Henri Laurens (1885-1954), La bouteille de Beaune

Henri Laurens (1885-1954)
La bouteille de Beaune
inscribed with initials 'HL' (on the underside)
oil on wood construction
Height: 9 ½ in. (24.2 cm.)
Width: 9 ¼ in. (23.6 cm.)
Depth: 7 ½ in. (19.2 cm.)
Executed in 1915-1916; unique

Provenance
Galerie Simon (Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler), Paris (acquired from the artist, circa 1920).
Jacques Zoubaloff, Paris; sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 28 November 1935, lot 204.
Private collection, Paris.
Galerie Tarica, Paris (acquired from the above, circa 1970).
Acquired from the above by the family of the present owners, circa 1970.

Pre-Lot Text
Beyond Boundaries: Avant-Garde Masterworks from a European Collection

In the early years of the Twentieth Century, such dramatic discoveries were made in the world of science and mathematics that, it could be argued, ordinary people were constrained to perceive the world differently. Even though many did not fully understand what had taken place, they knew that their very conception of the universe had been altered, and some feared (quite rightly, as the future would prove) that the newest innovations in technology might pose a threat to the peaceful existence of mankind. There is no question that these revelations affected the arts—literature, music, dance and the visual arts—which, in roughly the same period, experienced a dramatic upheaval of tradition, causing some to go so far as to question the very essence of art itself. A number of artists turned to a reliance upon alternative systems of thought as a rationale for their creative activities, from the fourth dimension and non-Euclidean geometry to an exploration of heightened spiritual awareness, one that with proper focus and guidance could serve to reveal the ultimate mysteries of the universe. All of this occurred in a period of social unrest, one that led to a world war in Europe and America and a revolution in Russia, replacing the monarchs of the past with various systems of egalitarian rule. This caused some to question and challenge all forms of political authority, particularly artists—who, after all, want no restraints of any kind imposed on their work. As a result, many sought a means by which to renounce governmental control, some seeking solace in the ideals of anarchism.
The one characteristic that the artists included in the Beyond Boundaries Collection share is that they all came of age and matured as artists in roughly the same period, from 1910 through 1920, that is to say at approximately the same time when these dramatic changes in their world were taking place. Even though they operated in highly diverse environments and sought inspiration from very different sources, each emerged and followed the basic principles and tenets of the artistic style with which they eventually became associated: (1) expressive or amorphic abstraction (Wassily Kandinsky, Francis Picabia); (2) Cubism and/or Futurism (Henri Laurens, Francis Picabia, Gino Severini); (3) Dada and/or Surrealism (Marcel Duchamp, Jean Crotti, Suzanne Duchamp, Max Ernst, Francis Picabia, Man Ray); (4) constructivism and geometric abstraction (Theo van Doesberg, Moholy-Nagy). Many aspects of contemporary art today owe their origin to techniques and innovations introduced by these artists, but there is one approach to the art-making process—where an idea takes precedence over the material form used to express it—that was unquestionably pioneered by a single artist in this group, Marcel Duchamp. In the case of the work by him contained in this collection—an ordinary sheet of paper seemingly selected at random and signed by the artist—the very nature of what constitutes a work of art is thrown open to question. Although these ideas would not take hold in the art world until the emergence of Conceptual Art in the 1960s, once they did, they “changed,” as Jasper Johns described the contribution of Marcel Duchamp, “the condition of being here.”
The individual works in the present collection are not only representative of the art movements with which they are associated, but to varying degrees, they represent such a significant contribution to each artistic style that the works themselves could function as exemplars of its most salient characteristics. Henri Lauren’s La bouteille de Beaune, for example, renders simultaneous views of the inside and outside of a bottle (as well as the space surrounding it), thereby questioning the traditional distinction that existed between solid and void and, like many contemporaneous Cubist paintings, we are presented instead with dismembered planes set within an indeterminate spatial structure. Similarly, Severini’s Danseuse portrays a professional dancer kicking her leg so forcefully into the air that she seems to explode out of the picture frame into the viewer’s space, a quality that reflects the goal of Futurist painters and sculptors who attempted to capture the sensation of movement within the confines of a static image. In utilizing the basic visual vocabulary of Cubism (as well as the technique of papier collé), this work could just as accurately be described as Cubist, or Cubo-Futurist, an intermingling of the two styles that had occurred often in this period (Duchamp’s famous Nude Descending a Staircase, for example, clearly exemplifies aspects of both styles, although the artist insisted that his imagery was drawn from sources in stop-motion or chronophotography).
Because of its title, Picabia’s Animation would seem indebted to Futurism, yet its overall abstraction is more in keeping with Kandinsky’s vision of non-objective painting, although its sharp-edged, harshly defined geometric forms may have come out of Cubism (a movement from which Picabia had himself only recently emerged). The degree to which a knowledge of Kandinsky’s paintings influenced Picabia in this period is hard to say, although like most of the other artists committed to modernism in this period, there is no doubt that he was familiar with his ground-breaking and highly influential book, Űber das Geistige in der Kunst: Insbesondere in der Malerei [Concerning the Spiritual in Art: Especially in Painting], 1911. We know that Duchamp read this book during an important sojourn to Munich during the summer of 1912 (although an English edition appeared in 1914, a French translation would not be published until 1949). As the title of his book suggests, Kandinsky was a theosophist, a practitioner of mystical and occult philosophy that believes the origins and purpose of the universe can be unlocked by those who possess heightened states of spiritual awareness. Whereas Kandinsky today is accepted as the father of abstract art, in his book he warned against the complete elimination of subject. “Today the artist cannot confine himself to complete abstract forms,” he wrote, “they are still too indefinite for him.” Indeed, in his Improvisation mit Pferden [Improvisation with Horses], the prominent, zig-zagging black line outlines the profile of a galloping horse mentioned in the title, while other horses appear to be ascending a mountain at the upper right. Other details within the composition suggest the form of an embracing couple and the turrets of a cityscape in the background (elements that reappear with some frequency in Kandinsky’s work of this period).
At first, the idea of a pure abstraction was considered too radical, since in having eliminated the subject, a work of art would be considered nothing more than mere decoration for its own sake. “Let us admit,” wrote Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger in their book on Cubism in 1913, “that the reminiscence of natural forms cannot be absolutely banished, not yet, at all events. An art cannot be raised to the level of a pure effusion at the first step.” Clearly, in Animation, as well as in other pictures by the artist in this period, Picabia ignored these warnings, as he would the advice of anyone throughout his career who sought to impose rules and restrictions on any facet of the creative process.
Picabia met Duchamp in Paris in 1911 and, shortly after their meeting, he introduced him to the writings of the German philosopher, Max Stirner (1806-1856), whose most important book, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum appeared in a French translation in 1899 (L'Unique et sa propriété) and in English in 1907 (The Ego and its Own). Stirner espoused a philosophy wherein decisions made by an individual were considered superior to restraints imposed by society, a way of thinking that held a special appeal for any artist who sought to liberate themselves from the conventions of the past. Precisely such an approach would be espoused by Dada, a movement in literature and the visual arts that began in neutral Switzerland in 1916, but which—thanks to the proselytizing efforts of its principle spokesman, Tristan Tzara—quickly spread to other European capitals. In reaction to the atrocities of war, the Dadaist championed chance as a legitimate means of expression, as it defied the logical system of alliances that threw most of Europe into a worldwide conflagration. Dada soon found adherents in New York, where, after the outbreak of war, many artists—such as Jean Crotti and Marcel Duchamp (both of whom arrived within months of one another in 1915)—moved to escape the war. In 1916, Crotti and Duchamp shared a studio in the Lincoln Arcade Building on 67th Street and Broadway (today Lincoln Center), where Duchamp worked on the construction of the most important work of his early career, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, 1915-1923 (Philadelphia Museum of Art), a construction executed on the surface of two large rectangular plates of glass and, therefore, better known as The Large Glass. It was within this environment that Crotti made his Les forces mécaniques de l’amour en mouvement [The Mechanical Forces of Love in Movement], a work on glass that is fabricated from many of the same elements Duchamp used in the execution of his Large Glass. Both works employ a similar...