La Femme au Cheval (also known as Woman with a Horse) is a large oil painting created toward the end of 1911 by the French artist Jean Metzinger (1883–1956). It was first exhibited in Paris at the Salon des Indépendants (20 March–16 May) in 1912. The artist has broken down the picture plane into facets, presenting multiple aspects of the subject simultaneously. This concept first pronounced by Metzinger in 1910—since considered a founding principle of Cubism—would soon find its way into the foundations of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics; the fact that a complete description of one and the same subject may require diverse points of view which defy a unique description. The painting, formerly owned by Niels Bohr, is now in the Royal Collection of Paintings and Sculpture at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen.
Description
The work is an oil painting on canvas with dimensions 162 x 130 cm (63.8 x 51.2 in). As the title indicates the painting represents a woman and a horse. The rather elegant woman wearing only a pearl necklace and the horse are immersed in a landscape with trees and a window (in the 'background'), a vase, with fruits and vegetation (in the 'foreground') clearly taken from the natural world. The nude figure sitting to the left, the horse standing to the right, along with other elements of the painting are depicted in a faceted manner, based to some extent on non-Euclidean geometry. Denying the illusion of Renaissanceperspective the artist breaks down the figures and background into facets and planes, presenting multiple aspects of the subject all at once. This can be seen in the deliberate positioning of light, shadow, form and color, in the way in which Metzinger assimilates the union of the background, woman and horse. For example, the division of the model's features generates a subtle profile view, the vase is shown both from above and the side.
The resulting free and mobile perspective, 'simultaneity' of multiple view-points, was used by Metzinger to constitute the image of a whole—one that includes the fourth dimension—what he called 'total image'.[1]
Where the dialectic nature of Paul Cézanne's work had been influential between 1908 and 1910 during the expressionistic phase of Cubism, the flat, linear structures of Georges Seurat would capture the attention of Metzinger. In addition to the flattened depth of field, the colors (subtle blues, raw umber and burnt sienna) employed in La Femme au Cheval bare resemblance to the colors of Seurat's 1889-90 Le Chahut and his 1887-88 Parade de Cirque.[1]
"With the advent of monochromatic Cubism in 1910-1911," Robert Herbert writes, "questions of form displaced color in the artists' attention, and for these Seurat was more relevant. Thanks to several exhibitions, his paintings and drawings were easily seen in Paris, and reproductions of his major compositions circulated widely among the Cubists. The Chahut (Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo) was called by André Salmon "one of the great icons of the new devotion", and both it and the Circus (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), according to Apollinaire, "almost belong to Synthetic Cubism".[2][1]
File:Étienne-Jules Marey, Cheval blanc monté, 1886, locomotion du cheval, expérience 4, Chronophotographie sur plaque fixe, négatif..jpgÉtienne-Jules Marey, Cheval blanc monté, 1886, locomotion du cheval, expérience 4, Chronophotographie sur plaque fixe
In the composition, Metzinger depicts motion, not of the subject matter as the Futurists relative to the observer, but by successive superimposed images captured by the artist in motion relative to (or around) the subject matter. The Chronophotography of Étienne-Jules Marey that influenced Marcel Duchamp's 1912 Nu descendant un escalier n° 2[3] could also be read into Metzinger's work of 1911-12, though here the dynamic role is played by the artist.[4]
Mobile perspective, 1909-1911
Rather than depicting the subject matter classically, from one point of view, the artist has used a concept of 'mobile perspective' to portray the subject from a variety of angles. The images captured from multiple spatial view-points and at successive time intervals are shown simultaneously on the canvas.[5]
The anti-Hellenic concept of representing a subject from multiple view-points was a central idea of Jean Metzinger's Note sur la Peinture, 1910.[6][7][8] Indeed, prior to Cubism painters worked from the limiting factor of a single view-point. And it was Jean Metzinger, for the first time in Note sur la peinture who enunciated the stimulating interest in representing objects as remembered from successive and subjective experiences within the context of both space and time. In that article, Metzinger writes about the works of Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, noting that they "discarded traditional perspective and granted themselves the liberty of moving around objects." All four, according to Metzinger, held in common the notion of simultanety. This is the concept of "mobile perspective" that would tend towards the representation of the "total image." Though he does not discuss his own work in Note sur la peinture, clearly at the time of writing he had already discarded classical perspective (Nu, Landscape and Nu à la cheminée (Nude), c. 1908, 1909 and 1910 respectively) turning his attention fully towards the geometric abstraction of form.[9]
Theoretical underpinnings, 1912
Jean Metzinger, 1912, Danseuse au café (Dancer in a café), oil on canvas, 146.1 x 114.3 cm, Albright–Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. Published in Au Salon d'Automne "Les Indépendants" 1912, Exhibited at the 1912 Salon d'Automne, Paris.
The idea exemplified in La Femme au Cheval of moving around an object in order to see it from different view-points was elaborated upon in Du "Cubisme" (1912),[10] written in collaboration with Albert Gleizes.
Metzinger and Gleizes wrote with reference to non-Euclidean geometry in Du "Cubisme". It was argued that Cubism itself was not based on any geometrical theory, but that non-Euclidean geometry corresponded better than classical, or Euclidean geometry, to what the Cubsists were doing. The essential was in the understanding of space other than by the classical method of perspective; an understanding that would include and integrate the fourth dimension with 3-space.[11][7]
Though the rupture with the past seemed total, there was still within La Femme au Cheval something of the past. Metzinger, for example, writes in a Pan article, two years before the publication of Du "Cubisme" that the greatest challenge to the modern artist is not to 'cancel' tradition, but to accept "it is in us," acquired by living. It was the combination of the past with the present, and its progression into the future that most intrigued Metzinger:[12]
"If we wished to relate the space of the [Cubist] painters to geometry, we should have to refer it to the non-Euclidian mathematicians; we should have to study, at some length, certain of Riemann's theorems."[10]
The concept of observing a subject from different points in space and time simultaneously (multiple or mobile perspective) "to seize it from several successive appearances, which fused into a single image, reconstitute in time" developed by Metzinger (in his 1911 article) and observed in La Femme au Cheval was not derived from Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, though it was certainly influenced in a similar way, through the work of Jules Henri Poincaré (particularly Science and Hypothesis). Poincaré's writings, unlike Einstein's, were well known leading up to 1912. Poincaré's widely read book, La Science et l'Hypothèse, was published in 1902 (by Flammarion).
The French mathematician Maurice Princet discussed the work of Poincaré, along with the concept of the fourth spatial dimension, to artists at the Bateau-Lavoir. He was a close associate of Pablo Picasso, Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Marcel Duchamp and Jean Metzinger. Princet is known as "le mathématicien du cubisme." Princet brought to attention of these artists a book entitled Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions by Esprit Jouffret (1903) a popularization of Poincaré's Science and Hypothesis. In this book Jouffret described hypercubes and complex polyhedra in four dimensions projected onto a two-dimensional page. Princet was close to Metzinger and participated in meetings of the Section d'Or in Puteaux, giving informal lectures to the artists, many of whom were passionate about mathematical order. In 1910, Metzinger said of him, "[Picasso] lays out a free, mobile perspective, from which that ingenious mathematician Maurice Princet has deduced a whole geometry".[6]
Influence on quantum mechanics
Jean Metzinger, La Femme au Cheval, hanging in the office of Niels Bohr (the Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922)
Arthur I. Miller, author of Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time and the Beauty that Causes Havoc (2002), writes: "Cubism directly helped Niels Bohr discover the principle of complementarity in quantum theory, which says that something can be a particle and a wave at the same time, but it will always be measured to be either one or the other. In analytic cubism, artists tried to represent a scene from all possible viewpoints on one canvas. [...] How you view the painting, that’s the way it is. Bohr read the book by Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes on cubist theory, Du Cubisme. It inspired him to postulate that the totality of an electron is both a particle and a wave, but when you observe it you pick out one particular viewpoint."[13][14]
Niels Bohr (1885–1962), the Danish physicist and one of the principle founders of quantum mechanics, moved into a mansion owned by the Carlsberg Foundation (where he and his family resided after 1932[15]) and was given unconditional authority to furnish it. For inspiration Bohr hung in his office a large painting by Jean Metzinger, La Femme au Cheval (Woman with a horse), one of Metzinger's most conspicuous early examples of 'mobile perspective' implementation. Bohr, vitally interested in the rapid changes taking place in modern art, took great pleasure in speaking about La Femme au Cheval to visitors, according to the Danish artist Mogens Andersen (1967, p. 321). His lectures had been meant to parallel "the lessons painfully learned by atomic physicists," writes Miller, "who realized the inadequacy of visual perception when they discarded the visual imagery of the solar system atom after 1923."[13] To this problem Bohr developed a solution in 1927 with striking similarities to Metzinger's concept of multiple perspective: the principle of complementarity, which Bohr summarized as follows:
[...] the account of the experimental arrangements and of the results of the observations must be expressed in unambiguous language with suitable application of the terminology of classical physics. [...] Consequently, evidence obtained under different experimental conditions cannot be comprehended within a single picture, but must be regarded as complementary in the sense that only the totality of the phenomenena exhausts the possible information about the objects.[16]
Bohr was the first to point out the ‘indivisibility of the quantum of action’, his way of describing the uncertainty principle, implying that not all aspects of a system can be viewed simultaneously. For example, the wave–particle duality of physical objects are such complementary phenomena. Both concepts are borrowed from classical mechanics, i.e., measurements such as the double-slit experiment can demonstrate one or the other, but not both phenomena at a particular moment in time or position in space. It is impossible to empirically demonstrate both phenomena simultaneously.
This was perhaps the first manifestation of interest in Cubism on the part of a leading representative of the physics community.[17] Bohr's interest in the new art, Miller notes, was anchored in the writings of Metzinger. He concludes: "If cubism is the result of the science in Art, the quantum theory is the result of art in science."[13] In the epistemological words of Bohr, 1929:
...depending upon our arbitrary point of view...we must, in general, be prepared to accept the fact that a complete elucidation of one and the same object may require diverse points of view which defy a unique description. (Neils Bohr, 1929)[18]
Within the context of Cubism, artists were forced into the position of re-evaluating the role of the observer. Classical linear and aerial perspective, uninterrupted surface transitions and chiaroscuro were pushed aside. What remained was a series of images obtained by the observer (the artist) in different frames of reference as the object was being painted. Essentially, observations became linked through a system of coordinate transformations. The result was Metzinger's 'total image' or a combination of successive images. In Metzinger's theory, the artist and the object being observed became equivocally linked so that the results of any observation seemed to be determined, at least partially, by actual choices made by the artist. "An object has not one absolute form; it has many," Metzinger wrote. Furthermore, part of the role of placing together various images was left to the observer (the one looking at the painting). The object represented, depending on how the observer perceives it, could have as many forms "as there are planes in the region of perception." (Jean Metzinger, 1912)[19]
^Joann Moser, Cubist Works, 1910–1921, p. 43, 1985, Jean Metzinger in Retrospect, The University of Iowa Museum of Art (J. Paul Getty Trust, University of Washington Press)
^ abNote sur la peinture, Jean Metzinger, Pan (Paris), October–November 1910
^ abDaniel Robbins, Jean Metzinger: At the Center of Cubism, 1985, Jean Metzinger in Retrospect, The University of Iowa Museum of Art (J. Paul Getty Trust, University of Washington Press) p. 9-10
^'Cubisme et tradition, Jean Metzinger, Paris Journal, 16 August 1911
^S. E. Johnson, Metzinger, Pre-Cubist and Cubist Works, 1900-1930, International Galleries, Chicago, 1964
^ abDu "Cubisme", Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes, Edition Figuière, Paris, 1912 (First English edition: Cubism, Unwin, London, 1913)
^Linda Henderson, The Fourth Dimension and NonEuclidean geometry in Modern Art, 1983
^Daniel Robbins, Jean Metzinger: At the Center of Cubism, 1985, Jean Metzinger in Retrospect, The University of Iowa Museum of Art, p. 11
^ abcMiller, A., 2002, Einstein, Picasso: space, time and the beauty that causes havoc, Basic Books, New York, 2001, pp. 166-169, 256-258
^French, A. P.; Kennedy, P. J., eds. (1985). Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-62415-3
^Niels Bohr (1949). Discussions with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics. In P. Schilpp. Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist. Open Court.
