Focus on this artwork and discuss the Description.
Soldier at a Game of Chess, initialed "JM" and signed "JMetzinger" (lower right), is an oil painting on canvas with dimensions 81.3 x 61 cm (32 x 24 in.). The vertical composition is painted in a geometrically advanced Cubist style, representing a solitary French soldier playing a game of chess. He wears a military hat (képi) and bears a cigarette in his mouth. Because of this, Joann Moser suggests that this may be a self-portrait. Images of Metzinger often depicted him with a cigarette in his mouth: consider for example Robert Delaunay's 1906 Portrait of Metzinger (Man with a Tulip); Suzanne Phocas, Portrait de Metzinger, 1926.The soldier's head and hat are seen in both frontal side views simultaneously. His facial features are eminently stylized, simple, geometric, resting on rounded shoulders delineated by a rectangular structure superimposed with elemental monochromatic planes that compose the background. Depth of field is practically nonexistent. Blues, reds, green and black dominate the composition. The table—treated in faux bois, or trompe-l'œil—and the chessboard are practically seen from above, while the chess pieces are observed from the side; his right hand is fused within.
"Direct reference to observed reality" is present, but the emphasis is placed on the self-sufficiency of the painting as an object unto itself. "Orderly qualities" and the "autonomous purity" of the composition are a prime concern.The overall composition is highly crystalline in its geometricized materialization, consisting of superimposed synthetic planes; something Albert Gleizes would later refer to, in La Peinture et ses lois (1922), as "simultaneous movements of translation and rotation of the plane". Gleizes too had been working along similar lines during his mobilization at Toul, where he painted Portrait of an Army Doctor (Portrait d'un médecin militaire), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The synthetic factor was ultimately taken furthest of all from within the Cubists by Gleizes.
Portrait of an Army Doctor trompe-l'œil Orderly chessboard chess self-portrait Gleizes Albert Gleizes Cubist Robert Delaunay Portrait of an Army Doctor (Portrait d'un médecin militaire) Chess Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Toul faux bois képi