The Cubist Painters, Aesthetic Meditations
[3][4][5] Les Peintres Cubistes is illustrated with black and white photographs of works by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Juan Gris, Marie Laurencin, Fernand Léger, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp and Raymond Duchamp-Villon.
When the book went to press, the original title was enclosed in brackets and reduced in size, while the subtitle Les Peintres Cubistes was enlarged, dominating the cover.
[6][7][9] A portion of the text was translated into English and published with several images from the original book in The Little Review: Quarterly Journal of Art and Letters, New York, Autumn 1922.
The first part, "On Painting" (Sur la peinture), is a manifesto for the new art form, consisting of seven chapters (22 pages), of which much of the text was written in 1912 and published in Les Soirées de Paris the same year.
[26][27][28] The second and larger section of the book (53 pages), under the heading "New Painters" (Peintres nouveaux), analyzes the work of ten artists most representative of the movement in the following order: Picasso, Braque, Metzinger, Gleizes, Laurencin, Gris, Léger, Picabia, Duchamp, and in the Appendix, Duchamp-Villon.
In the section on Marie Laurencin, Apollinaire included a text a Henri Rousseau, first published in a review of the 1911 Salon des Indépendants (L'Intransigéant, 10 April 1911).
[28] Included are four reproductions of the works by each artist (with the exception of Rousseau), and portrait photographs of Metzinger, Gleizes, Gris, Picabia, and Duchamp.
[3][4][5] In his analysis of the new art movement, Apollinaire makes a distinction between four different types of Cubism;[7] scientific, physical, orphic and instinctive.
The works of the Orphic artists simultaneously present a pure aesthetic pleasure, a construction to the senses and a sublime meaning.
[31] It came to rely heavily on Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler's book Der Weg zum Kubismus (published in 1920), which centered exclusively on the developments of Picasso, Braque, Léger, and Gris.
"If Kahnweiler considers Cubism as Picasso and Braque," wrote Daniel Robbins, "our only fault is in subjecting other Cubists' works to the rigors of that limited definition.
According to Robbins, "To suggest that merely because these artists developed differently or varied from the traditional pattern they deserved to be relegated to a secondary or satellite role in Cubism is a profound mistake.
[32] Cooper's restrictive use of these terms to distinguish the work of Braque, Picasso, Gris and Léger (to a lesser extent) implied an intentional value judgement, according to Christopher Green.
[25] Apollinaire stressed the importance of what he perceived as virtues of the plastic arts: purity, unity, and truth; all of which would keep "nature in subjection".
This utopian expression stood for the aspiration and premonitions of artists who contemplated Egyptian, African, and oceanic sculptures; who meditated on various scientific works, and who lived "in anticipation of a sublime art".
"[10][28] It was Braque who, at the Salon des Indépendants of 1908, first exhibited to the public works whose geometric preoccupations began to dominate the composition.
[36] Describing Metzinger, Apollinaire claims this 'great painter's work had not yet been fully appreciated, despite the design, composition, the contrasted lights and an overall style'.
[...] Each one of his pictures contains a judgment of the universe and his entire work resembles a nocturnal firmament when it is clear, free from all clouds and trembling with adorable lights.
"[10][28] The works of Gleizes show "powerful harmonies", but Apollinaire warns of confounding his paintings with the "theoretical cubism" of the "scientific painters".
Referring to the writings of Gleizes, Apollinaire cites the will of the artist to "bring back his art to his simplest elements".
"[10][28] The art of Laurencin (and women more generally) brought a "new vision full of the joy of the universe", an "entirely feminine aesthetic" writes Apollinaire.
Apollinaire made clear the great esteem held by the Cubist painters for his works, calling Rousseau the "Inhabitant of Delight".
[10][28] Rousseau had painted two portraits of Apollinaire: "I often watched him at work, and I know the care he gave to the tiniest details; he had the capacity to keep the original and definitive conception of his picture always before him until he had realized it; and he left nothing, above all, nothing essential, to chance.
[38] Apollinaire compares the work of Gris with the "scientific cubism" of Picasso, "his only master", a type of drawing that was geometrical individualized, "a profoundly intellectual art, according to color a merely symbolic significance".
With Albert Gleizes this function is taken by the right angles which retain light, with Fernand Léger by bubbles, with Metzinger by vertical lines, parallel to the sides of the frame cut by infrequent echelons."
Apollinaire hesitated to make any broad generalizations, noting rather Duchamp's apparent talent and his abandoning of "the cult of appearances".
The architect, the engineer should have sublime aims: to build the highest tower, to prepare for time and ivy the most beautiful of ruins, to throw across a harbor or a river an arch more audacious than the rainbow, and finally to compose to a lasting harmony, the most powerful ever imagined by man.
Physical Cubism was supported in the press by the writers listed above, in addition to Roger Allard [fr], Olivier Hourcade, Jean Marchand, Auguste Herbin, and Véra.
Certain artists associated with Instinctive Cubism were supported by Louis Vauxcelles, René Blum (ballet), Adilphe Basler, Gustave Kahn, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, and Michel Puy.
According to Apollinaire this trend included Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, André Derain, Raoul Dufy, Auguste Chabaud, Jean Puy, Kees van Dongen, Gino Severini, and Umberto Boccioni.
