Georges Braque, "Vase, Palette, and Mandolin" (1936). Oil, charcoal, and graphite on canvas, 32 x 39 5/8”. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Purchase with the aid of funds from W. W. Crocker. © 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.
Art and war—arguably the most famous linkage of the two is Guernica, Pablo Picasso’s visceral 25-foot-long painting raging against the bombing of a Basque village during the Spanish Civil War. Though Georges Braque once said he and Picasso were “roped together like mountain climbers” during their radical Cubist collaborations in the first decade of the 20th century, his response to World War II was very different from his friend’s. He remained dedicated to Cubism, while Picasso continued to wander stylistically. And as the war escalated, Braque remained in his Paris apartment and studio, painting still lifes: compote bowls, grapes, newspapers, musical instruments, tables, and painting palettes.
Georges Braque and the Cubist Still Life, 1928–1945 examines this little-studied period of the artist’s career. Co-curated by Karen Butler of Washington University’s Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum and Renée Maurer of The Phillips Collection in D.C., it is the first major U.S. museum exhibit in 16 years devoted to Braque. The display asks questions about inwardness and ambiguity, specifically how Braque’s work responded to political events in the 1930s and ’40s.
To help visitors fix everything in time, the exterior wall leading to the exhibit features a timeline, including historical photos and milestones in Braque’s life. The exhibit space is divided into five rooms, with paintings arranged chronologically, beginning in 1928 with a series of four paintings, informally titled the Rosenberg Suite, that have not been together since the late 1920s.
“His dealer, Paul Rosenberg, asked Braque to make a decoration for the floor of his dining room,” Butler explains, noting that these are the studies for those panels. “He had a very interesting, fancy gallery in Paris; it was in a big, gorgeous two- or three-story building. So Braque designed these, and worked with a local artisan to make marble inlays for the floor.”
On view are 37 works in all, including two from the Kemper’s holdings and three from the Saint Louis Art Museum. In addition to presenting Braque’s work in a historical context, the show examines his working processes and materials, which were often innovative. For instance, he used sand in his paint to create a stucco effect on a wall.
“Braque was actually trained as a painter-decorator,” Butler says. “His father was a house painter, but in the 19th century, that meant you knew how to create wallpapering, false marbling, and wood-grain patterns by hand. He went on to be trained as an artist, but all these things were tricks in some ways that he and Picasso used in Cubism.”
He also painted completely over canvases, like 1943’s Still Life With Palette, which conservators X-rayed to reveal the earlier composition. The Baluster and Skull/Still Life with Fruit Dish, a 1938 work owned by a private collector and rarely viewed, is a double-sided painting.
“I don’t think Braque thought of this as a two-sided painting,” Butler notes. “I think he was reusing it. He’s reattached the canvas, so one side is stretched, and the other side is concave… you’ll see both, but what you will see on one side is an upside-down painting.”
Braque was definitely personally affected by the war, even if he didn’t paint explicitly about it, Butler says. Rosenberg was forced to flee to the United States in 1940, his gallery seized by the Nazis. Though it was later returned, he remained in America and introduced the country to Braque’s work. Though Braque continued to exhibit seemingly apolitical still lifes, he was still living under the thumb of the fascist Vichy regime.
“You do see changes in his art over time,” Butler says. “The works in the 1940s have more black and become more somber. They’re generally limited to the two rooms where he had heat, the kitchen and the salon. There are a couple of paintings where you can see a potbellied stove, or fish, or things that you ate during the war.”
In an interview with the French press in April 1940, just a few months before the outbreak of world war, Braque somewhat dismissed the notion of linking art and politics. “He said, ‘Sometimes a work can take me 10 years to complete. How can that be about current events?’—which indicates that he sees art as autonomous, as not making a political point,” Butler says. “Yet he also says, ‘I’m a man of my time. I’m conditioned by events that surround me. Art is not vacation from the world, either.’”
Georges Braque and the Cubist Still Life, 1928–1945 opened January 25 and runs through April 21 at the Kemper, located at Forsyth and Skinker boulevards. Call 314-935-4523 or visit kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu for more info. Hours are 11 a.m.–6 p.m. Mon, Wed & Thu, 11 a.m.–8 p.m. Fri, and 11 a.m.–6 p.m. Sat & Sun. Admission is free.
