The Epic
From immobile form to mobile form
‘L’épopée, de la forme immobile à la forme mobile’, Le Rouge et le Noir, 1929. French text of the historical section of Kubismus (Bauhausbücher 13, Albert Langen Verlag, Munich 1928). Reprinted in Puissances du Cubisme (Editions Présence, Chambéry, 1969).
Albert Gleizes: Le Dépiquage de Moissons [Harvest Threshing], 1912. Oil on canvas, 269x535cm, National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo
[Subheadings added by the translator]
Translator's preface
Challenging the Renaissance - From Cézanne to Cubism - The taste for the 'primitive'
The public scandal of Cubism - The contagion spreads - The conflicts of 1912 - 1913/14
Robert Delaunay - the 'denouement' of Cubism - Metzinger and Gris - first principles of the flat surface - Distortion (dealers and snobs)
Cubism in the 1920s - Commercial applications - Painting and 'decorative painting'
Braque and Picasso, restoration of the craft - The 'Salon Cubists', verticality of the picture plane
Cubism as a popular art - Conclusion, the Decorative Arts Exhibition, 1925
ILLUSTRATIONS - photographs of paintings by various Cubist painters taken from Kubismus, with comments by Gleizes locating them in his threefold model, volume - multiple perspective - flat surface.
NOTE: The essay was published after the international exhibition L'Art d'aujourd'hui organised in Paris by Gleizes's pupil Ynaga Poznansky. Some of the context is given in my essay on Poznansky which can be read here.
The text of The Epic can be downloaded in Word format here
The original French can be downloaded here