In Portrait of Jacques Nayral, how is the Gleizes on Nayral discussed?
I was on the verge of painting the Portrait of Jacques Nayral. He was to become my brother-in-law, and was one of the most sympathetic men I have ever met. A strange lad, a little surprising on first encounter - both disturbing because of his sharp use of irony and also attractive because of a generosity that left him as vulnerable as a child. The first time I met him was at President Bonjean's house at Villepreux-les-Clayes, near Versailles, during a dinner which brought together the committee of that 'Villa Medicis Libre' which, as I said before, had been founded by Alexandre Mercereau. From that time onwards, we saw each other often and became friends. [...]One day he asked me to do his portrait. I agreed with joy, all the more so because his head and his whole personality [personne] seemed to me to be perfect models for emphasising the plastic elements I was trying to develop. His face with clearly demarcated surfaces that made up a passionate interplay of facets, his hair in dark masses projecting lightly in waves over his temples, his solidly constructed body - straightaway suggested to me equivalences, echoes [rappels], interpenetrations, rhythmic correspondences with the surrounding elements, fields, trees, houses. So I suggested painting him in my garden, where I found easily to hand an environment that was highly suitable for my model.
I made a whole series of studies to prepare this portrait. Drawings and washes in china ink. I analysed the architecture of the head in monumentally sized enlargements, two or three times the natural size, I made a certain number of drawings of the hands, I studied the organisation and the overall effect, volumes and the relations of the formal elements between themselves. Finally, I reduced the colour to a harmony of blacks and greys supported by some flashes of light red which set up a contrast, at once breaking with and supporting the interplay of harmonious colour relations. Nayral came regularly to the studio, I worked directly on him, naturally, but more often than not the work consisted in friendly conversation, in walks in the garden, during which I studied him, watching what was his natural way of walking and what were his usual gestures, above all arming my memory with essential characteristics, trying to isolate his true likeness from the accumulation of details and picturesque superfluities which always interfere with the permanent reality of a being. The portrait was executed without turning to the model, it was finished some weeks before the Automne and I decided to show it... if the jury would be willing to accept it, as I was not yet a member. (Albert Gleizes)
Nayral himself celebrated this collaborative process in his preface to the Cubist exhibition held at the Galerie Dalmau in Barcelona, April - May 1912 (the second Cubist manifestation held outside of Paris): 'You see a portrait in a landscape' wrote Nayral, 'is it simply the reproduction of some lines that permit our eye to recognize a head, clothes, trees? Photography would be sufficient'. Nayral answers the query: 'a thinking human in harmony with the surroundings, in accordance with them', one must 'reveal the concert of all these forms of life that are the thought of this man, the perfume of this flower, the brilliance of this plant, the vibration of this light, this is the task of the artist'. In essence, write Antliff and Leighten in Cubism and Culture, "this synthetic vision was the product of Gleizes's sympathetic response to the expressive acts and physiognomic traits he deemed indicative of the poet's character. Both form and content in the work were the result of Gleizes's mental associations while working from memory.Just before the 1911 Salon d'Automne—Metzinger had already placed the last brushstroke of paint of Tea Time—Gleizes published a major article about Metzinger, within which he argued that 'representation' was fundamental, but that Metzinger's intention was 'to inscribe the total image'. This total image 'combined the evidence of perception with 'a new truth, born from what his intelligence permits him to know'. Such 'intelligent' knowledge, writes the art historian Christopher Green, "was the accumulation of an all-round study of things, and so it was conveyed by the combination of multiple viewpoints in a single image." He continues, "This accumulation of fragmented aspects would be given 'equilibrium' by a geometric, a 'cubic' structure. Metzinger's Tea-time, a work that attracted much attention at the Salon d'Automne of 1911, is like a pictorial demonstration of Gleizes's text. Multiple perspectives and a firm overall geometric structure (almost a grid) take control of a near pornographic subject: 'intelligence' subdues the senses."Reviewing the Cubist room at the Salon d'Automne of 1911 in L'Intransigeant, Apollinaire wrote of Gleizes' Portrait of Jacques Nayral:‘It is a very good likeness, yet in this impressive canvas, there is not one form or color that was not invented by the artist. This portrait has a grandiose appearance that should not escape the notice of connoisseurs.’Nayral was killed in action in December 1914, at the age of thirty-five, in an attack on a German trench near Arras.
Gleizes first learned of the death of his brother-in-law and friend when a postcard on which he had written "Patience, a little more patience, it is impossible that this war can endure much longer... then we will put ourselves back to work..." came back marked "disparu". Gleizes painted two works entitled To Jacques Nayral (A Jacques Nayral) in 1914 and 1917 as an homage to the writer. These are private portraits that signify an intensely personal memorial to his closest friend and key figure who shared the hopes of the pre-war Passy group for an innovative collective artistic program.
Passy group Albert Gleizes Cubism Salon d'Automne Alexandre Mercereau