Natures Mortes: Portrait de Cézanne, Portrait de Renoir, Portrait de Rembrandt
| Natures Mortes: Portrait de Cézanne, Portrait de Renoir, Portrait de Rembrandt |
|---|
| Francis Picabia , 1920 |
| Toy monkey and ink on cardboard |
| Illustration in the journal Cannibale No. 1
Link to the picture |
Natures Mortes: Portrait de Cézanne, Portrait de Renoir, Portrait de Rembrandt is an assemblage by the French artist Francis Picabia . The plush monkey, which is attached to a cardboard surface, is framed by ink lettering that identifies the monkey as a portrait of three famous painters at the same time: Paul Cézanne , Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Rembrandt van Rijn . The work was shown to a public audience for the first time on March 27, 1920 at the Maison de l'Oeuvre in Paris as part of a ceremony to mark the publication of a Dada manifesto and is now only preserved as a photographic representation.
description
The four sides that frame the plush or toy monkey affixed in the middle are all provided with lettering in capital letters , which look as if they were written spontaneously by hand on the cardboard. They form the visual and thematic framework of the work at the same time: because they identify the monkey as a portrait of three old masters of painting: Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Rembrandt van Rijn. In addition, the lettering at the bottom seems to indicate the genre of the work, insofar as “Nature_morte Natures Mortes” is the plural for still life in French .
The toy monkey has pulled its own tail through its legs and stretches it out towards the viewer while raising its other arm in the air. As a commercial product, which is the toy monkey, its facial features are only carelessly worked out. It may come from the fact that he seems to be grinning slightly deranged, which gives him a provocative-obscene, but at the same time comical effect.
interpretation
The work can be understood as a satire and corruption of established art, more precisely of painting. The three famous painters Cézanne, Renoir and Rembrandt can be regarded as outstanding representatives of the art that Picabia rejects: the mimetic art, which is solely dedicated to the imitation of nature. Just like his friend Marcel Duchamp , he saw this art as a kind of craftsmanship, because you have to rely on your own painting skills, but not on real creativity, to practice it. Against this background, the provocative function of the chimpanzee in Picabia's work becomes apparent: By identifying him with the three painter icons, it should be implied that these are nothing more than monkeys that would only “ape” nature - just like the instinct-guided one Monkey tries to imitate humans.
Francis Picabia goes one step further when he lets the monkey hold his tail in his hand and use it to perform a clearly obscene gesture. The association with masturbation is obvious - especially when you consider that cock means “queue” in French and is a slang word for penis. The gesture can be interpreted as a cynical comment by Picabia, with which he suggested that the mimetic painter always remains self-referential, insofar as he is only concerned with exercising and representing his own ingenious abilities. The French title “Natures Mortes” with its death connotation (“Dead Nature”) alludes to the fact that the time of this art is now over.
The artist's intention is not only made clear by the text and gestures inherent in the image, but also by the use of the materials and their crude design. The deliberately negligent and rough aesthetics and the use of a toy monkey bought by Picabia himself as a ready-made point to an inheritance of this art with new means and forms of expression. Instead of an emphatically artificial, "smooth" design, there is a new aesthetic that refuses the traditional norm of beauty and uses mundane everyday objects. The presentation of the work on the occasion of a Dada manifesto, which proclaimed a new understanding of art by satirising the art of the old masters, fits in with such a programmatic interpretation.
In his assemblage, Piacabia plays with the old catchphrase of art as imitator of nature ( Ars simia naturae ), as the authors of emblem books or painters such as Chardin or Watteau have already varied before him, and basically up to Aristotle's sentence Ars naturam imitation goes back.
In this sense, Picabia's work can be viewed as both satire and swan song for traditional painting, and it is then to be understood as a work of the anti-art movement.
literature
- Baker, George (2007): The Artwork Caught by the Tail. Francis Picabia and Dada in Paris . Cambridge: The MIT Press.
- Kuspit, Donald (2008): A Critical History of 20th-Century Art . Stony Brook: Art Department, State University of New York.
Individual evidence
- ^ Baker, George (2007): The Artwork Caught by the Tail, p. 101.
- ↑ The three question marks. In: sueddeutsche.de. May 17, 2010, accessed September 25, 2018 .
- ↑ "In France there is an old saying, 'stupid like a painter' [...]" This appropriate quote from Duchamp can be found here: Archived copy ( Memento from December 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Baker, George (2007): The Artwork Caught by the Tail, p. 100.
- ↑ Art imitates nature . Aristotle, Physics, 2.2.194
- ↑ Hope B. Werness: The Continuum Encyclopedia of Animal Symbolism in Art. New York 2006. p. 282.
- ^ Anti-art