, he was drafted into the army, only to be discharged from military duty in 1915. The same year, he married fellow artist and poet Juliette Roche (who is believed to have painted the verso of the present work). Gleizes and Roche left France in September 1915, traveling to Barcelona and Bermuda before settling in New York from 1917 to 1919. In April 1919, the couple moved back to Paris, and Gleizes began experimenting with creating the effect of papiers collés through brush and oil paint.
Back in Paris, he incorporated imagery from his time spent in New York. In the present work, Gleizes depicts a figure amidst the skyscrapers which characterize life in the city. Like other artists who explored the subject, such as Fernand Léger and Léopold Survage (figs. 1 and 2), Gleizes employs flat planes of color and rotational devices which suggest the dynamic motion of an urban metropolis. Gleizes described his admiration for the mechanical advances taking place in cities: “Skyscrapers are works of art. They are creations of steel and stone which equal the most admired creations in the Old World. The great bridges like Brooklyn Bridge could be put on the same plane as the work of the builders of Notre Dame of Paris” (quoted in Albert Gleizes: Le Cubisme en Majesté, Paris, 2001, p. 149).
The first owner of this work, Rose Valland, was an art historian and a key figure of the French resistance. Two years after the present work left Valland’s collection for The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York, the Nazis took control of the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris, where Valland worked. The Museum was converted into the headquarters of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, the Nazi art looting organization created by Adolf Hitler. There, they stored paintings and other works of art stolen from private French collectors and dealers, many of whom were Jewish. As the cultural patrimony of France passed through the doors of the Jeu de Paume, Valland eavesdropped and secretly kept detailed notes on the destinations of train car shipments filled with looted art. This information which Valland risked her life gathering was instrumental for the Monuments Men following the liberation of Paris, leading to the discovery of multiple repositories of looted art and facilitating the restitution process for many families.
World War I marked a major turning point for Gleizes, who underwent profound personal and artistic changes between 1914 and 1920. Prior to the war, he had been deeply involved with the Parisian avant-garde, as a participant in the important Section d’Or exhibition of 1912 and co-author with Jean Metzinger of Du cubisme. In 1914, he was drafted into the army, only to be discharged from military duty in 1915. The same year, he married fellow artist and poet Juliette Roche (who is believed to have painted the verso of the present work). Gleizes and Roche left France in September 1915, traveling to Barcelona and Bermuda before settling in New York from 1917 to 1919. In April 1919, the couple moved back to Paris, and Gleizes began experimenting with creating the effect of papiers collés through brush and oil paint.
Back in Paris, he incorporated imagery from his time spent in New York. In the present work, Gleizes depicts a figure amidst the skyscrapers which characterize life in the city. Like other artists who explored the subject, such as Fernand Léger and Léopold Survage (figs. 1 and 2), Gleizes employs flat planes of color and rotational devices which suggest the dynamic motion of an urban metropolis. Gleizes described his admiration for the mechanical advances taking place in cities: “Skyscrapers are works of art. They are creations of steel and stone which equal the most admired creations in the Old World. The great bridges like Brooklyn Bridge could be put on the same plane as the work of the builders of Notre Dame of Paris” (quoted in Albert Gleizes: Le Cubisme en Majesté, Paris, 2001, p. 149).
The first owner of this work, Rose Valland, was an art historian and a key figure of the French resistance. Two years after the present work left Valland’s collection for The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York, the Nazis took control of the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris, where Valland worked. The Museum was converted into the headquarters of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, the Nazi art looting organization created by Adolf Hitler. There, they stored paintings and other works of art stolen from private French collectors and dealers, many of whom were Jewish. As the cultural patrimony of France passed through the doors of the Jeu de Paume, Valland eavesdropped and secretly kept detailed notes on the destinations of train car shipments filled with looted art. This information which Valland risked her life gathering was instrumental for the Monuments Men following the liberation of Paris, leading to the discovery of multiple repositories of looted art and facilitating the restitution process for many families.