Focus on this artwork and explain the Description.
Man with a Pipe is an oil painting on canvas with dimensions 93.7 × 65.4 cm (36.5 by 25.75 inches), signed JMetzinger lower right. The work represents a man sitting at a table upon which is placed a mug of beer. The man, an American according to the title of the work, has his arms crossed and has a pipe in his mouth. He wears a jacket and tie. To the right is a vase with a painting of a sail boat in front of a setting sun above. To the sitters left can be seen half of a portrait in a round frame. While the Man with a Pipe is treated in an extreme form of Cubism, the two works hanging on the wall behind the sitter are not Cubist at all, albeit, they are stylized. One represents a boat with a setting or rising sun, the other, a portrait placed in a semi-circle, almost an echo of the Man with a Pipe.
Rather than simultaneously superimposing successive images to depict motion, Metzinger represents the subject at rest from multiple angles. The dynamic role is played by the artist rather than the subject. By moving around the subject the artist captures several important features at once; such as the profile and frontal view. And because motion involves time, several intervals or moments are captured simultaneously (a process coined by Metzinger called simultaneity or multiplicity). Moods and expressions within each facet may be different, reflecting change over time. The result, according to Metzinger is a more complete representation of the subject matter (a 'total image') than would otherwise have resulted from one image taken at one instant. Each facet reveals something new and different about the subject. Sutured together, these facets would form a more complete image than an otherwise static representation seen from one point of view; what Metzinger called a "total image".In addition to the inequality of parts being granted as a prime condition of Metzinger Cubism, there are two methods of regarding the division of the canvas. Both methods, according to Metzinger and Gleizes (1912) are based on the relationship between color and form:According to the first, all the parts are connected by a rhythmic convention which is determined by one of them. This—its position on the canvas matters little—gives the painting a centre from which the gradations of colour proceed, or towards which they tend, according as the maximum or minimum of intensity resides there.
According to the second method, in order that the spectator, himself free to establish unity, may apprehend all the elements in the order assigned to them by creative intuition, the properties of each portion must be left independent, and the plastic continuum must be broken into a thousand surprises of light and shade. [...]Every inflection of form is accompanied by a modification of colour, and every modification of colour gives birth to a form. (Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Du "Cubisme", 1912)
Jean Metzinger Du "Cubisme" Cubist Cubism Albert Gleizes