Why I chose Jacques Villon as pseudonym (part 2)
Keywords: analytical cubism, cubist, jacques villon, marcel duchamp, 20th century, painting, prints,
philadelphia museum of art, avant garde, paris, picasso, french, futurism, expressionism
Jacques Villon
The Duchamp brothers: Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon and Raymond Duchamp-Villon
"Jacques Villon (born Gaston Emile Duchamp, 1875-1963) was the elder half-brother of Marcel Duchamp, painter, sculptor and author (1887-1968), Raymond Duchamp-Villon, sculptor (1876-1918) and Suzanne Duchamp, painter (1889-1963). He learned intaglio printmaking from his grandfather, Emile Nicolle. After studying law he settled in Paris in 1894, where he worked in Cormon's studio and earned his living as a draughtsman. To distinguish himself from his other siblings, Gaston Duchamp adopted the pseudonym of Jacques Villon as a tribute to the great French medieval poet François Villon.
"In 1906 he moved to Puteaux in the quiet outskirts of Paris. He became more interested in painting, and during the next five years took his lead from Degas and the Fauves. However, his isolation from the vibrant art community in Montmartre where he lived before, together with his modest nature, ensured that he and his artwork remained relatively obscure for a number of years. In 1907, under the influence of his brother Raymond, he began to simplify dramatically the forms and figures in his prints, working in drypoint - a technique that created dark, velvety lines that stood out against the white of the paper. Then, in 1911, he embraced Analytical Cubism, which satisfied his need for order and discipline. Subsequently, he tried to develop a new style of painting based on mathematical proportions corresponding to the Golden Section3. In the early 1910s, Villon and a group of artists met regularly in his studio in Puteaux to discuss artistic and literary principles that would inspire the development of their unique brand of Cubism.
"In 1913, he created, in rapid succession, his greatest Cubist masterpieces: seven large drypoints in which forms were broken into shaded pyramidal planes. That year, he exhibited at the famous Armory Show in New York City that helped introduce European modern art to the United States. His works proved popular and all his paintings sold. From there, his reputation expanded so that by the 1930s he was actually better known in the United States than in Europe.
"Later, between 1919 and 1929, he painted abstracts, in which he sought to represent the essence of objects by means of signs and not properties. After this abstract phase Villon reverted, in 1933, to natural forms and pure colours. In 1950, Villon received the Carnegie Prize in Pittsburgh, the highest award in the world of painting. Around this time he stopped painting landscapes and figure compositions, and evolved a new and carefully thought-out form of abstract painting, for which he used cool colours.
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The Horse |
Anger |
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The Philosopher |
The Bird |
"Among Villon's greatest achievements as a printmaker was his creation of a purely graphic language for Cubism -- an accomplishment that no other printmaker, including Braque and Picasso, could claim."4
The only book I was able to track down that is currently in print about the work of Jacques Villon is a book titled Jacques Villon and His Cubist Prints by Innis Howe Shoemaker, published and sold by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.5 "'As the world's most important repository of the work of Marcel Duchamp, the Museum has long dreamed of expanding its collection of work by his brother, Jacques Villon,' said Innis Howe Shoemaker, The Audrey and William H. Helfand Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs. 'This gift from the Rothschild Foundation, presented in honour of the 125th anniversary, now makes the Museum one of the greatest public collections of Villon's Cubist prints.'"6
Further links to web sites related to Villon's life and work.
Cubism
"Cubism was an avant-garde7 art movement that revolutionised European painting and sculpture in the early 20th century. The essence of cubism is that instead of viewing subjects from a single, fixed angle, the artist breaks them up into a multiplicity of facets, so that several different aspects/faces of the subject can be seen simultaneously.
"It began in 1906 with two artists - Georges Braque (French) and Pablo Picasso (Spanish) -- who were living in the Montmartre Quarter of Paris, France. The term "cubism" was first used by the French art critic Louis Vauxcelles in 1908. ("bizarre cubiques" = cubes). Picasso and Braque were great innovative artists in search of new ways to express space and form in painting. They were influenced by Paul Cezanne, African tribal art and Iberian sculpture. First they worked alongside one another and then started to work hand in hand to further advance their concepts into what was later termed analytical cubism (autumn 1909 - winter 1911/1912), a style in which densely patterned near-monochrome surfaces of incomplete directional lines and modelled forms constantly play against one another.
"The second phase of Cubism was called synthetic cubism. These works of art were composed of distinct superimposed parts - painted or often pasted onto the canvas.
"Cubism had a major impact on artists of the first decades of the 20th century and it gave rise to development of new trends in art like: futurism8, constructivism9 and expressionism.10 It remains one of the most famous art forms today."11
[3] Please follow the links about the Golden Section on my page on Mysticism in Mathematics.
[4] Adapted from www.masterworksfineart.com/inventory/villon.htm, www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Villon and Jacques Villon, Poet of Precision: A New Acquisition in Context, Philadelphia Museum of Art. www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/exhibits/villon.shtml
[5] Buy this book at store.yahoo.com/pma-store/jacvilandhis.html.
[6] Jacques Villon, Poet of Precision: A New Acquisition in Context, Philadelphia Museum of Art.
[7] Avant garde (literally, vanguard) is a French language phrase, used to refer to persons or actions that are novel or experimental, particularly with respect to the arts. See for example: dadaism, cubism, futurism, lettrism, paradoxism, outer-art, etc. I will discuss the symbolism of these and other art forms in a future article.
[8] Futurism was a 20th Century art movement begun around 1909 by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and others. The Futurists explored every medium of art, from painting and sculpture to poetry and theatre. The painter and sculptor Umberto Boccioni wrote the Manifesto of Futurist Painters in 1910 in which he vowed: We will fight with all our might the fanatical, senseless and snobbish religion of the past, a religion encouraged by the vicious existence of museums. We rebel against that spineless worshipping of old canvases, old statues and old bric-a-brac, against everything which is filthy and worm-ridden and corroded by time. We consider the habitual contempt for everything which is young, new and burning with life to be unjust and even criminal. The Futurists' glorification of modern warfare as the ultimate artistic expression and their intense nationalism allowed those who survived World War I to embrace Italian fascism. Nonetheless, their artistic works inspired other artists like Marcel Duchamp. www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism_(art)
[9] Constructivism was an artistic movement in Russia from 1914 onward in favour of "pure" art with no social function which used designs influenced by, and materials used in, industry.
[10] Expressionism is, generally speaking, a tendency in any art form to distort reality for emotional effect. Additionally, the term often implies emotional angst - the number of cheerful expressionist works is relatively small. In music, Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg both wrote pieces described as expressionist.
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