(
Groupe de femmes, sculpture front the left);
Amedeo Modigliani (sculptures behind that of Csaky); paintings by
František Kupka (
Amorpha, Fugue in Two Colors);
Francis Picabia (
La Source (The Spring));
Jean Metzinger (
Dancer in a café); and
Henri Le Fauconnier (
Mountaineers Attacked by Bears) The Salon d'Automne of 1912 was held in Paris at the Grand Palais from 1 October to 8 November. The Cubists (a group of artists now recognized as such) were regrouped into the same room, XI. The 1912 polemic leveled against both the French and non-French
avant-garde artists originated in
Salle XI of the Salon d'Automne where the Cubists, among whom were several non-French citizens, exhibited their works. The resistance to both foreigners and avant-garde art was part of a more profound crisis: that of defining modern French art in the wake of
Impressionism centered in Paris. Placed into question was the modern ideology elaborated upon since the late 19th century. What had begun as a question of
aesthetics quickly turned
political during the Cubist exhibition, and as in the 1905 Salon d'Automne, the critic
Louis Vauxcelles (in Les Arts..., 1912) was most implicated in the deliberations. It was also 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. On 3 December 1912 the polemic reached the
Chambre des députés (and was debated at the Assemblée Nationale in Paris). , 1912,
La Source (The Spring), oil on canvas, 249.6 x 249.3 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Exhibited at the 1912 Salon d'Automne, Paris In his 1921 essay on the Salon d'Automne, published in
Les Echos (p. 23), founder
Frantz Jourdain denouncing aesthetic snobbery, writes that the saber-rattling revolutionaries dubbed the
Cubists,
Futurists and
Dadaists were actually crusty reactionaries who scorned modern progress and revealed contempt for democracy, science, industry and commerce. Jourdain again came under vicious attack in 1912—as the French nation drew closer to war in a conservative and fiercely nationalistic political climate—now by the dean of the
Conseil Municipal and member of the city's
Commission des Beaux-Arts,
Jean Pierre Philippe Lampué. Lampué argued, unsuccessfully, that the Salon d'Automne be refused use of the Grand Palais on the grounds that the organizers were unpatriotic and were undermining—with their foreign "Cubo-Futurist" exhibitions—the artistic heritage of France. He did however manage to raise public opinion against the Salon d'Automne, the Cubists and Jourdain specifically. The huge scandal prompted the critic
Roger Allard to defend Jourdain and the Cubists in the journal
La Côte, pointing out that it wasn't the first time the Salon d'Automne—as a venue to promote modern art—came under attack by city officials, the Institute, and members of the Conseil. And it would not be the last either. To appease the French, Jourdain invited the
pontiffs des Artistes Français, writes Gleizes, to an "exposition de portraits" specially organized at the salon.). His wife,
Georgette Agutte, an artist associated with the Fauves, had exhibited from 1904 at the
Salon des Indépendants and participated in the founding of the Salon d'Automne (her art collection included works by Derain, Matisse, Marquet, Rouault, Vlaminck, Van Dongen, and Signac).
Charles Beauquier, the politician and self-proclaimed free-thinker ("libre-penseur") sided with Breton and Benoist: "We do not encourage garbage! There is garbage in the arts and elsewhere".
, oil on canvas, 195.6 x 114.9 cm (77 x 45 1/4 in.), Philadelphia Museum of Art. Completed the same year that Albert Gleizes co-authored the book Du "Cubisme"'' with Jean Metzinger Ultimately, Marcel Sembat won the debate on several fronts: the Salon d'Automne remained at the Grand Palais des Champs Elysées for years to come; the press coverage following the Assemblée nationale's discussions was as intense as it was widespread, publicizing Cubism still further; the reverberations caused by the Cubist scandal echoed across Europe, and elsewhere, extending far beyond what would have been predicted without such publicity. Marcel Sembat would soon become Minister of Public Works; from 1914 to 1916, under
Prime Ministers René Viviani and
Aristide Briand.
Works exhibited at the 1912 Salon d'Automne •
Jean Metzinger entered four works:
Dancer in a café, titled
Danseuse (Albright-Knox Art Gallery),
La Plume Jaune (
The Yellow Feather),
Paysage (
Landscape), and ''
Femme à l'Éventail (Woman with a Fan) (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York), hung in the decorative arts section inside La Maison Cubiste
(the Cubist House''). •
Francis Picabia, 1912,
La Source (
The Spring) (Museum of Modern Art, New York) •
Fernand Léger exhibited
La Femme en Bleu (
Woman in Blue), 1912 (Kunstmuseum, Basel) and
Le passage à niveau (
The Level Crossing), 1912 (Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, Switzerland) •
Roger de La Fresnaye,
Les Baigneuses (
The bathers) 1912 (The National Gallery, Washington) and
Les joueurs de cartes (Card Players) •
Henri Le Fauconnier,
The Huntsman (Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, Netherlands) and
Les Montagnards attaqués par des ours (
Mountaineers Attacked by Bears) 1912 (Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design). •
Albert Gleizes, ''
L'Homme au Balcon, Man on a Balcony (Portrait of Dr. Théo Morinaud)'', 1912 (Philadelphia Museum of Art), also exhibited at the
Armory Show, New York, Chicago, Boston, 1913. •
André Lhote,
Le jugement de Pâris, 1912 (Private collection) •
František Kupka,
Amorpha, Fugue à deux couleurs (
Fugue in Two Colors), 1912 (Narodni Galerie, Prague), and
Amorpha Chromatique Chaude. •
Alexander Archipenko,
Family Life, 1912, sculpture (destroyed) •
Amedeo Modigliani, exhibited four sculptures of elongated and highly stylized heads •
Joseph Csaky exhibited the sculptures
Groupe de femmes, 1911-12 (location unknown),
Portrait de M.S.H., no. 91 (location unknown), and ''
Danseuse (Femme à l'éventail, Femme à la cruche)'', no. 405 (location unknown)
La Maison Cubiste (Cubist House) , 1912, Maquette originale de La Maison Cubiste (Cubist House, Façade architecturale), Document du Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris decoration by
André Mare This Salon d'Automne also featured
La Maison Cubiste.
Raymond Duchamp-Villon designed façade 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). While the geometric decoration of the plaster façade and the paintings were inspired by
cubism, the furnishings, carpets, cushions, and wallpapers by
André Mare were the beginning of a distinct new style,
Art Deco. They were extremely colorful, and consisted of floral designs, particularly stylized roses, in geometric patterns. Thsee themes were to reappear in decoration after the First War through the firm founded by Mare. Metzinger and Gleizes in
Du "Cubisme", written during the assemblage of the "Maison Cubiste", wrote about the autonomous nature of art, stressing the point that decorative considerations should not govern the spirit of art. Decorative work, to them, was the "antithesis of the picture". "The true picture" wrote Metzinger and Gleizes, "bears its ''raison d'être'' within itself. It can be moved from a church to a
drawing-room, from a museum to a study. Essentially independent, necessarily complete, it need not immediately satisfy the mind: on the contrary, it should lead it, little by little, towards the fictitious depths in which the coordinative light resides. It does not harmonize with this or that ensemble; it harmonizes with things in general, with the universe: it is an organism...". "Mare's ensembles were accepted as frames for Cubist works because they allowed paintings and sculptures their independence", wrote Christopher Green, "creating a play of contrasts, hence the involvement not only of Gleizes and Metzinger themselves, but of Marie Laurencin, the Duchamp brothers (Raymond Duchamp-Villon designed the façade) and Mare's old friends Léger and Roger La Fresnaye".
La Maison Cubiste was a fully furnished house, with a staircase, wrought iron banisters, a living room—the
Salon Bourgeois, where paintings by Marcel Duchamp, Metzinger (
Woman with a Fan), Gleizes, Laurencin and Léger were hung—and a bedroom. It was an example of ''L'art décoratif'', a home within which Cubist art could be displayed in the comfort and style of modern, bourgeois life. Spectators at the Salon d'Automne passed through the full-scale 10-by-3-meter plaster model of the ground floor of the façade, designed by Duchamp-Villon. This architectural installation was subsequently exhibited at the 1913
Armory Show, New York, Chicago and Boston, listed in the catalogue of the New York exhibit as Raymond Duchamp-Villon, number 609, and entitled
"Façade architectural, plaster" (
Façade architecturale). For the occasion, an article entitled ''Au Salon d'Automne "Les Indépendants"
was published in the French newspaper Excelsior
, 2 Octobre 1912. 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. ==1913–1914==