How We Should Read Apollinaire`s Les Peintres Cubistes

How should we read Apollinaire's Les Peintres cubists?

Les Peintres Cubistes was first published in late 1913 and consists of a compilation of brief studies previously published in various art journals and newspapers between 1905 and 1912. This collated work is split into two distinct sections, Sur la peinture and Peintres nouveaux which are, respectively, descri ptions of the general aesthetic of the contemporary art movement and a treatment of the individual artists to whom Apollinaire attached significance. Braque, a painter dealt with in Les Peintres Cubistes, is reported as saying: "The only value of his book on Cubism is that, far from enlightening people it succeeded in bamboozling them." Certainly Les Peintres Cubistes with its poetic prose crossing disciplines is a montage of juxtaposed elements, which have been collected over a period of several years; naturally this complexity is apparent when reading the text. However, this enables the enduring value of Apollinaire's critique of cubism because of the manner in which we are exposed to Apollinaire's appreciation of the radical and new art of his era and how we must read such a text. The first section of this essay will address the fact that this book should not be read as a manifesto of Cubism, leading into a discussion about Apollinaire's four divisions of Cubism. Subsequently, I shall examine the use and style of language used by Apollinaire and his take on abstraction of subject matter. Finally I will analyse the significance of Picasso and of the other painters dealt with in Les Peintres Cubistes.

The foremost characteristic of Les Peintres Cubistes is, rather its lack of characteristic, in the fact that it is not a manifesto for Cubism, or indeed any particular art form. Whilst reading the text there is the overwhelming sense that Apollinaire wishes to transcend any particular artistic movement or '-ism', and have the authority to give an enduring and universal contribution. Indeed, this wish to address modern art movements in general is apparent in the first sentence when Apollinaire cites "Les vertus plastiques : la pureté, l'unité et la vérité." In the first sentence of his critique, Apollinaire employs his anti-realist stance and shows that his meditation will deal with a broader range of modern art forms than simply cubism because these are the values he considers to be of worth across the modern artistic spectrum. Apollinaire does not specify these "trois vertus" to be of value to one particular art form so the reader is immediately exposed to the universal aesthetic of his critique. Apollinaire wants to set himself up as a commentator on modern art and position himself on a broader spectrum; it was this desire which lead to the controversy over the use of title and sub-title. Apollinaire would have preferred the use of the sub-title Les Mediations Esthétiques, because this would allow him to give more widespread attention to art, not limited to cubism, however it was upon the insistence of his publisher that "les Peintres Cubistes" was selected to be the main title since the publisher considered it to be more contemporary. The reader is exposed to Apollinaire's intention in regard to the choice of title via a statistical survey of the first six chapters, Sur les peinture, in which he does not use the word cubism a single time. The value of art across various forms is articulated throughout however the allusion to cubism is implicit rather than explicit. Indeed, Apollinaire said himself that the book should not be regarded as a popularisation of cubism but rather a meditation. It is imperative that the reader bears this in mind when interpreting the book because it was never intended to, nor does it, address only the cubist movement; rather it moves beyond the limitation of a label or movement, giving the critique a ubiquitous value that engages with the contemporary aesthetic climate. Les Peintres Cubistes seeks meaning in transience and the embodiment of the mobile and unresolved, Apollinaire avoids imposing any fixity on the infinite mobility of the mind and the lack of resolve in his writing is apparent throughout the book. He captures and articulates the dislocation of the mind in a coherent manner "representing thinking in terms of a continually unfolding desire [.] as an incarnation of tautology and speculation." For example Apollinaire asserts that subject matter is no longer of importance, but immediately the reader sees his conscious attenuating as he contradicts himself, saying subject matter must be counted because it is still possible to attest a subject to a title given to a painting. It is this constant technique of juxtaposition and a fusion of diverse images and statements that allows the reader a great personal intimacy with Apollinaire's thought process. To further this use of juxtaposition, Apollinaire's frequent use of the word 'mais' captures the tension that he feels and his lack of resolve, "Mais, on ne découvrira jamais la réalité", (p57) it appears almost as an afterthought to his stance a line before, he continually shows a huge instability in his thought process and his position, constantly capturing the multi-layering and lack of neatness in human experience. Apollinaire aptly captures the variability of the human mind and how we project our changing emotions onto our experiences enabling the reader to track Apollinaire's oscillating thought process. To this affect, the fragmented and aerated structure of the first section, Sur la peinture, enables the reader to see the permeability of the human thought process. To quote Décaudin, "Le livre est ainsi un patchwork aux coutures invisibles, tout l'art de l'auteur consistant à dissimuler les raccords et les points de colle et à gommer les écarts chronologiques." The reader is exposed to the blanks and air that circulates between Apollinaire's thought process, reflecting the instability of human emotion. Therefore as one reads the text and experiences its lack of resolve, one is exposed to a conscious effort to attenuate and reveal the complexity of values and human experience and how our inner experiences project on to our perceptions on art and vacillate from one day to another. An additional point of interest in Apollinaire's style of writing is his artistic use of language and metaphor. Certainly the flamboyant style in which he writes is atypical for the language of an art critique, and he brings his lyrical brilliance into play which is better associated with his poetry. « La flamme est le symbole de la peinture [.] la flamme a la pureté qui ne souffre rien d'étranger et transforme cruellement en elle-même ce qu'elle atteint. » (p54). This imagery is certainly very strong and verging on impassioned, Little aptly describes this passage as being "closer to 'le Brasier' than to traditional art criticism, where metaphor is never allowed to rule so unchallenged." The aesthetic vagueness employed through the wide use of metaphor shows Les Peintres Cubistes to be impressionistic rather than analytical, implicit rather than explicit. The reader becomes aware of a sense of Apollinaire verbalising ideas on behalf of the painters whom he addresses, "Chacune de ses ouvres renferme un jugement sur l'univers et son ouvre entier ressemble au firmament nocturne quand il est pur de tout nuage et qu'il y tremble d'adorables" (p87). He uses his own creative passion as a poet to replicate the abstraction of the painters and to verbalise and enhance the qualities of the paintings, and the reader gets the impression that rather than providing a comprehensive understanding of the contemporary art scene, Apollinaire perceives it innate qualities and then replicates it through his creative and artistic style of writing. Les Peintres Cubistes' style of writing is underlined by tension and lack of resolve. As previously mentioned the book aptly captures the lack of neatness in human experience and emotion. This oscillation appears in Apollinaire's attitude towards to modernity and the pace of life at the beginning of the 20th Century. Apollinaire wants to celebrate modernity, « nouvel homme, le monde est sa nouvelle représentation », (p79), and simultaneously there is never a complete severance with the past. He looks towards the future but the retrospective element of his writing never allows the reader a total release from the past. This temporal tension is evident from early on and can be resumed best in the line "On ne peut pas transporter partour avec soi le cadaver do son père" (p55) One is never wholly free from the past because it is experience which creates us, our multi-layered psyche, and outlook on the world. In an era when Freudian theory was becoming popular, this layering of experience to create an outset not only shows popular contemporary references, but also engages the reader in the manner by which art can affect us differently on a daily basis. Apollinaire does not here describe a seamless and tidy transition from our perception of art to our expression but describes "a process by which the object in perception is replaced and dismantled by the object in expression." In dealing with the process of viewing the new form of art, the reader sees Apollinaire's discovery of difference and the fact that identification disappears into our traces of perception - the entirety of Les Peintres Cubistes is a continuity of lack and the dissolving of past and present categories. Cubism is a fundamental and new art form; it is a radical metamorphosis of the art scene and one of its core vertus, « La verité sera toujours nouvelle » (p57). But previously Apollinaire has contradicted himself on this point, expressing that nothing is entirely new because everything that is new is new only by reference to something that has gone before it, "La racine [.] montre la progression de la pureté" (p55). The temporal contortion displayed in the book means the reader is thrown into a celebration of the future, modernity and all it has to offer, yet the reader is not allowed to simply look forward. You cannot prolong or repeat the past, but neither can you disregard it. There is the constant undulating sense of looking back and appreciating the world from which the contemporary art scene has evolved. A continuation of this theme is the fact that the book speaks to the reader's sense of the unfinished. Les Peintres Cubistes is a radical moment of rupture because Apollinaire is an early commentator on cubism and he significantly breaks away from the previous concept of mimesis in art. Apollinaire drives a form of anti-narrative and evacuation of specificity. He eclipses his subject matter by not mentioning by name the paintings which he writes about, this is very much in the manner of which the painters abstract their subject matter and develop universal values. This in a sense is staying true to the concept of mimesis, from which he consciously attempts to break away, however his writing is far deeper than this and what is perhaps the initial impression. Apollinaire is furthering and enhancing the universal values; as he describes "il y a des poetes auxquels une muse dicte leurs oeuvres" (p77). Les Peintres Cubistes is a non-existent representation of anecdote, Apollinaire invites the reader to be drawn to form rather than theme, he is not trying to capture the nature of early the 20th century society and the art scene, but reduce everything down to its essence and giving the reader empty subject matter to consider. He addresses the experience of painting and painting as a process, he "writes about innovation as intellectual survival, as a confrontation with structures presented by expression itself." He compares cubist painting to music as the purest form of literature since music is pure sound and cubist works are pure artistic sensations. This allows the book to be read as a purer form of literature itself because it seeks to abstract and engage the reader's sense of incompleteness via the evacuation of specificity whilst theme and content is back-grounded and art as a pure process is highlighted away from the restraints of the empirical world. Apollinaire emphasises that cubism and the contemporary art scene is an art in which natural appearances and conceptions play an ever diminishing part. It is the art of creating new structures which do not themselves exist in the visual sphere and have therefore been created entirely by the artist himself. « Un art de conception qui tend à s'élever jusqu'à la création. » (p67) This is in accordance with Apollinaire's desire to treat painting as a process of discovery and articulates his own deep interest in artistic creativity. It additionally is reflected in Apollinaire's choice of artists to include in the second part of Les Peintres Cubistes, he recognises several artists that are experimenting with non-figurative painting, leading to his 'rather desperate juggling' of the names of the representatives for orphic cubism, this includes his treatment of Duchamp, Leger and Picabia. Although their inclusion can be argued to be accurate representations in so far as their use of light of is concerned, his inclusion of Laurencin as a cubist painter, which she is generally considered not to be, once again shows his transcendence of the term cubism. It also accurately depicts how much of his writing in Les Peintres Cubistes is based upon his friendship with the artists and their conversations about the painters' aims. These modulations and variations in discourse once again imply to the reader that the meditation is perceived in Apollinaire's impressions and own opinions. He also highlights the social dimension of the new art form, arguing that the new painters have a duty to show a new take on the art form, the reader can take this to be based on the discussions of the painters' aims, and certainly in the case of Picasso. It is through no coincidence that the second part, Peintres Nouveaux, is opened by Picasso's "art étonnant et dont la lumière est sans limites." (p80) Apollinaire never ceased to be a loyal promoter of Picasso's work. This treatment of the social duty and proclamation of the genius of Picasso - not that many would deny that - gives Les Peintres Cubistes a level of intimacy not associated with art criticism and allows the reader to view the impressionistic analysis almost as a romanticised notion. "The categories into which Apollinaire divides cubism were correspondingly idiosyncratic", indeed their origins can also be found in Apollinaire's own predilections rather than observation and close analysis. Certainly Apollinaire's championing of Picasso, uniquely allows him to contribute to both the main categories of scientific and orphic cubism. Apollinaire attempts to show the reader the differences within Cubism and to show that it is multi-stranded and evolving as an art form rather than a duplication of work that have gone before it. This gives the universal and atemporal qualities that are of such great importance throughout Les Peintres Cubistes.