Already, a conscious courage is coming to life.
Here are some of the painters: Picasso, Braque,
Delaunay, Le Fauconnier; they are highly enlightened,
& do not believe in the stability of any system,
even if it were to call itself classical art.
Their reason is poised between the pursuit
of the fleeting and a mania for the eternal.
Quote of Jean Metzinger Note sur la Peinture (1910)
[the Cubist painters who] continued to paint objects motionless, frozen, & all the static aspects of Nature;
they worship the traditionalism of w:Poussin, of w:Ingres, of Corot, ageing & petrifying their art
with an obstinate attachment to the past,
which to our eyes remains totally incomprehensible;
Is it indisputable that several aesthetic
declarations of our French comrades
[the Cubists in Paris] display
a sort of masked academicism.
It is not, indeed, a return to
the Academy to declare that
the subject, in painting, has
a perfectly insignificant value?
To paint from the posing model
as an absurdity, and an act of
mental cowardice, even if the model
be translated upon the picture in linear,
spherical and cubic forms;
Quotes by Boccioni in his text
of 'Les exposants au public' - exh.
Cat. Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, February 1912, pp. 2, 3
Get all the information you can about the Cubists,
& about Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Go to Kahnweilers' art gallery. And if he's got photos of recent works –
produced after I left -,
buy one or two. Bring us the Futurists in Italy,
like Boccioni himself; back all the information you can get.
Quote of Boccioni, in a letter to Gino Severini,
staying in Paris in the Summer of 1911; as quoted in Futurism,
ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou /
5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 27.
We [the Futurists] must smash,
demolish and destroy our traditional harmony,
which makes us fall into a 'gracefullness'
created by timid and sentimental cubs
[this denigrating word refers to the French Cubists].
Quote by Boccioni in his 'Sculptural Manifesto' of 1912;
as quoted in Futurism, ed. By Didier Ottinger;
Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008 Is it indisputable that several aesthetic declarations
of our French comrades the Cubists display a sort of masked
academicism; It is not, indeed, a return to the Academy
to declare that the subject, in painting,
has a perfectly insignificant value?
To paint from the posing model as an absurdity,
& an act of mental cowardice, even if the model
be translated upon the picture in linear,
spherical and cubic forms;
Quote of Boccioni, in 'Les exposants au public' - exh. Cat. Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, February 1912 pp. 2, 3.
The square is not a subconscious form.
It is the creation of intuitive reason. The face of the new art.
The square is a living, regal infant. The first step of pure creation in art.
Quote of Kazimir Malevich,
in 'From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting' (November 1916)
Unless we are to condemn all modern painting,
we must regard cubism as legitimate, for it continues modern methods,
& we should see in it the only conception
of pictorial art now possible.
In other words, at this moment cubism is painting.
Quote of Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger,
in Du "Cubisme", Edition Figuière, Paris, 1912
(First English edition: Cubism, T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1913)
To understand Cézanne is to foresee Cubism.
Henceforth we are justified in saying that
between this school and previous manifestations
there is only a difference of intensity,
& that in order to assure ourselves
of this we have only to study the methods
of this realism, which, departing from the superficial
reality of Courbet, plunges with Cézanne
into profound reality, growing luminous
as it forces the unknowable to retreat.
Quote of Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger,
Du "Cubisme", Edition Figuière, Paris, 1912 (First English edition: Cubism, T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1913)
