Describe the characteristics of the Mobilization in this artwork's Background.
Gleizes had been conscripted at the outset of the war (August 1914) and sent to the garrison town of Toul, close to the Eastern front (120 km from Sainte-Menehould, where his close friend Jean Metzinger was mobilized) to serve in the 167e régiment d'infanterie (from which the 367e régiment d'infanterie was formed). He was stationed in the Caserne Maréchal-Ney (Plateau Saint-Georges), attached to the Service de Santé des Armées, in the infirmary of the unit. Upon giving his name to the receiving sergeant he was asked if he had any relation to the Cubist painter. When Gleizes answered that he was the Cubist painter he was told to step aside. Sergeant Raymond Vaufrey (soon to become a well-known paleontologist) happened to be an avid enthusiast of modern art. Shortly thereafter Gleizes was assigned the role of providing entertainment for the troops. His experience with artistic and literary activities at the Abbey of Créteil and the Association Ernest Renan, along with his connection to the distinguished author and actor Maxime Léry, may have helped secure the post. His close associates at the garrison included Carlos Salzedo, a harpist responsible for musical activities; the dentist Théo Morinaud, and early childhood friend from Courbevoie and possibly the subject of several pairings by Gleizes, including l'Homme au Balcon (Man on a Balcony), Philadelphia Museum of Art. Also stationed at Toul were the painters Georges Valmier, Paul Colin, and the composer Florent Schmitt. Gleizes activities as artistic and literary impresario at the fortress included monologues reciting classical, romantic and Symbolist poetry by Paul Fort, Jules Laforgue, Tristan Corbière, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé.
Gleizes' mobilization was an obstacle to his production of artwork, though he was able to work on small scale, and ultimately produced one relatively large piece, Portrait of an Army Doctor.
The painter Gleizes, who wrote a book on Cubism, writes to a friend: "From Toul, advanced outpost on the Eastern border, I am sending you this card. There is no question of Cubism at the moment or simultanism. When will we speak of it again? When will we do it again? Soon I hope, and with the glory of having crushed the German felony, having extirpated the Prussian Hydra and to be able to return freely in French Alsace-Lorraine forever. I have absolute confidence in your effort, your mission." (Gleizes, L'Intransigeant, August 1914)
An admirer of his work, his commanding officer—the regimental surgeon portrayed by Gleizes in this painting—made arrangements so that Gleizes could continue to paint while mobilized at Toul. This work, painted at the outset of the Crystal Cubist period, was a precursor to Gleizes's abstract paintings of 1915–16. Portrait of an Army Doctor consists of broad, overlapping planes of brilliant color, dynamically intersecting vertical, diagonal, horizontal lines coupled with circular movements. This painting, along with his Portrait de Florent Schmitt, Le Chant de guerre (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), according to Gleizes, represented a break from both 'Cubism of analysis', and from the representation of volume undertaken during the first period of Cubism. He was now on a path that lead to 'synthesis', with its starting point in 'unity'.This unity, and the highly crystalline geometricized materialization consisting of superimposed constituent planes, ultimately referred to by the French poet and art critic Maurice Raynal as Crystal Cubism, would soon be described by Gleizes in La Peinture et ses lois (1922–23), as 'simultaneous movements of translation and rotation of the plane'. The synthetic factor was taken furthest of all from within the Cubists by Gleizes. Basing himself on his 1915 abstractions, Gleizes sought to clarify his methods further in La Peinture et ses lois, deducing the fundamental principles of painting from the picture plane, its proportions, the movement of the human eye and the universal physical laws. These theoretical postulates, later referred to as translation-rotation, according to Robbins, rank "with the writings of Mondrian and Malevich as one of the most thorough expositions of the principles of abstract art, which in his case entailed the rejection not only of representation but also of geometric forms".Many drawings, gouaches and watercolors were realized by the artist in and around Toul. He kept the landscapes and portrait sketches in a drawer, until one day they were discover by a private (a miner) who removed them all only to tack them on the wall with toothpicks for an exhibition. Gleizes remarked that educated or cultured soldiers had more difficulty with his paintings than those with little or no intellectual pretensions. Portrait d'un médecin militaire generated mixed responses. The Professor of Physiology from the Faculty of Nancy in charge of the infirmary at Toul, Dr. Lambert, was more enthusiastic about his portrait by Valmier than that of Gleizes:The portrait that he [Valmier] made of the Doctor was excellent, a very good likeness that remained in the classical idiom. But for myself, I wanted to remain faithful to Cubism and not to play games with my own convictions. So the portrait I envisaged was a little surprising for the good doctor's habits of mind. He did not conceal his way of thinking, but he let me do what I wanted. I made of him, from memory, a large number of drawings in pencil, in pen and ink, in ink wash. I made a series of watercolors and gouaches. When he saw them, the model was pretty shaken. When my studies seemed to be ready, I did the oil painting. I painted the portrait in the Marshall Ney's room. I nailed a canvas I had ordered from Nancy to the wall and got down to work. When it was finished, it received the approval of my friends, the unsophisticated ones, who were all able to recognise Dr. Lambert perfectly well. The others were divided. As for the interested party, he refused, definitely, but amicably, to take possession of it. To please me, he only accepted the final little gouache which I had used for the execution of the canvas. (Albert Gleizes, Souvenirs, c. 1942)
The Portrait d'un médecin militaire, commissioned by Dr. Lambert, is "impressive" writes art historian Peter Brooke: "Although Gleizes tells the story lightheartedly, it is a serious, almost tragic painting, in which the subject (the poor Dr. Lambert) has almost disappeared—reduced to a presence rather than a likeness—in a construction in which vertical parallel lines, and therefor a static, monumental character, prevail. Together with the second Portrait of Florent Schmitt (the Chant de guerre), it could be described as the furthest point reached by this Cubism striving towards the laws of the 'object'—the properties of the picture space itself—but still taking the 'subject'—the thing represented—as its starting point." (Brooke, 2001, p. 46)Shortly thereafter, Jean Cocteau asked Gleizes to design the set and costumes for the William Shakespeare play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, along with Valmier.
A Midsummer Night's Dream Maurice Raynal in Albert Gleizes Lorraine 367e régiment d'infanterie abstract Arthur Rimbaud l'Homme au Balcon (Man on a Balcony) Ernest Renan Stéphane Mallarmé 167e régiment d'infanterie Tristan Corbière La Peinture et ses lois Crystal Cubism Florent Schmitt Solomon R. Guggenheim x Crystal Cubist Cubism Man on a Balcony Symbolist Paul Colin Carlos Salzedo 200 Jules Laforgue Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Jean Cocteau Jean Metzinger William Shakespeare Raymond Vaufrey Toul Georges Valmier Paul Fort