Focus on this artwork and analyze the Content and form.
A similar concept lies behind Albert Gleizes' portrait of his friend, neo-Symbolist writer Joseph Houot, pen name Jacques Nayral, who in 1912 married Mireille Gleizes, the sister of Albert Gleizes. Along with Metzinger's Tea Time, Gleizes' Portrait of Jacques Nayral, painted the same year, exemplifies ideas and opinions formulated between 1910 and 1911 that would soon be codified in Du "Cubisme"; written in 1912 by Metzinger and Gleizes in preparation for the Salon de la Section d'Or, held in October. Du "Cubisme", published by Eugène Figuière, a close associate of Gleizes' friends Jacques Nayral and Alexandre Mercereau, was an attempt to bring together all the progressive tendencies.According to Gleizes, both the content and form in this painting were the result of mind associations as he completed the work from memory; something that would play a crucial role in the works of other Cubists, such as Fernand Léger, Robert Delaunay and Francis Picabia. More so than an 'objective' view of the real-world, Jacques Nayral valorized subjective experience and expression. He and other Symbolist writers embraced an antirationalist and antipositivist world-view, consistent with concepts that underscored Cubist philosophies. Nayral's interest in philosophy led him to correspond with Henri Bergson, someone who would greatly inspire both Metzinger and Gleizes. Nayral's related interest in avant-garde art led him to purchase Metzinger's large 1912 oil on canvas entitled La Femme au Cheval, also known as Woman with a Horse (Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen). Nayral's association with Gleizes led him to write the Preface for the Cubist exhibition at Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona (April–May 2012)The Neo-Symbolist writers Jacques Nayral and Henri-Martin Barzun associated with the Unanimist movement in poetry. In his capacity as Figuière's editorial assistant Nayral had selected Du "Cubisme" and Les Peintres Cubistes, Méditations Esthétiques as part of a projected series on the arts. These writers and other Symbolists valorized expression and subjective experience over an objective view of the physical world.Paul Cézanne's technique of passage, in the Bergsonian sense, was used by the Cubists to stimulate a presentiment, an awareness of the dynamism of form. "Between sculpturally bold reliefs", wrote Gleizes and Metzinger, "let us throw slender shafts which do not define, but which suggest. Certain forms must remain implicit, so that the mind of the spectator is the chosen place of their concrete birth. Let us also contrive to cut by large restful surfaces any area where activity exaggerated by excessive contiguities.
The dynamism of form resides in the unfolding response of both the artist and viewer to the quantitative and qualitative properties of the Cubist artwork. Metzinger's La Femme au Cheval (Woman with a Horse) (1911-12)—illustrated in Du "Cubisme" and owned by the poet Jacques Nayral—is structured according to these principles. The interplay of volumes, lines and planes has been 'abstracted' from the subject matter and spread throughout the composition. These complex geometric forms serve to 'suggest' the underlying imagery rather than to 'define' the subject, allowing the unity of the picture to be established by the viewer's 'creative intuition'.In this portrait, Gleizes was interested in 'equivalences, echoes, interpenetrations [emboîtements], rhythmic correspondences with the surrounding elements—terrain, trees, houses'. He was delighted to paint a portrait of Nayral because his face corresponded well to the solid, faceted, architectural qualities he had sought.In a departure from the static nature of single-point perspective, in his Nayral portrait, as in Le Chemin, Paysage à Meudon (1911), Gleizes simplifies, interpenetrates volumes, fuses the landscape with the model, to form a homogeneous picture. While volumes point is different directions and the subject is seen from several different angles ('multiple perspective') the observer still sees the entire surface of the canvas, preserving unity.Nayral asked Gleizes to paint his portrait in 1910, a task the artist completed over the course of several months, coming to an end in 1911. For Gleizes, this portrait, much as Metzinger's 'Le goûter (Tea Time), exemplified concepts that were later codified in Du "Cubisme". In his autobiographical notes Gleizes suggests that the theory of intuition propounded in that text may have been pronounced as early as 1910 (during a Proto-Cubist phase).
Symbolists Albert Gleizes avant-garde Paul Cézanne Cubism La Femme au Cheval (Woman with a Horse) Le Chemin, Paysage à Meudon Proto-Cubist Woman with a Horse Du "Cubisme" Robert Delaunay Henri Bergson antipositivist La Femme au Cheval Henri-Martin Barzun Les Peintres Cubistes, Méditations Esthétiques Alexandre Mercereau Section d'Or Le goûter (Tea Time) Francis Picabia Unanimist movement Fernand Léger Galeries Dalmau single-point perspective