Focus on Portrait de l'éditeur Eugène Figuière and discuss the Salon d'Automne, 1913.
By 1913 the predominant tendency in modern art visible at the Salon d'Automne consisted of Cubism with a clear tendency towards abstraction. The trend to use brighter colors that had already begun in 1911 continued through 1912 and 1913. This exhibition, held from 15 November to 8 January 1914, was dominated by de La Fresnaye, Gleizes and Picabia. Works by Delaunay, Duchamp and Léger were not exhibited.The preface of the catalog was written by the French Socialist politician Marcel Sembat who a year earlier—against the outcry of Jules-Louis Breton regarding the use of public funds to provide the venue (at the Salon d'Automne) to exhibit 'barbaric' art—had defended the Cubists, and freedom of artistic expression in general, in the National Assembly of France.
"I do not in the least wish... to offer a defense of the principles of the cubist movement! In whose name would I present such a defense? I am not a painter... What I do defend is the principle of the freedom of artistic experimentation... My dear friend, when a picture seems bad to you, you have the incontestable right not to look at it, to go and look at others. But one doesn't call the police!" (Marcel Sembat)
Cubism Jules-Louis Breton Marcel Sembat Salon d'Automne