Épatant (pronounced a-pat-on)
Something
startling or shocking, especially if unconventional
Circa
1910s: An adjective in French formed from the present participle of épater (to flabbergast), the construct
being é- + patte
(paw) + -er.
The é- prefix is from the Old
French es-, from the Latin ex- & ē- and was used to indicate away or moving away from. Patte
is from the Middle French, from the Old French pade & pate (paw,
foot of an animal), from the Vulgar Latin patta
(paw, foot), borrowed from the Frankish patta
(paw, sole of the foot), from the Proto-Germanic pat- & paþa- (to
walk, tread, go, step), of uncertain origin and relation. Possibly it was from the primitive
Indo-European (s)pent- & (s)pat- (path; to walk), a variant of the
primitive Indo-European pent- & pat- (path; to go). It was cognate with the Dutch poot (paw) and the Low German pedden (to step, tread); it's related to
both pad & path. The suffix -er is from the Latin -āre, used to form infinitives of
first-conjugation verbs (many of these verbs directly descended from Latin,
rather than from stem + suffix).
Cubism
It’s probably no longer possible for a style of visual art to shock. That may be because everything possible has been done or that the representational promiscuity of the last century has dulled collective sensitivity, certainly among Western audiences. Put simply, new being no longer possible, nor is the shock of the new (Shock of the New (1972) is a strangely neglected book by art critic Ian Dunlop (b 1940), exploring seven exhibitions of the modern period, from the Salon des Refuses (Paris, 1863) to Joseph Goebbels’ Degenerate Art show (Munich, 1937); the title later re-used by Australian art critic Robert Hughes (1938–2012) for his 1980 TV show).
In the early days of modernity, painting genuinely could shock as cubism did in the years before the First World War. Essentially a simplification of form and deconstruction of perspective, cubism played with ideas of mass, time and space, distorting deliberating the techniques artists had honed over the centuries in creating the three dimensional illusions rendered on inherently flat canvases. The early works were still recognizably representational but soon, the movement seemed to morph into something which existed to shock and the geometric touches grew in intensity, sometimes overwhelming the represented forms, some of the later work really pure visual abstraction, the sort of self-indulgent technical ecstasy Comrade Stalin would later, in a similar context, condemn as “formalism”.
The origin of cubism is generally traced back to Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), a portrait of five prostitutes in a style influenced by the African tribal art which the artist had seen at the Palais du Trocadéro, a Paris ethnographic museum. Curiously, Picasso chose to show the work only to fellow artists and it went unseen by the public until an exhibition in 1916. Others certainly adopted its techniques, defining the first era of Cubism which came to be known as Analytical Cubism, marked by depictions of a subject from multiple vantage points at once, creating a fractured, multi-dimensional effect expressed usually with a small palette of colors. The term cubism was used first in 1908 by French critic Louis Vauxcelles (1870-1943) but wasn’t widely employed until the press adopted in 1911 and it was then often used in a derogatory sense. The reputation of both Picasso and cubism has since improved and when assessing the drip painter Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), the collector Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) could think of no higher compliment than him being “...the greatest painter since Picasso”. Of course, many who thought their own eye for art quite well-trained didn't agree with Ms Guggenheim. In 1945, just after the war, Duff Cooper (1890–1954), then serving as Britain's ambassador to France, came across Picasso leaving an exhibition of paintings by English children aged 5-10 and in his diary noted the great cubist saying he "had been much impressed". "No wonder" added the ambassador, "the pictures are just as good as his".
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), oil on canvas by Pablo Picasso.
No comments:
Post a Comment