Man on a Balcony
Man on a Balcony (also known as Portrait of Dr. Théo Morinaud and 'L'Homme au balcon), is a large oil painting created in 1912 by the French artist, theorist and writer Albert Gleizes (1881–1953). The painting was exhibited in Paris at the Salon d'Automne of 1912 (no. 689). The Cubist contribution to the salon created a controversy in the French Parliament about the use of public funds to provide the venue for such 'barbaric art'. Gleizes was a founder of Cubism, and demonstrates the principles of the movement in this monumental painting (over six feet tall) with its projecting planes and fragmented lines.[1] The large size of the painting reflects Gleizes's ambition to show it in the large annual salon exhibitions in Paris, where he was able with others of his entourage to bring Cubism to wider audiences.[2][3]
Man on a Balcony
1912
Oil on canvas
195.6 cm × 114.9 cm (77 in × 45.25 in)
In February 1913, Gleizes and other artists introduced the new style of modern art known as Cubism to an American audience at the Armory Show in New York City, Chicago and Boston. In addition to Man on a balcony (no. 196), Gleizes exhibited his 1910 painting Femme aux Phlox (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston).[4][5]
Man on a Balcony was reproduced in L'Excelsior, Au Salon d'Automne, Les Indépendants, 2 October 1912. It was then reproduced in Les Peintres Cubistes, Méditations Esthétiques, a collection of essays by Guillaume Apollinaire published in 1913[6][7] The painting was completed around the same time as Albert Gleizes co-authored with Jean Metzinger a major treatise titled Du "Cubisme" (the first and only manifesto on Cubism). Man on a Balcony was purchased at the 1913 Armory Show by the lawyer, author, art critic, private art collector, and American proponent of Cubism Arthur Jerome Eddy for $540. Gleizes' Man on a Balcony was the frontispiece of Arthur Jerome Eddy's book Cubists and Post-Impressionism, March 1914.[8] The painting later formed part of the Louise and Walter Conrad Arensberg Collection, 1950. It is currently in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The Salon d'Automne of 1912, held in Paris at the Grand Palais from 1 October to 8 November, saw the Cubists (listed below) regrouped into the same room XI. For the occasion, Danseuse au café was reproduced in a photograph published in an article entitled Au Salon d'Automne "Les Indépendants" in the French newspaper Excelsior, 2 Octobre 1912.[18] Excelsior was the first publication to privilege photographic illustrations in the treatment of news media; shooting photographs and publishing images in order to tell news stories. As such L'Excelsior was a pioneer of photojournalism.
The history of the Salon d'Automne is marked by two important dates: 1905, bore witness to the birth of Fauvism (with the participation of Metzinger), and 1912, the xenophobe and anti-modernist quarrel (with the participation of both Metzinger and Gleizes). The 1912 polemic leveled against both the French and non-French avant-garde artists originated in Salle XI where the Cubists exhibited their works. The resistance to avant-garde artists and foreigners (dubbed "apaches") was just the visible face of a more profound crises: that of defining modern French art, centered in Paris, and the dwindling of an artistic system crystallized around the heritage of Impressionism. Burgeoning was a new avant-garde system, the international logic of which—mercantile and médiatique—put into question the modern ideology elaborated upon since the late 19th century. What had begun as a question of aesthetics quickly turned political, and as in the 1905 Salon d'Automne, with his infamous "Donatello chez les fauves", the critic Louis Vauxcelles (Les Arts..., 1912) was most implicated in the deliberations. It was Vauxcelles who, on the occasion of the 1910 Salon des Indépendants, wrote disparagingly of 'pallid' cubes with reference to the paintings of Metzinger, Gleizes, Le Fauconnier, Léger and Delaunay.[19]
On 3 December 1912 the polemic reached the Chambre des députés and was debated at the Assemblée Nationale in Paris.[20][21]
This exhibition also featured La Maison cubiste. Raymond Duchamp-Villon designed facade of a 10 meter by 3 meter house, which included a hall, a living room and a bedroom. This installation was placed in the Art Décoratif section of the Salon d'Automne. The major contributors were André Mare, a decorative designer, Roger de La Fresnaye, Jacques Villon and Marie Laurencin. In the house were hung cubist paintings by Marcel Duchamp, Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger, Roger de La Fresnaye, and Jean Metzinger (Woman with a Fan, 1912). Though in the Deco section of the Parisian salon, the installation would soon find its way into the Cubist room at the 1913 Armory Show in New York City.