SEPTEMBER 28, 2007 – JANUARY 28, 2008

A House of Cards: Picasso & Cubism celebrates the acquisition of Pablo Picasso’s drypoint Nature morte à la bouteille de Marc (Still Life with a Bottle of Marc), 1911, a work widely considered to be the artist’s most important Cubist print. This beautiful and richly-printed impression was formerly in the collection of the artist before it passed at his death to Marina Picasso, his granddaughter. This exhibition also offers a rare opportunity to view Picasso’s Nature morte à la bouteille de Marc side by side with its companion work, Georges Braque’s drypoint, Fox, 1911, thanks to a generous loan from the Saint Louis Art Museum. Both Picasso’s and Braque’s prints were commissioned by their dealer, Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler, as companion works. The two artists created the printing plates for these two prints during the summer of 1911. The plates were printed by the Parisian printer, Eugène Delâtre, in editions of 100 impressions and published by Kahnweiler in 1912. The impressions of Picasso’s and Braque’s prints in this exhibition are from the Kahnweiler 1912 edition, the only edition of the prints.

Cubist sculptures, paintings, and works on paper by Picasso and Braque’s contemporaries Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Henri Laurens, Alexander Archipenko, Albert Gleizes, Juan Gris, Olga Rozanova, Natalia Gontcharova, Varvara Stepanova, Lionel Feininger, John Storrs, Agnes Weinrich, and John Marin from the Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections are also included in A House of Cards: Picasso & Cubism.

This essay does not attempt to define the various branches or phases of Cubism nor summarize the important contributions of other artists of the Cubist movement. It explores the relationships between Picasso, Braque, Kahnweiler, and poet Guillaume Apollinaire. It relates the circumstances of the creation of the two prints and discusses the possible meanings of these images.

A house of cards is a fragile and precarious structure. It can be blown down or knocked over by a careless hand. Seventeenth-century Dutch and French still life painters used the image of a house of cards, along with smoke, soap bubbles, and fading flowers, as a symbol of the transitory nature of life. When the French painter Jean-Simeon Chardin (1699–1779) painted his magical painting of a boy building A House of Cards, 1736 (National Gallery of Art, London), he did this in full knowledge of its traditional symbolic meaning. By the late 19th century, the genre of still life painting had become largely devoid of traditional iconographic significance. Nevertheless, the symbolic traditions and conventions of European still life painting connected the work of Chardin to Paul Cezanne (1839–1906), and through him to Picasso and Braque.

The exhibition’s title, A House of Cards, evokes the iconographic significance of a house of cards and suggests some other ways of looking at the exhibition as well. Many Cubist images created around 1911, with their tumbling planes and facets, resemble a collapsing house of cards. Playing cards are important elements in Picasso’s Nature morte à la bouteille de Marc and Braque’s Fox. Cubist artists often depicted images of playing cards in their still life paintings and prints, for the cards’ formal qualities of flatness as well as for their symbolism. Further, several of the Russian avant-garde artists included in this exhibition were members of a Moscow artists’ group named the Jack of Diamonds. And finally, the house of cards can stand for the five-hundred-year-old European tradition of illusionistic painting that was blown to bits by Cubist artists.

Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque first met in 1907 in Paris. That year, Braque had seen the works of Paul Cezanne at the memorial exhibition for the recently-deceased painter and was impelled to pursue the increasingly abstract implications of Cezanne’s art, expressed by his statement that all forms in nature could be reduced to the cylinder, cone, and sphere. Picasso, on the other hand, approached abstraction from the direction of primitivism and his discovery of African art. Also in 1907, Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler (1881–1979), a young German stockbroker living in Paris, opened his own gallery and became Picasso and Braque’s dealer. Kahnweiler introduced Braque to the poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918). Apollinaire brought Braque to visit Picasso’s studio in Montmartre, where together they viewed Picasso’s recently completed painting, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907 (Museum of Modern Art, New York). Picasso and Braque realized they shared many radical ideas about painting. As their friendship progressed, they embarked together on an audacious adventure, resulting in a radical rethinking of painting. In an often-quoted remark, Braque later recalled that, “We were like two mountain climbers roped together.” Their discoveries were to alter the course of twentieth-century art. The poet wrote the introduction to the catalogue of Braque’s first exhibition that year at Kahnweiler’s gallery. (It was in writing about this exhibition that the critic Louis Vauxcelles coined the term “Cubisme” to disparage Braque’s work).

Kahnweiler recognized Picasso’s and Braque’s importance. He provided them with stipends that allowed them to paint. His support freed them from the necessity to show their works in the annual official exhibitions, such as the Salon des Independents and the Salon d’Autumne. Kahnweiler made some of the earliest sales of Cubist art to collectors, including American expatriates Leo and Gertrude Stein and Moscow businessmen Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov. Kahnweiler pioneered the use of photography to document the works that he sold. The Kahnweiler photographs helped spread early knowledge of Cubist style to the rest of Europe, America, and Russia, where the avant-garde artists of the Jack of Diamonds group, including Natalia Gontcharova and Olga Rozanova, saw them. In 1913, Kahnweiler sent works by Picasso to New York’s Armory Show, the first comprehensive presentation of radical modern art in America. Other artists in A House of Cards whom Kahnweiler promoted were Juan Gris, Albert Gleizes, and Henri Laurens, whose sculpture La Joueuse de Guitare, 1919, was in the dealer’s personal collection.

In 1911, Kahnweiler commissioned Picasso and Braque to make the two large drypoints that are the focus of this exhibition. By this time, both artists were already experienced printmakers and Kahnweiler had published several prints and artist-illustrated books. Picasso had previously made at least twenty prints, including his Saltimbanque series of drypoints and etchings of 1904–05 and an unpublished proto-Cubist etching. By 1907, Picasso had even acquired his own etching press. In 1909, Kahnweiler published a few of Picasso and Braque’s Cubist drypoints. That same year, the dealer published Guillaume Apollinaire’s L’Enchanteur Pourissant, illustrated with 32 original woodcuts by André Derain (1880–1954). The following year, Kahnweiler published the poet Max Jacob’s (1876–1944), Saint Matorel, 1910, containing four original etchings by Picasso.

Picasso and Braque spent the late summer of 1911 vacationing together in Céret, a town in the foothills of the Pyrenees in the south of France. During the last three weeks of August through the first days of September, they worked on the two printing plates for Kahnweiler. Picasso returned to Paris on September 5, 1911. On September 7, Guillaume Apollinaire was arrested in connection with the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. Picasso was also brought in for questioning because earlier that year he had purchased two stone sculptures that turned out to have been stolen from the Louvre. That autumn, printer Eugène Delâtre (1864–1938) pulled a few trial proof impressions. He then steel-faced the printing plates to reinforce the burr of the drypoint line which permits the plates to withstand the pressure of printing without loss of line quality. The tiny holes, drilled so that the copper plates could be dipped into an ionized solution for steel-facing by electrolysis, are visible in the impressions. The Kahnweiler-published, 1912 editions printed by Delâtre in 100 impressions each are the only published editions of these prints. The present location of the printing plates is unknown.

Picasso’s Nature morte à la bouteille de Marc and Braque’s Fox document a moment when the two artists truly shared a visual language. The two prints were made during the early phase of Cubism that came to be known as Analytical Cubism. Seen side by side, they are astonishingly similar, with the same sense of fragmentation and instability. Both depict bottles and cards on a table in a café. Solid forms are only partially outlined, appearing fragmented and flattened. Planes overlap, merge, pass through each other, and become one with the surrounding space. The viewer’s point of view is constantly shifting, now looking down, now straight ahead. Shading is incomplete and does not describe form.

Drypoints are made by scratching a design into a copper plate with a sharpened tool called a drypoint needle or scriber. As the tool gouges into the metal, it cuts a furrow but also leaves a metal burr. Both the furrow and the burr hold ink, so the resulting printed line can appear velvety or fuzzy. Picasso and Braque drew on their plates in a manner that emphasized the scratchy, burred drypoint lines. These marks insistently remain lines, refusing to resolve into the clear contours and surfaces of fully delineated objects.

In 1911, Picasso and Braque began to write letters, words, and numbers in their works. Although lettering had a formal function of reinforcing the pictorial flatness they sought at the expense of illusionistic depth, these words and numbers had a symbolic function. They slyly alluded to people, places and things in Picasso and Braque’s world.

Picasso’s print depicts a table covered with playing cards and bottles, one with the words “E VIE MARC.” The bottle contains eau-de-vie Vieux Marc (Old Marc). In 1912–14, Picasso painted works that contain bottles clearly labeled Vieux Marc. Marc is a clear, distilled, high-alcohol content brandy made from the solid mass of skins, stems, and pulp left over after grapes are pressed. Vieux Marc is aged marc. Eau-de-vie marc is an apt symbol for pictorial abstraction, which is, after all, the distillation of images into an essence.

Several Picasso scholars have said that the partially-seen words “(d)e vie(ux) Marc” may be a sly reference to Marcelle Humbert (1885–1915), who was also known as Éva Gouel, for whom, by the end of 1911, Picasso would leave his longtime mistress, Fernande Olivier (1881–1966). Other writers have speculated that the bottle of marc may be an allusion to Alcools, Guillaume Apollinaire’s collection of poems (including one dedicated to Picasso), that had the working title, Eau de Vie. In the poem Zone, Apollinaire wrote: À la fin tu es las de ce monde ancien (You are weary at last of this ancient world) and further, Et tu bois cet alcool brûlant comme ta vie. Ta vie que tu bois comme une eau-de-vie (You sip a liquor as burning as your life. Your life that you drain like an eau-de-vie.)

The heart, diamond, and club cards in Picasso’s print may also have symbolic meaning. The one fully-shaded card, the ace of hearts, may be a reference to Marcelle or Éva, Picasso’s new love. He omitted the spade, which can signify death.

Braque made his drypoint on a slightly larger plate than Picasso’s. The word Fox is the name of the bar, located at 26 rue d’Amsterdam in Paris, which was patronized by Apollinaire and his friends. In Braque’s print, the cards and a bottle of Old Tom gin are arranged on a table, of which the forward edge and the knob of a drawer are recognizable. A slip of paper, a number written on it, lies on a dish. Fragments of words, lines, and shapes such as the step-like forms in the upper right only occasionally resolve themselves into identifiable images. The vertical and horizontal intersections may indicate the backs of chairs. In 1911, Braque based an oil painting (Kunstmuseum, Bern) on the composition of this drypoint. Both images are in the same direction. Had the painting preceded the drypoint, the print would have reversed the image.

The creative relationship of Picasso, Braque, Kahnweiler, and Apollinaire was only to last a few years longer. In 1912–14, Kahnweiler published several new prints by Picasso and he commissioned several prints by Braque. But of Braque’s Cubist prints, only Fox and another work, Job, 1911, were printed and published in contemporary editions. Braque departed for military service in August, 1914. He suffered a head wound during the war and did not paint again until around 1917. Apollinaire died in 1918 from the Spanish Influenza pandemic. During the First World War, Kahnweiler, a German national, took refuge in Switzerland. He essentially abandoned his gallery stock, much of which was damaged by dampness. The French government seized the art works as enemy property, and these were sold at four auctions held after the war. Picasso, angered by the fact that Kahnweiler had failed to protect his works or to place them with French dealers, dismissed him as his dealer. The two were not reconciled until after World War II. In a final collaboration in 1921, Kahnweiler published a color lithograph by Braque. Braque ended up with eight of the printing plates that he made from 1909–1912 but these were only rediscovered in 1948 in his studio. His Cubist plates, originally commissioned by Kahnweiler, were eventually printed by Georges Visat and published by Galerie Maeght between the years 1950–1954.

Picasso’s Nature morte à la bouteille de Marc and Braque’s Fox are fully-realized Cubist visions expressed in the aggressive and immediate graphic language of drypoint. The two prints capture a fleeting moment in the artists’ lives and their tumultuous world. They distill the essence of the radically creative years before the house of cards — old Europe, Apollinaire’s ce monde ancien — came crashing down.

Amy N. Worthen, Curator of Prints

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Des Moines Art Center thanks the following individuals for their valuable contributions to this exhibition:
Brent Benjamin, Director, the Saint Louis Museum of Art, and Francesca Herndon-Consagra, Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, who suggested and facilitated the loan of Braque’s Fox; Tom Rassieur, Curator of Prints and Drawings, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Charles Young. The Art Center is very grateful to the Des Moines Art Center Print Club for providing the funds to support the production of this gallery guide.

About Print Club

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Burt Waller and Donna Stein, The Cubist Print. University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1981.

Brigitte Baer, Picasso The Printmaker: Graphics from the Marina Picasso Collection. Dallas Museum of Art, 1983.

EXHIBITION CHECKLIST

(works are listed in chronological order)

Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973)
Nature morte à la bouteille de Marc, 1911
(Printed by Delâtre; Kahnweiler edition of 100,
1912, after steel-facing).
Bloch 24; Geiser 33b; Baer 7
Drypoint on Arches paper, signed and
numbered 39/100
Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections;
Purchased with funds from the Mildred M.
Bohen Deaccessioning Fund, 2006.17

Georges Braque (French, 1882–1963)
Fox, 1911 (Printed by Delâtre; Kahnweiler edition
of 100, 1912, after steel-facing). Engelberts 5
Drypoint on Arches paper, signed and
numbered 47/100
Loaned by the Saint Louis Art Museum,
The Sidney S. and Sadie Cohen Print Purchase
Fund, 140:1965

Olga Rozanova (Russian, 1881–1962) and
Alexei Kruchenykh (Russian, 1886–1968)
Untitled, from A Duck’s Nest of Bad Words,
1913–14
Lithograph with hand-coloring on paper
Des Moines Art Center’s Louise Noun Collection
of Art by Women, 1991.44.14

Olga Rozanova (Russian, 1881–1962) and
Alexei Kruchenykh (Russian, 1886–1968)
Untitled, from A Duck’s Nest of Bad Words,
1913–14
Lithograph with hand-coloring on paper
Des Moines Art Center’s Louise Noun Collection
of Art by Women, 1991.44.16

Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876–1918)
Tête de Cheval (Horse Head), 1914
(posthumous cast)
Bronze
Nathan Emory Coffin Collection of the
Des Moines Art Center; Purchased with funds
from the Coffin Fine Arts Trust. 1967.1

Alexander Archipenko (1887–1964)
Seated Figure, 1916
Bronze
Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections;
Gift of Florence Cowles Kruidenier, 1968.32

Georges Braque (French, 1882–1963)
Verre, pipe, cartes à jouer (Glass, Pipe, and
Playing Cards), 1918
Oil on wood
Nathan Emory Coffin Collection of the
Des Moines Art Center; Purchased with funds
from the Coffin Fine Arts Trust, 1968.7

Lyonel Feininger (American, 1871–1956)
Rathaus von Zottelstedt II (Town Hall of
Zottelstedt II), 1918
Woodcut on paper
Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections;
Gift of Emily Weitz in memory of Sarah
Stevenson Weitz, 2000.13

Henri Laurens (French, 1885–1954)
La Joueuse de Guitare (The Guitar Player), 1919
Fruitwood
Nathan Emory Coffin Collection of the
Des Moines Art Center; Purchased with funds
from the Coffin Fine Arts Trust, 1964.141

Albert Gleizes (French, 1881–1953)
Decoration for the Moscow Station, 1920–27
Color pochoir on paper
John C. Huseby Print Collection of the
Des Moines Art Center through Purchase, 1995.37

Agnes Weinrich (American, 1873–1946)
Woman with Flowers, 1920
Oil on canvas
Des Moines Art Center’s Louise Noun Collection
of Art by Women, 1998.55

John Bradley Storrs (American, 1885–1956)
L’Homme Nu (Nude Man), 1922
Limestone
Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections;
Purchased with funds from the Edmundson
Art Foundation, 1966.3

Natalia Sergeevna Gontcharova
(Russian, 1881–1962)
Weibliche Halbfigur (Half-length Female Figure), 1922
Color lithograph
Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections;
Purchased with funds from Rose F. Rosenfield, 1969.19

Erika Giovanna Klien (Austrian, 1900–1967)
Der Einsinkende Turm/Ober St. Veit, 1922
Black crayon on paper
Des Moines Art Center’s Louise Noun Collection
of Art by Women through Bequest, 2003.329

Varvara Fedorovna Stepanova (Russian,
1894–1958)
Charlie Chaplin, 1922
Linoleum cut on paper
Des Moines Art Center’s Louise Noun Collection
of Art by Women through Bequest, 2003.350

Juan Gris (Spanish, 1887–1927)
Les Pommes (The Apples), 1926
Oil on panel
Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections;
Gift of John and Elizabeth Bates Cowles, 1958.73

John Marin (American, 1870–1953)
Mid-Manhattan No. 1, 1932
Oil on canvas mounted on board
Purchased with funds from the Coffin Fine Arts
Trust; Nathan Emory Coffin Collection of the
Des Moines Art Center, 1961.29

Marcel Duchamp (French, 1887–1968)
De où Par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Sélavy (La Bôite en Valise) [The Box in a Valise], 1935–41;
second series, 1955–68
Cloth-covered case containing 68 miniature replicas
Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections;
Purchased with funds from the Mildred M. Bohen
Deaccessioning Fund, 1990.9