Explore the André Salmon, 1912 of this artwork, Tea Time (Metzinger).
Following Louis Vauxcelles' sarcastic referral to Le goûter as "la Joconde à la cuiller" (Mona Lisa with a spoon) in the 30 September 1911 issue of Gil Blas, André Salmon elaborated, without sarcasm.
In his 1912 Anecdotal History of Cubism André Salmon writes:Jean Metzinger and Robert Delaunay painted landscapes planted with cottages reduced to the severe appearance of parallelepipeds. Living less of an interior life than Picasso, remaining to all outward appearances more like painters than their precursor, these young artists were in a much greater hurry for results, though they be less complete. [...]Exhibited, their works passed almost unobserved by the public and by art critics, who ... recognized only the Fauves, whether it be to praise or to curse to them.Now, the king of the Fauves ... Henri Matisse ... with one word cast out Jean Metzinger and Robert Delaunay from the family. With that feminine sense of the appropriate, the basis of his taste, he baptized the cottages of the two painters, "Cubist." An ingenuous or ingenious art critic was with him. He ran to his newspaper and with style wrote the gospel article; the next day the public learned of the birth of Cubism. (André Salmon, 1912)
In L'Art Vivant Salmon quotes a statement made by Metzinger in defense of himself and Picasso: 'Before us, no painter had the desire to feel the objects he painted' ["Avant nous, aucun peintre n'avait eu le souci de palper les objets qu'il peignait"] (Jean Metzinger). What Metzinger probably refers to is that unlike the artists before them, he and Picasso move around their models and subjects, capturing not just one vision but many, capturing the full essence of their subject matter, if not all of its characteristics and properties. "Palper", or to 'palpate the objects' is more than just 'feel', it is to examine or explore by touch, a method of examination in which the artist feels size or shape or firmness or location of something, it implies volume, it involves a sense, just as taste. This text can also be found in André Salmon on French Modern Art, translated as: "We have never had the curiosity to touch the objects we were painting." This translation of Metzinger's statement is obviously erroneous, implying nearly the exact opposite of what was meant in the original French.
Also in L'Art Vivant, André Salmon writes about Le Goûter: 'It was Metzinger who attempted and was tempted by freedom. Savant in grace, he exhibited a painting we named the Mona Lisa of Cubism' ["C'est Metzinger qui tenta et que tenta la liberté. Savant en la grâce, il exposa une toile qu'on baptisa la Joconde du cubisme"].In his 1920 essay, André Salmon again quotes Metzinger's statement: "Jamais, jusqu’a ce jour, les peintres n’avaient eu la curiosité de toucher les objets dont ils prétendaient traduire l’apparence". According to Salmon, Metzinger's reference to "touching" (toucher) the objects they attempted to represent, was a means by which to show all the sides, every aspect, each view-point, each element of the surface of the object simultaneously ("toutes les faces d'un objet à la fois").
André Salmon Louis Vauxcelles parallelepiped Cubism Robert Delaunay Matisse Henri Matisse Jean Metzinger Gil Blas Mona Lisa simultaneously