,
Salle XI, Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées, Paris, between 1 October and 8 November 1912. Exhibited:
Joseph Csaky (
Groupe de femmes, sculpture front the left),
Amedeo Modigliani four sculptures on white bases. Other works are shown by
Jean Metzinger (
Dancer in a café),
František Kupka (
Amorpha, Fugue in Two Colors),
Francis Picabia (
The Spring) and
Henri Le Fauconnier (
Mountaineers Attacked by Bears) The Salon d'Automne of 1912, held in Paris at the Grand Palais from 1 October to 8 November, saw the Cubists regrouped into the same room XI. The history of the Salon d'Automne is marked by two important dates: 1905, bore witness to the birth of
Fauvism, and 1912, the xenophobe and anti-modernist quarrel. The 1912 polemic leveled against both the French and non-French avant-garde artists originated in
Salle XI where the Cubists exhibited their works. The resistance to foreigners (dubbed "apaches") and avant-garde artists was just the visible face of a more profound crises: that of defining modern French art, and the dwindling of an artistic system crystallized around the heritage of
Impressionism centered in Paris. Burgeoning was a new avant-garde system, the international logic of which—
mercantile and
médiatique—put into question the modern ideology elaborated upon since the late 19th century. What had begun as a question of
aesthetics quickly turned
political, and as in the 1905 Salon d'Automne, with his infamous "Donatello chez les fauves", the critic
Louis Vauxcelles (Les Arts, 1912) was most implicated in the deliberations. Recall too, it was 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. The Cubist contribution to the 1912 Salon d'Automne created scandal regarding the use of government owned buildings, such as the
Grand Palais, to exhibit such artwork. The indignation of the politician
Jean Pierre Philippe Lampué made the front page of
Le Journal, 5 October 1912. On 3 December 1912 the controversy spread to the Municipal Council of Paris. A debate transpired in the
Chambre des Députés about the use of public funds to provide the venue for such art. The Cubists were defended by the Socialist deputy, Marcel Sembat. • Francis Picabia,
La Source (
The Spring), 1912 (Museum of Modern Art, New York) •
Jean Metzinger entered three works:
Dancer in a café (titled
Danseuse),
La Plume Jaune (
The Yellow Feather), ''
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''). •
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 Baigneuse (
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 Paris, 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 •
Amedeo Modigliani, exhibited four elongated and highly stylized heads), sculptures •
Joseph Csaky exhibited the sculptures
Groupe de femmes, 1911-1912 (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) This exhibition also featured
La Maison Cubiste.
Raymond Duchamp-Villon designed facade 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). In a review of the exhibition published in
Le Petit Parisien, art critic Jean Claude writes of Picabia's entries: I believe that the record of high fantasy is held this year by Mr. Picabia. His two entries are entitled
La Source and
Danses à la source. These are beautiful titles... The two paintings, I must say, do not accord with them at all. They are vast panels, on which have been drawn triangles, rhombuses, trapezoids, squares, rectangles, all crooked, and mixing in their inextricable entanglement the brown with the pink, the brick with the red nasturtium and the green bluish to reddish black. It's ugly. It evokes incrusted linoleum and it has no utility. Of works by Léger, Gleizes and Metzinger, Jean Claude writes: "Mr. Léger walked his brush on the canvas after having dipped them in blue, black, red and brown. It is stupefying to look at. The catalog says it's a
Woman in blue. Poor woman.
Man on a Balcony, by Mr. Gleizes, is more comprehensible. At least in the chaos of cubes and trapezoids we find a man. I will say as much for the entry of Mr. Metzinger,
Dancers. It has the effect of a puzzle that is not assembled properly". ==See also==