SECTION D’OR (GOLDEN SECTION)
City of
Paris by Robert Delaunay
The year 1912 marked the passage from Analytic Cubism to Synthetic Cubism
and witnessed the movement's widespread propagation. Gleizes and Metzinger
published the first doctrinal work devoted to the new movement. In the course
of the autumn, the historic exhibition of the Section d'Or at the La Boétie
Gallery in Paris gathered together in one vast collection all Cubism's
adherents -- with the sole exception of its two creators, Braque and Picasso,
who showed their works only at the Kahnweiler Gallery. The exhibition included
not only Juan Gris, Léger, Gleizes, Metzinger, Lhote, Delaunay, Marcoussis and
Roger de La Fresnaye, but also Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon, Raymond
Duchamp-Villon, Dumont, and Agero. Many of these painters retained only the
superficial appearance of Cubism, the geometrical fragmentation of the painted
surface, and later turned in opposite directions, some going back to
traditional formulae, while others were borne away by abstract currents or Dada
experiments, but the unity of their search was based on a common admiration for
Cézanne and his constructive lesson. The initiative and the title of this
exhibition, which created a considerable stir, were due to the painter and
engraver Jacques Villon. In his studio at Puteaux, near Paris, a number of
artists passionately interested in problems of rhythm and proportion met on
Sunday afternoons, among them the two theoreticians of Cubism, Gleizes and
Metzinger, Picabia, Léger La Fresnaye, as well as the poets Paul Fort,
Ribemont-Dessaignes, Jean Cocteau and Joachim Gasquet. Villon developed his
theory of vision by pyramids, taken from Leonardo da Vinci, and suggested
during these meetings the title of 'Section d'Or', borrowed from the treatise
of the Bolognese monk Luca Pacioli, The Divine Proportion, published in Venice
in 1509 and illustrated by Leonardo himself. Formulated by Vitruvius and taken
up again during the Renaissance, the golden section or divine proportion (or
gate of harmony) is the ideal relation between two magnitudes, expressed numerically
as and demonstrated in many masterpieces of different arts, applied consciously
or, more often, by instinct. 'There is,' Voltaire said, 'a hidden geometry in
all the arts that the hand produces.' Although the golden section was not the
only constant to which the Cubists referred for the mathematical organization
of their canvas, it reflected the profound need for order and measure that they
felt more through sensibility and reason than as a result of calculation.
Distorted by the incomprehension or bad faith of critics, the 'Section d'Or'
exhibition met with immense avant-garde success in France and abroad, and
constituted a general rally under the sign of Cézannian architecture and
geometrical discipline.
Jacques
Villon (1875-1963) - 1913 - (0,65 m x 0,92 m)
Paris, Collection Louis Carré
Roger de La Fresnaye
Early years and education
La Fresnaye was born in Le
Mans where his father, an
officer in the French army, was temporarily stationed. The La Fresnayes were an
aristocratic family whose ancestral home, the Château de La
Fresnaye, is in Falaise. His education was classically based, and was followed
from 1903 to 1904 by studies at the Académie
Julian in Paris, and from 1904 to 1908 at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. From 1908 he studied at the Académie
Ranson under Maurice
Denis and Paul
Sérusier, whose joint influence
is evident in early works such as Woman with Chrysanthemums, 1909. This
demonstrates the dreamlike symbolist ambience and stylistic character of work by the Les
Nabis group.Career
From 1912 to 1914 La Fresnaye was a member of the Section d'Or group of artists, and his work demonstrates an individual response to cubism. He was influenced by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, but his work has a more decorative than structural feel and his prismatic colours reflect the influence of Robert Delaunay. He was a member of the Puteaux Group, an orphist offshoot of cubism led by Jacques Villon. His most famous work is The Conquest of the Air, 1913, which depicts himself and his brother outdoors with a balloon in the background.La Fresnaye enlisted in the French army in World War I but contracted tuberculosis and was discharged in 1918. His health deteriorated rapidly after the war. He never recovered the physical energy to undertake sustained work. In the later paintings that he did create, he abandoned cubist spatial analysis for a more linear style. He ceased painting in 1922 but continued to draw. He died in Grasse in 1925.
Photograph
of Artillery, 1911. Oil on canvas by Roger de La Fresnaye in the public domain. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
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