Focus on this artwork and analyze the Crystal Cubism.
The Cubist considerations manifested prior to the outset of World War I—such as the fourth dimension, dynamism of modern life, the occult, and Henri Bergson's concept of duration—had now been vacated, replaced by a purely formal reference frame. This clarity and sense of order spread to almost all of the artists under contract with Léonce Rosenberg—including Metzinger, Juan Gris, Jacques Lipchitz, Henri Laurens, Auguste Herbin, Joseph Csaky and Gino Severini—leading to the descriptive term 'Crystal Cubism', coined by the critic Maurice Raynal.By its very date of execution, Metzinger's Soldier at a Game of Chess was precursor to a style that would become known as Crystal Cubism.Comparisons have been made between war-time works of Metzinger and Juan Gris. These works were created within a specific context, a particular timeframe, a relatively restrained milieu, and influenced by a diverse grouping of factors. Metzinger's milieu at the time included his close friend Juan Gris. Both artists (with Lipchitz) exchanged ideas and worked together in Paris and Beaulieu-lès-Loches. Despite theoretical or conceptual differences, the works by these artists (and practically all those who exhibited at Rosenberg's Galerie de L'Effort Moderne) bear striking similarities.
The 'Latin' virtues of clarity and order were indeed dominants in the recent works of most who exhibited. Nowhere was this more so than is the works of three artists who had been in close contact with one another from 1916... the painters Gris and Jean Metzinger, and the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz... It is above all the wartime work of these three Cubists that can be analysed as a move towards order alongside as process of distillation. (Green, 1987, p. 25)
The new aesthetic unity associated with the underlying geometric structure of the works created by these artists is what would lead to the appellation Crystal Cubism. Metzinger and Gris were at the forefront, among the leaders of this second phase of Cubism.In Crystal Cubist works, the distinction between the background and the figure are blurred. Rather than gradients of tone or color, the works are painted with flat, uniform sections of tone and color. Though highly abstract in overall construction, objects or elements of the real world are present. The primacy of the manifest geometric manifold, the angular juxtaposition of the surface planes, are distinct features of this second phase of Cubism. This reductionist style is consistent with a process of distillation otherwise auxiliary before the war.During 1916, Sunday discussions at the studio of Lipchitz, included Metzinger, Gris, Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Pierre Reverdy, André Salmon, Max Jacob, and Blaise Cendrars. Metzinger and Gris were in close contact.In a letter written to Albert Gleizes in Barcelona during the war, dated 4 July 1916, Metzinger writes:After two years of study I have succeeded in establishing the basis of this new perspective I have talked about so much. It is not the materialist perspective of Gris, nor the romantic perspective of Picasso. It is rather a metaphysical perspective—I take full responsibility for the word. You can't begin to imagine what I've found out since the beginning of the war, working outside painting but for painting. The geometry of the fourth space has no more secret for me. Previously I had only intuitions, now I have certainty. I have made a whole series of theorems on the laws of displacement [déplacement], of reversal [retournement] etc. I have read Schoute, Rieman (sic), Argand, Schlegel etc.
The actual result? A new harmony. Don't take this word harmony in its ordinary [banal] everyday sense, take it in its original [primitif] sense. Everything is number. The mind [esprit] hates what cannot be measured: it must be reduced and made comprehensible.That is the secret. There in nothing more to it [pas de reste à l'opération]. Painting, sculpture, music, architecture, lasting art is never anything more than a mathematical expression of the relations that exist between the internal and the external, the self [le moi] and the world. (Metzinger, 4 July 1916)
The 'new perspective' according to Daniel Robbins, "was a mathematical relationship between the ideas in his mind and the exterior world". The 'fourth space' for Metzinger was the space of the mind.In a second letter to Gleizes, dated 26 July 1916, Metzinger writes:If painting was an end in itself it would enter into the category of the minor arts which appeal only to physical pleasure... No. Painting is a language—and it has its syntax and its laws. To shake up that framework a bit to give more strength or life to what you want to say, that isn't just a right, it's a duty; but you must never lose sight of the End. The End, however, isn't the subject, nor the object, nor even the picture—the End, it is the idea. (Metzinger, 26 July 1916)
Continuing, Metzinger mentions the differences between himself and Juan Gris:Someone from whom I feel ever more distant is Juan Gris. I admire him but I cannot understand why he wears himself out with decomposing objects. Myself, I am advancing towards synthetic unity and I don't analyze any more. I take from things what seems to me to have meaning and be most suitable to express my thought. I want to be direct, like Voltaire. No more metaphors. Ah those stuffed tomatoes of all the St-Pol-Roux of painting.
Some of the ideas expressed in these letters to Gleizes were reproduced in an article written by Paul Dermée, published in the magazine SIC in 1919, but the existence of letters themselves remained unknown until the mid-1980s.From 1916, Lipchitz, Gris and Metzinger had been in close contact with one another. The three had just signed contracts with the dealer, art collector and gallery owner Léonce Rosenberg. It is the work of these three artists, executed during the war, that can be analyzed as a process of distillation in a shift towards order and purity. This process would continue through 1918 when the three spent part of the summer together in Beaulieu-lès-Loches to escape the bombardment of Paris.At an opening held at the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris, on 9 June 1947, Léonce Rosenberg related his impressions to Hélène Bauret:In the painting "La Tricoteuse", hanging next to works by Gris, Metzinger reveals himself more of a painter, more natural, more flexible [plus souple] than Gris. Often, Gris would tell me: "Ah! If I could brush [brosser] like the French!"
Metzinger's radical geometrization of form as an underlying architectural basis for his 1914–15 compositions is already visible in his work circa 1912–13, in paintings such as Au Vélodrome (1912) and Le Fumeur (1913). Where before, the perception of depth had been greatly reduced, now, the depth of field was no greater than a bas-relief.Metzinger's evolution toward synthesis has its origins in the configuration of flat squares, trapezoidal and rectangular planes that overlap and interweave, a "new perspective" in accord with the "laws of displacement". In the case of Le Fumeur Metzinger filled in these simple shapes with gradations of color, wallpaper-like patterns and rhythmic curves. So too in Au Vélodrome. But the underlying armature upon which all is built is palpable. Vacating these non-essential features would lead Metzinger on a path towards Crystal Cubism: works created before the War, and after the artist's demobilization as a medical orderly during the war, such as Femme au miroir, private collection; Landscape with Open Window (1915) Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes; Femme à la dentelle (1916) Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Summer (1916) Statens Museum for Kunst; Le goûter (1917) Galerie Daniel Malingue; Tête de femme (1916–17) private collection; Femme devant le miroir (c. 1914) private collection; Femme au miroir (1916–17) Donn Shapiro collection; Maison cubistes au bord de l'eau (1916); and Femme et paysage à l'aqueduc (1916).
If the beauty of a painting depends solely on its pictorial qualities: retain only certain elements, those that seem to suit our expressive needs, then with these elements, build a new object, an object which we can adapt to the surface of the painting without subterfuge. For that object to look like something known, I am increasingly considering not to be useful. For me it is enough for it to be "well made", for there to be a perfect accord between the parts and the whole. (Jean Metzinger, quoted in Au temps des Cubistes, 1910–1920)
André Salmon Daniel Robbins Schlegel Amedeo Modigliani Maurice Raynal Galerie de L'Effort Moderne Gino Severini Gleizes Albert Gleizes Schoute Blaise Cendrars medical orderly Crystal Cubism Statens Museum for Kunst Cubist Cubism Pierre Reverdy Argand Le Fumeur Pablo Picasso Henri Laurens Henri Bergson Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris Jacques Lipchitz relief Chess duration Henri Matisse Léonce Rosenberg Rieman Joseph Csaky Jean Metzinger World War I fourth dimension Juan Gris Diego Rivera SIC Max Jacob Au Vélodrome Auguste Herbin Musée National d'Art Moderne Beaulieu-lès-Loches Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes Femme au miroir