Focus on Bathers (Metzinger) and explore the Metzinger, Picasso, and Braque.
There is a close association between Metzinger's Baigneuses (Bathers) and Picasso's 1908 Paysage aux deux figures (Landscape with Two Figures). Both stances are verbalized with the same abstract vocabulary. In both cases, the figures are camouflaged or blended with the background, their bodies forming part of the landscape. These works were completed at a time when Metzinger frequented the Bateau Lavoir in Montmartre, where he may have seen Picasso's painting. There are differences, too, worth noting between the two works (aside from the size and colors which are unknown in the Metzinger case). While the dominant feature of Picasso's painting is the landscape, Metzinger chose to highlight the figures; the landscape playing only a secondary role in the overall composition. Metzinger's figures are much larger relative to the canvas. They are prominently and symmetrically displayed, and of lighter color contrast relative to Picasso's asymmetrical juxtaposition and subdued contrasting. Two of Metzinger's nudes—to the right and left of the dominant central figures—are quite inconspicuous, as in Picasso's piece. In both paintings the nudes and landscape have become unified, not presuming a representation of reality.
They are the product of a reductive abstracting process, of an open, freewheeling process of synthesis—where a dialogue between components lead to the liberation from any particular classical foundation. They are combined harmoniously though pictographic imagery rendered in residuum abstractions of apparent mathematical codes. In the case of Metzinger, his prowess in mathematics is well documented. In the case of Picasso, the mathematical association with his paintings has been made through Maurice Princet.Metzinger's early interests in mathematics is well documented. He was familiar with the works of Gauss, Riemann and Jules Henri Poincaré (and perhaps Galilean relativity) prior to the development of Cubism: something that reflects in his pre-1907 works. The French mathematician Maurice Princet promoted the work of Poincaré, along with the concept of the fourth spatial dimension, to artists at the Bateau-Lavoir. He was a close associate of Pablo Picasso, Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Marcel Duchamp and Jean Metzinger. Princet is known as "le mathématicien du cubisme." He brought to the attention of these artists a book entitled Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions by Esprit Jouffret (1903) a popularization of Poincaré's Science and Hypothesis. In this book Jouffret described hypercubes and complex polyhedra in four dimensions projected onto a two-dimensional page. Princet became estranged from the group after his wife left him for André Derain. However, Princet would remain close to Metzinger and participate in meetings of the Section d'Or in Puteaux. He gave informal lectures to the artists, many of whom were passionate about mathematical order. In 1910, Metzinger said of him, "[Picasso] lays out a free, mobile perspective, from which that ingenious mathematician Maurice Princet has deduced a whole geometry".Picasso's Landscape with Two Figures is almost entirely Cézannian, in its color, in its reduction to simplified forms and in its loose brushwork. Picasso still shows a sense of depth perspective through shading, despite some flattening of the surface. Metzinger's painting is less influenced by Cézanne in its brushstrokes, hardly visible in this photograph. Its quasi-Nabis post-Symbolist treatment can be observed, but Metzinger vacates all depth of field. The background and foreground have become one. The only devices that indicate depth are (1) elevation in the picture plane; lower is closer and further is higher, and (2) objects in front of others obscure the object in the background, such as the central nude appears in front of the nude she holds with her right hand.
In both paintings, the faces of the models have been left out, featureless, reduced to their simplest spherical form.
In light of the fact that Metzinger frequented the Bateau Lavoir since 1908 and exhibited with Georges Braque at Berthe Weill's gallery, introduced to Picasso by Max Jacob and Guillaume Krotowsky (who already signed his works Guillaume Apollinaire), and in view of the similarities between the two works, it is probable that Metzinger's Bathers was painted the same year; 1908. The differences between the two paintings suggest that, while Metzinger may have been influenced by Picasso (unlike Albert Gleizes), his intention was certainly not to copy or even resemble the Spaniard, as would soon Braque (or visa versa). His intention was to create his own brand of art, dependent on his own lived experience.
Then the kingdom of the Fauves whose civilization had appeared so new, so powerful, so startling, took on suddenly the aspect of a deserted village.
It was then that Jean Metzinger, joining Picasso and Braque, founded the Cubist City. (Guillaume Apolllinaire, 1913)
Whether in advanced non-objective mathematical workings or abstract geometrical form, along with his non-representative dislocated outward appearance, Metzinger creates a pure image—"the total image".
By 1908–09, in such studies as Baigneuses (Bathers), it is apparent that Metzinger was not following the lead of Picasso or Braque in their hermetic approach to painting—he had little interest in imitating, whether it be "an orb on a vertical plane" or anything else—Metzinger was on a path leading to abstraction and to the almost total disintegration of recognizable form.
Bateau-Lavoir Nabis Georges Braque Bateau Lavoir polyhedra Guillaume Apollinaire Albert Gleizes hypercubes abstract right Cubism Marcel Duchamp André Derain Puteaux Pablo Picasso depth of field Riemann Symbolist Derain Berthe Weill Jules Henri Poincaré Esprit Jouffret Jean Metzinger Henri Poincaré Maurice Princet Section d'Or Max Jacob Montmartre Gauss Fauves Braque fourth spatial dimension