Focus on this artwork and explain the Symbolism and interpretations.
In The Introduction to Metaphysics (1903) Henri Bergson described in his theory of images how uniting a collection of disparate images acts on the consciousness and intuition, creating an alogical disposition. The Symbolist poet Tancrède de Visan, who prior to 1904 and some time leading up to 1911 attended the lectures of Bergson at the College de France, met regularly with the Cubists at the poet Paul Fort's soirees at the fashionable La Closerie des Lilas. He related Bergson's notion of 'accumulated successive images' to the writings of Maurice Maeterlinck circa 1907, and in 1910 advocated the technique in Vers et Prose.In Note su la peinture of the same year Metzinger argues that Delaunay's Tour Eiffel combines several different views captured throughout the day in one image. 'Intuitive, Delaunay has defined intuition as the brusque deflagration of all the reasonings accumulated each day'. The following year, in Cubisme et Tradition (1911) Metzinger writes of the immobility of paintings of the past, and that now, artists permit themselves the liberty of 'moving around the object to give, under the control of intelligence, a concrete representation derived from several successive aspects.' He continues, 'The painting possesses space, and now it also reigns in the duration' ["voilà qu'il règne aussi dans la durée"]., With motion and time, intuition and consciousness, Metzinger could now claim his art had moved closer to nature, closer to a true, yet subjective, reality.
Parallel to the theories of Bergson, embraced by Metzinger, Gleizes and other members of the Section d'Or, Maeterlinck's ideas became of interest. Bolstered by mathematics, Reimannian geometry, and new discoveries in science that revealed existence of unseen realms (such as X-rays), and attracted to the concept of extra dimension (in addition the three spatial dimensions: the fourth dimension), Metzinger likely responded positively to Maeterlinck's popular stage play The Blue Bird (written in 1908), finding in it, perhaps, the analogy to the Cubist quest for higher realities.
Maeterlinck’s play, The Blue Bird, premiered in Moscow in 1908, New York 1910, and on 2 March 1911 the play premiered in Paris at the Théâtre Réjane (owned and run by the French actress Réjane from 1906 to 1918). The play subsequently was adapted to several films titled The Blue Bird. The French composer Albert Wolff wrote an opera (first performed at the N.Y. Metropolitan, 27 December 1919, in the presence of Maeterlinck) based on Maeterlinck's original 1908 play. Due to the early popularity of the play and Metzinger's various interests in science and Symbolism, and as his 1913 painting bears the same name as the play, it is relatively safe to assume that Metzinger was familiar with the work of Maeterlinck.
Edward Fry commented in Cubism that Metzinger's L’Oiseau bleu has "no significant connection with Maeterlinck’s 1910 play of the same name" may not be entirely justified. Aside from the presence of the blue bird (The Blue Bird of Happiness in Maeterlinck's play) there is no iconographic evidence relating to the painting to the play, but at the very least a connection between Maeterlinck and Symbolism, with Bergson and Cubism, has been established through Tancrede de Visan.
"The Cubists also found support in Maeterlinck for their ideas regarding successive images and simultaneity. Contemporary critics like Visan recognized the parallel between Bergson and Maeterlinck, claiming that Maeterlinck had anticipated Bergson’s technique of successive images in Serres chaudes. While Bergson argued that the artist must induce an alogical state in the beholder by juxtaposing images as disparate as possible to enable the spectator to reconstruct his or her original intuition, Maeterlinck took the same approach in Serres chaudes, according to Visan. Furthermore, Maeterlinck used words and gestures in unusual ways and placed them in strange contexts with the same aim in mind. Maeterlinck’s highly popular L’Oiseau bleu and other writings, including Le temple enseveli, espoused a continuity of time previously suggested by Bergson. In addition, the faceted diamond of L’Oiseau bleu not only gave the children "true sight" that closely mimicked the X-ray, but also allowed them to perceive distant times and places. Clearly responding the play, Metzinger, in his painting of the same name, breaks the objects into facets and reveals a simultaneous view of places separated by great distance. Just as Poincaré advocated that a combination of multiple perspectives could represent a higher-dimensional object, Metzinger must have seen a parallel with Maeterlinck’s diamond—a faceted object that revealed higher reality". (Laura Kathleen Valeri, 2011)
LIGHT: "We are in the Kingdom of the Future," said Light, a character in Meaterlinck's play, "in the midst of the children who are not yet born. As the diamond allows us to see clearly in this region which is hidden from men, we shall perhaps find the Blue Bird here..."THE FAIRY: (Pointing to the diamond) "When you hold it like this, do you see?… One little turn more and you behold the past…. Another little turn and you behold the future…"LIGHT: "We are in the Kingdom of the Future, in the midst of the children who are not yet born. As the diamond allows us to see clearly in this region which is hidden from men, we shall very probably find the Blue Bird here..."The enchanted diamond in The Blue Bird, when turned, has the virtue of setting free the spirits temporarily, a diamond " which opens your eyes" and "makes people see", even "the inside of things".The same year that he painted L’Oiseau bleu Metzinger wrote: 'We will not consider the forms as signs of an idea, but as living portions of the universe.' (1913)Guillaume Apollinaire, in a poem written in 1907 entitled La Tzigane, writes of a blue bird: "Et l'oiseau bleu perdit ses plumes Et les mendiants leurs Avé". He does so again in 1908 in another poem, entitled Fiançailles: "Le printemps laisse errer les fiancés parjures, Et laisse feuilloler longtemps les plumes bleues, Que secoue le cyprès où niche l'oiseau bleu". And yet again, this time in 1918, in Un oiseau chante: Moi seul l'oiseau bleu s'égosille, Oiseau bleu comme le coeur bleu, De mon amour au coeur céleste".The Blue Bird is also 1910 silent film, based on the play by Maurice Maeterlinck and starring Pauline Gilmer as Mytyl and Olive Walter as Tytyl. It was filmed in England. The original Broadway production of The Blue Bird or L'Oiseau Bleu by Maurice Maeterlinck opened at the New Theatre in New York (followed by the Majestic Theater) on October 1, 1910, and closed on January 21, 1911. Revivals were produced in 1911 and 1924.
fashion Prose Guillaume Apollinaire Paul Fort multiple perspective Albert Wolff Réjane war Cubism Tancrède de Visan blue bird Symbolist Henri Bergson Paris Section d'Or fourth dimension The Blue Bird Maurice Maeterlinck La Closerie des Lilas