''L'Homme au hamac'', also referred to as ''Man in a Hammock'', is a painting created in 1913 by the French artist, theorist and writer

Albert Gleizes Albert Gleizes (; 8 December 1881 – 23 June 1953) was a French artist, theoretician, philosopher, a self-proclaimed founder of Cubism and an influence on the School of Paris. Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger wrote the first major treatise on ...

. The work was exhibited at Moderni Umeni, SVU Mánes, Vystava, Prague, February – March 1914, no. 41; and '' Der Sturm'', Berlin, July – August 1914. The painting was reproduced in

Guillaume Apollinaire Guillaume Apollinaire) of the Wąż coat of arms. (; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic of Polish descent. Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of t ...

, ''Paris-Journal'', July 4, 1914 (published again in ''Chroniques d'Art'', 1960. p. 405); and Albert Gleizes, ''L'Épopée'', Le Rouge et le Noir, October 1929, p. 81. Stylistically Gleizes' painting exemplifies the principle of mobile perspective laid out in ''

Du "Cubisme" ''Du "Cubisme"'', also written ''Du Cubisme'', or ''Du « Cubisme »'' (and in English, ''On Cubism'' or ''Cubism''), is a book written in 1912 by Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger. This was the first major text on Cubism, predating ''The Cubist P ...

'', written by himself and French painter

Jean Metzinger Jean Dominique Antony Metzinger (; 24 June 1883 – 3 November 1956) was a major 20th-century French painter, theorist, writer, critic and poet, who along with Albert Gleizes wrote the first theoretical work on Cubism. His earliest works, from 1 ...

. Evidence suggests that the man reclining in the hammock is indeed Jean Metzinger. Formerly in the collection of Metzinger, the first owner of the painting, ''Man in a Hammock'' forms part of the permanent collection of the

Albright-Knox Art Gallery The Buffalo AKG Art Museum, formerly known as the Albright–Knox Art Gallery, is an art museum at 1285 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York, in Delaware Park. the museum's Elmwood Avenue campus is temporarily closed for construction. It hosted e ...

, Buffalo, New York.

Description

''Man in a Hammock'' is an oil painting on canvas with dimensions 130 by 155.5 cm (51.2 x 61.2 inches) signed and dated "Alb Gleizes 13", lower left. Painted in 1913, the work "presents an interesting synthesis of back and forth motion," writes art historian Daniel Robbins (Guggenheim, 1964), "and introduces a composition based on the intersection of powerful diagonals".Robbins, Daniel, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, ''Albert Gleizes, 1881-1953, A Retrospective Exhibition'', 1964
/ref> ''Man in a Hammock'' is related to a number of other works, such as a watercolor and a sepia ink over pencil drawing from 1909, a pencil and ink dated 1913, in addition to at least three other works in various media. A large and finished painting of ''L'Homme au hamac'' dating from the summer of 1909 is on the reverse of ''Houses among Trees'', 113.5 x 154 cm, 1910. In both the proto-Cubist version and in a small oil sketch (formerly in the collection of Ida Bienert, Dresden) the man wears a large sombrero.

Portrait of Jean Metzinger

The reclining figure is clearly readable. His face is seen both from a profile and frontal view simultaneously. While this property of seeing multiple facial features at once is rare in the work of Gleizes, it is seen quite often in the works of Metzinger.Joann Moser, Daniel Robbins, ''Jean Metzinger in retrospect'', 1985, The University of Iowa Museum of Art (J. Paul Getty Trust, University of Washington Press) The figure is situated in a landscape setting that recedes to buildings typical of Parisian suburbs around 1910 in the upper center background of the canvas. In the foreground, the sitter's right leg is supported by a Paris-style park chair. The table placed next to the sitters right arm—portrayed as if seen from above in accord with the

non-Euclidean geometry In mathematics, non-Euclidean geometry consists of two geometries based on axioms closely related to those that specify Euclidean geometry. As Euclidean geometry lies at the intersection of metric geometry and affine geometry, non-Euclidean g ...

first pronounced by

Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically d ...

—supports various elements; a vase, a glass, some fruit (perhaps lemons) and a spoon. The long spoon, according to Christian BriendBriend, C., Exhibition Catalogue, ''Gleizes - Metzinger. Du Cubisme et après'', 9 May - 22 September 2012, pp. 34, 36, Musée de La Poste, Galerie du Messager, Paris, France. Exposition in commemoration of 100th anniversary of the publication of Du "Cubisme"] (

Musée National d'Art Moderne The Musée National d'Art Moderne (; "National Museum of Modern Art") is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou in the 4th arrondissement of the city. In 2021 it ranked 10th in t ...

, Paris), is a reference to the principle accessory of Metzinger's seminal 1911 ''

Le goûter (Tea Time) ''Le Goûter'', also known as ''Tea Time'' (''Tea-Time''), and ''Femme à la Cuillère'' (''Woman with a teaspoon'') is an oil painting created in 1911 by the French artist and theorist Jean Metzinger (1883–1956). It was exhibited in Paris at ...

''; dubbed by

André Salmon André Salmon (4 October 1881, Paris – 12 March 1969, Sanary-sur-Mer) was a French poet, art critic and writer. He was one of the early defenders of Cubism, with Guillaume Apollinaire and Maurice Raynal. Biography André Salmon was born in P ...

"La Joconde du Cubisme" (The ''Mona Lisa'' of Cubism).André Salmon, ''Artistes d'hier et d'aujourd'hui'', L'Art Vivant, 6th edition, Paris, 1920
/ref>
/ref> Gleizes utilizes a multitude of colors—unlike the limited palette often associated with early Cubism—ranging from large areas of

ochre Ochre ( ; , ), or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colours produced ...

, red, white and blue, surrounding the

grisaille Grisaille ( or ; french: grisaille, lit=greyed , from ''gris'' 'grey') is a painting executed entirely in shades of grey or of another neutral greyish colour. It is particularly used in large decorative schemes in imitation of sculpture. Many g ...

figure. The man represented in the painting is very likely a portrait of Jean Metzinger. The book entitled ''Paroles devant la vie'', held prominently by the model was written by

Alexandre Mercereau Alexandre Mercereau (22 October 1884, in Paris – 1945) was a French symbolist poet and critic associated with Unanimism and the Abbaye de Créteil. He founded the Villa Médicis Libre, which helped impoverished artists and operated as charitable ...

in 1913. Gleizes had collaborated in founding the

Abbaye de Créteil L'Abbaye de Créteil or Abbaye group (french: Le Groupe de l'Abbaye) was a utopian artistic and literary community founded during the month of October, 1906. It was named after the Créteil Abbey, as most gatherings took place in that suburb of P ...

, and was very familiar with Mercereau's writings. Metzinger wrote an important text about Mercereau in 1911. It was Mercereau who introduced Gleizes to Metzinger in 1910. Mercereau's publisher, Eugène Figuière, a year earlier had published ''

'', the Cubist manifesto written by Gleizes and Metzinger. In Gleizes' painting, one does not merely see a figure swinging in a hammock; one sees multiple aspects of the same figure simultaneously refracted into new pictorial language. Mercereau attempted to represent facets of

time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...

in his writings, much as Gleizes and Metzinger attempted to represent facets of space, time and form in their paintings. ''Man in a Hammock'' integrates the man into the landscape, forming a single image by virtue of a non-linear grid. This device is used by Gleizes very skillfully to accommodate all aspects of the scene. Mercereau's book, the still-life next to the sitter, the man, and the environment are all symbols of fundamental importance to Gleizes, an artist who rarely, if ever, contented himself with mundane subjects (a guitar, violin, or a bowl of fruit). ''Man in a Hammock'' is testament to the close association of two artists, Metzinger and Gleizes, and to their shared social, cultural and philosophical conviction that painting represented more than a fleeting glimpse of the world in which they lived, that indeed by showing multiple facets of a subject captured at successive intervals in time simultaneously, a truer more complete image would emerge.

'We feared the dogmas and hermetic ideas, destructive acts disguised as new constructions, before they appeared as we knew they would. Rejecting nothing, we sketched out a traditional curve in French painting from Courbet to ourselves as the latest arrivals, persuaded that the new order cannot be created independently of the permanent order'. (Albert Gleizes, 1917)Two Philosopher-Painters, Albert Gleizes and Kasimir Malevich
/ref>

Provenance

* Jean Metzinger * Mme Russo * Sidney Janis Gallery, 1957 * Purchased by Albright Art Gallery, February 22, 1957

Exhibitions

* Moderni Umeni, S.V.U., Manes, Prague, 1914, no. 41 * Der Sturm, Berlin, July, 1914

Literature

* Guillaume Apollinaire, ''Paris-Journal'', July 4, 1914, cf. ''Chroniques d'Art'', 1960. p. 405 * Albert Gleizes, ''L'Epopee'', Le Rouge et le Noir, October, 1929, p. 81 * Painting and sculpture from antiquity to 1942, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Steven A. Nash - 1979 * ''The Saturday Review'', 1965 * Albert Gleizes, 1881-1953: A Retrospective Exhibition, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum - 1964 * ''Saturday Review'', Henry Seidel Canby, Bernard Augustine De Voto, George Cooper Stevens - 1965 * Painters of the Section d'Or: The Alternatives to Cubism. Exhibition September 27-October 22, 1967, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York - 1967 * Gallery Notes, Albright-Knox Art Gallery - 1970 * ''Masterworks at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery'', Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Karen Lee Spaulding - 1999 * ''125 masterpieces from the collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery'', Karen Lee Spaulding, Albright-Knox Art Gallery - 1987 * Gallery Notes, Buffalo Fine Arts Academy - 1958 * ''The Guggenheim Museum collection: paintings, 1880-1945'', Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Angelica Zander Rudenstine - 1976 * ''Albert Gleizes: Catalogue Raisonné'', Albert Gleizes, Anne Varichon, Daniel Robbins - 1998 * L'Oeil, Georges Bernier, Rosamond Bernier - 1999 * Albert Gleizes et le dessin: 11 December 1970 - 25 January 1971 * André Dubois, Saint-Étienne (Loire, France). Musée d'art et d'industrie - 1970 * Maurice Raynal: la bande à Picasso, David Raynal - 2008 * Gallery Notes, Albright-Knox Art Gallery - 1953 * Œuvres en prose, Guillaume Apollinaire, Michel Décaudin, Pierre Caizergues - 1991 * International Auction Records, 1992

References

External links

Fondation Albert Gleizes

Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Grand Palais, Agence photographique
{{Jean Metzinger Paintings by Albert Gleizes Cubist paintings 1913 paintings Paintings in the collection of the Albright–Knox Art Gallery 20th-century portraits