Art
Post-Cubism
IT has long been a subject of lamentation to some and of rejoicing to others that Cubism is dead. During the first years of Surrealiste domination, indeed, it looked as though it was not only dead but also wholly rejected and -forgotten. The principles of the pure Surrealistes were so exactly opposed to those of the Cubists that it seemed unthinkable that the two schools could live peacefully together, and even more impossible that they should ever arrive at a compromise. The Surrealistes relied almost entirely on the subconscious and disapproved of the artist's intervening consciously and intellectually, more than was absolutely necessary, in the production of a work of art. The Cubists, on the other hand, reduced nature to patterns by the most sophisticated processes, not entirely unrelated to the methods of mathematical thought. The Cubists were for ever elimin- ating subject-matter more and more completely and so tending towards abstraction, whereas the Surrealistes relied to a great extent on effects of surprise produced by the juxtaposition in a painting of objects unlike in their associa- tions. That is to say, they used what a Cubist would con- sider purely- literary means.
It seemed, therefore, as though the two schools must always continue to be separate, and that the ideas of each would be useless to the other. But in fact there has been a certain fusion, and the reason for this may be partly a purely historical fact. Surrealisme owes its origin largely to the inventiveness of Chirico, but it is also in part descended from Picasso, and through him it has kept a certain con- nexion with Cubism. Many Surrealiste painters have found it impossible to keep strictly to their own creed and have allowed themselves to follow Cubist principles in consciously ordering their designs so that their paintings take on a certain coherence considered as pure patterns. In general the Surrealkes have benefited by the claim, finally established by-the Cubists, that a painting need not be an exact representa- tion of anything in nature, but is essentially a creation of the artist. In addition they have taken over many,technical devices inaugurated by the Cubists, such as the introduction of actual objects, cards, newspaper cuttings and so on into 'a, painted design.
It is consequently fair to say that much of the painting of to-day which appears at first sight to be purely Surrealiste in fact owes much to the Cubist tradition. This point is particularly well shown by the works at present on view at the Mayor Gallery in Cork Street, which has recently been re-opened in new and splendidly decorated rooms. The exhibition includes works by French, German and English -artists, almost all painted within the last two or three years. In general the Germans, Klee- and Baumeister, stand some- what apart, and the English appear as mild imitators of Parisian models, with the exception of Paul Nash, who exhibits the one really original English painting. The " French" artists, that is to say those artists of mixed nationality who belong to the Parisian school, may be divided into three groups. First, there are those like Braque and Marcoussis, who belong entirely to the Cubist school and only desert its strictest principles by indulging in more curvilinear designs that were approved in the Puritanical period of 1913. Secondly, there are the pure Surrealistes, here represented by Mir6, Masson and Ernst. Finally, there is a group of painters who derive from both schools, notably Picasso, Leger and Metzinger, in whose works a Cubist case fOr design is combined with a Surrealiste suggestiveness of shapes. In their paintings alone a balance is struck between the extreme classicism of Cubism and the extreme Romanticism of Surrealisme.
ANTHONY BLUNT.
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