Aesthetics No.15 (2011)76 / The Japanese Society for Aesthetics

Cubism and Color: An Untold History

KATO Yukiko
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, U.S.A.
Jamais
Je ne pourrai grandir mon unité vivante
Jusqu’à ce que l’énorme dehors entre en elle
On joue du piano, là-bas,
De l’autre côté de la rue.
Je devine à tâtons que c’est
Une jeune fille vêtue
D’un corsage blanc, d’une jupe
Bleue, et d’un ruban à la taille.

Elle est seule au chaud de sa chambre.
Ses yeux voudraient bien être aimés.
Les notes glissent par les mailles
Des rideaux, passent la croisée,Rencontrent des rayons de gaz;Le son me vient sur la clarté,
Et j’écoute onduler vers moi
Une musique à flamme jaune.
Jules Romains, La Vie Unanime (1908)

Color: Something Repulsive
How color functioned in the formation of Cubism? –– Jules Romains (1885-1972) was ayoung poet just over the age of twenty when he published his poetry La vie unanime at theartist colony Abbaye de Créteil, south-east of Paris, in spring 1908.[1] His aesthetics, generally
called Unanimisme, praised the “intersubjective” experience as an actual reality of modern
world –– an experience in which multiple subjects merge into one by overcoming the linear
subject-object relationship –– to cite the contemporary phenomenologist Edmund Husserl(1859-1938). Just as Husserl proposed looking introspectively into one’s self in order to return“to the object itself/zu den Sachen selbst,” Romains, in his work, sharpened his internal senses
so exquisitely that he could capture the intersubjective reality –– color, sound, touch,femininity, immaturity, encounters, intersections, and decentralized structure. Romains’
poetry is “colorful” in a philosophical sense. The poet salvaged periphery and the secondary
qualities represented by color, which had spilled out from the phallic logocentrism in Western
philosophy. In fact, the intersubjective world of Unanimisme is filled with colorful
representations, as evidenced by recent studies that have placed the viewer’s experience ofcolor on a phenomenological dimension.[2]Regardless of its short existence, the artist colony Abbaye de Créteil empowered young
Romains to step into his challenging project. The group that dwelled there provided alandmark of modern cultural history, considering that the future star avant-gardists ––including major Cubists and Futurists, such as F. T. Marinetti (1876-1944), Albert Gleizes(1881-1953), and Gino Severini (1883-1966) –– spent their pre-revolutionary era together
there.[3] They had critically emulated the principle of Free Verse demonstrated by Walt
Whitman and Gustave Kahn and had venerated the anarchism of Aleksei Tolstoy and Peter

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77

Kropotkin. Through their political and artistic radicalism, they boosted their praise of lively
dynamism to the artistic front, which had been otherwise neglected by the classical worldview
of the static self-and-world relationship. The aesthetics of Abbaye de Créteil, therefore, wasnaturally associated with that of Cubism and Futurism, characterized by these genres’ dynamic
pictorial structure. In fact, several art historians had already pointed out this affinity as early as
the 1960s, not only because Gleizes and Severini frequented the group, but also because thegroup professed the spatial/temporal dynamism that could foresee the tenets of the subsequent
avant-gardes.[4] Specifically, considering the significant role that the Abbaye played in thebirth of Orphisme,[5] a visual world consisting of heterogeneous color patches would
reasonably correspond with the fin-de-siècle mindset that refuted the classical sense of timeand space. Friedrich Schlegel designated “fragmentation” as an attribute of modern art as earlyas the beginning of the nineteenth century. However, as art historian Fujio Maeda pointed out,
it should be noted that such fragmentation was inseparably connected to the usage of color
expression in the modern visual world.[6] For example, as early as 1867, writers such as Emile
Zola saw through the peculiar effect of the fragmental color contrasts in the work of Edouard
Manet, which was independent of subject matter.[7] Furthermore, we all know the subsequent
prosperous years of color-oriented avant-gardes such as Impressionism, Symbolism, NeoImpressionism, and Fauve –– all of which set color as the sum and substance of their pictorial
structure. Following contemporary theorist Ernest Cassirer, who designated modernity as theage of “relation” instead of that of “substance,”[8] it can be safely said that color was the mostappropriate medium through which to express such relative dynamism, as it can posit relations
on the canvas by juxtaposition while line and design trace substantial outlines.[9]Cubism, which emerged through Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Georges Braque (18821963), was born during such a period of color art prosperity. Historically and formalisticallyspeaking, therefore, it could be reasonable to delineate Cubism as a part of the modern
widespread discourse of the color fragmental space emerging in the late nineteenth century.
However, any scholar who looks into the historiography of Cubism would encounter strong
resistance to such an explanation. In his Der Weg zum Kubismus (1920), Daniel-Henry
Kahnweiler, the exclusive art dealer for Picasso and Braque, famously asserted the heroic epicof Pablo Picasso, which began with the creation of “Demoiselles d’Avignon” (1907), andconcluded with the expulsion of its color.
In the year 1906, Braque, Derain, Matisse and many others were still striving for
expression through color, using only pleasant arabesques, and completely dissolving theform of the object. Cézanne’s great example was still not understood…. Early in 1907
Picasso began a strange large painting depicting women, fruit and drapery, which he left
unfinished. It cannot be called other than unfinished, even though it represents a long
period of work. Begun in the spirit of the works of 1906, it contains in one section theendeavors of 1907 and thus never constitutes a unified whole…. The colors are luscious
blue, strident yellow, next to pure black and white. This is the beginning of Cubism, thefirst upsurge, a desperate titanic clash with all of the problems at once…. An artist who ispossessed of the divine gift, genius, always produces aesthetic creations…whatever their

78

KATO Yukiko‘appearance’ may be…. A short period of exhaustion followed; the artist’s battered spirit
turned to problems of pure structure…. At the same time of course, the problem ofcomprehension –– of structure –– was always in the foreground…. The question of color,on the other hand, was completely by passed.[10]Although ninety years have passed since the publication of this text, the position of color in theliterature of Cubism has not seen any radical change. In the literature on Cubism, thediscussion on color is limited to the study of papiers collés emerging from 1912, Robert
Delaunay’s (1885-1941) Orphisme, and the activity of the “Salon Cubists,” who exhibited theirworks at the annual Salon starting in 1911. Thus almost no study thematized color as an
essential element in the birth of Cubism according to the consecutive history of the function ofcolor in visual space that began with Impressionism.[11]For art dealer Kahnweiler, announcing the farewell to color must have been the easiest
way to distinguish the “genius” under his aegis from the contemporary “mediocre” artists whodelved into color expressions at that time. As David Batchelor argues, such “chromophobia”
has long permeated the Western cultural discourse.[12] The word “color” derived from theprefix “kel” of the Indian-European parent language, which means “skin, surface, andconceal.”[13] Probably stemming in part from this etymology, color has been designated as asecondary quality that can only creep over the surface of things. Likewise, in the field of visualart, the ascendancy of design over color is –– needless to say –– an outcome of this
discourse.[14] Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment (1790), from which Kahnweiler
borrowed his idea of “analysis and synthesis” to explain the stylistic change of Cubism, also
argued that delineation essentially contributed to beauty while color simply enlivened thesensation or Empfindung.[15] At the same time, however, this means that color has concealed(also deriving from “kel”) or retained the peripheral knowledge repressed by philosophicalinstitutionalization. Critics including even J. W. Goethe, presumably one of the greatest
supporters of the discourse of color, condemned brilliant colors as a “gaudy” attribute of thebarbarian and the uncultured.[16] The colorful expression by the Impressionists was mocked
as morbid “indigo-mania” by contemporary critics.[17] The decorated colorful interior was
regarded as the place of otium or female leisure, irrelevant to the place of negotium or malebusiness.[18] In this way, in the West, color has always been offered a place among therepressed, which was characterized by irrationality, femininity, domesticity, decorativeness,barbarism, and mental illness.[19]This conceptual topology reminds us of the etymology of the Japanese word color or i-ro,
which means “the place (ro) of menace, taboo, and terribleness (i).” Color theorist Asao
Komachiya argued that the concept of color has historically been associated with ethicallyrejected issues such as death, destruction, and taboo.[20] His argument reminds us of thepossible fact that color has a destructive power exclusively intrinsic to the peripheral existence.
Considering Peter Bürger’s theory of “defamiliarization,” which argued that the avant-garde
was an attempt to retroactively reveal the repressed darkness hidden behind theinstitutionalization,[21] color as the retainer of menace must have been an appropriate means
for this violating attempt made by the avant-gardists. Picasso and his work, which were always

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79

driven by the beauty of destruction,[22] do not fit the staticand even arguably hypocritical explanation of “analysis
and synthesis.” It is true that the colors of the works of
Picasso and Braque around 1911 (Fig. 1) were dark.[23]However, consideration of color as a system of knowledge,
and determining whether its tone is bright or not, is not asignificant issue for discussion. Designating color as ahorizon of knowledge is one aim of this paper –– namely,
logos vs. chaos, sequence vs. fragmentation, the civilized vs.
the uncivilized, and the “male” saneness vs. the “female”
insanity. One might even argue that Cubism was born as aresult of the rising interest in color. The proposition of thepossibility of such a repulsive history is the aim herein.

Cubism as Color Art: A Discourse to Be Rediscoverd
An obvious severance occurred between the fin-desiècle discourse praising the chaotic attempts of the avantgardists and that of the post-World War I proposing stablesocial orders and nationalism even in the field of art.
Considering that Kahnweiler wrote Der Weg zum
Kubismus (1920) in Switzerland, a place of exile, to protect
his collections under the aegis of German philosophy,[24]the pre-war discourse should be carefully examined bydifferentiating it from that emerging in post-war society.
American critic Gelett Burgess, who maintained a certain
distance from contemporary European partisanship,
exclaimed the following with surprise when heencountered Picasso’s nudes in 1908 (Fig. 2):
The terrible pictures loom through the chaos. Monstrous, monolithic women, creatures like Alaskan
totem poles, hacked out of solid, brutal colors, frightful, appalling! (…) Picasso gets drunk on vermilion
and cadmium.[25]Fig. 1: Pablo Picasso.
Portrait of Kahnweiler, 1910,
oil, 100.6cm x 72.8cm, The Art
Institute of Chicago.

Fig. 2: Pablo Picasso.
Three Nudes under the Tree,
1907-8, oil, Picasso Museum,
Paris.

In the face of the audacious structure of Picasso’s Cubism painting, Burghess described hisbrilliant impression using the vocabulary of peripheral concepts such as color, women, and“primitive” culture. Burghess’ statement is also reminiscent of comments by Impressionist
critic Ernest Fillonneau, who reacted similarly to the work of Camille Pissarro (1830-1903),
thirty years before the advent of Cubism: “Mr. Pissarro became completely unintelligible. In his
tableaux, he married all the colors of the rainbow. How violent, tough, and brutal he is.”[26]80

KATO Yukiko

Presumably, nineteenth-century viewers who had encountered the continuous destruction of
spatial representation in avant-garde art must have read such violent novelty; importantly thisnovelty could not be irrelevant to color expression. A pertinent example of this connection is
the fact that Guillaume Apollinaire applied his eulogizing article on Fauve’s revolutionary
character in 1908 to his later work The Cubist Painters (1913). Apollinaire published his
original article entitled “Three Virtues of Plastic Art,” for the avant-garde exhibition in Le
Havre in June 1908, where Bonnard, Braque, Denis, Derain, Matisse, Metzinger, Redon,
Sérusier, Signac, Van Dongen, and Vlaminck –– namely, some Fauvists, Symbolists, NeoImpressionists, and proto-Cubists –– all assembled.[27] In this homage to the avant-gardists,
Apollinaire likened their art to a flame and claimed that beauty was not eternal. Under these
dynamic aesthetics, he described the typical classical concepts of “purity, synthesis, and truth”
in the most radical precepts: “purity driven by personal intuition,” “synthesis seeing thefleeting world,” and “the truth being incessantly renewed.” Five years later, the full text of thiscommemorative article reappeared in the preface of his The Cubist Painters.[28]In this way, the modernist trend toward the pictorial
dynamic fragmentation, which Zola had foreseen andRomains and Apollinaire had eulogized, culminated in thisera of Cubism. Of course, this should not be perceived as aproposal of historical progressivism. However, it should be
noted that the avant-garde art from Impressionism to
Cubism shared –– in part –– a common destructive
moment, as evidenced by such examples as the number ofcritics including Kahnweiler perceiving a taste of Cubism
in André Derain’s Fauve,[29] or those around the turn ofFig. 3: Paul Signac.
the century who referred to Neo-Impressionist color
Canal, Venice, 1905, oil,confetti as “cubes” before Vauxelles and Matisse began to
73.5cm x 92cm, Toledo,
use the terms “Cubism” or “cubes” for Cubism (Fig. 3).[30]Museum of Art.
In 1914, American art historian Arthur Eddy commented:
Twenty or twenty-five years ago painters who used a broad technic [sic], and especiallythose who used the palette knife to lay the pigment in flat sweeps, were looked upon as
charlatans and sensationalists. (…) This broad technic is simply painting in planes – in asense, simply modified Cubism.[31]In the same year, Fernand Léger (1881-1955) –– who had been patronized by Kahnweiler since1913 –– also announced almost exactly the same view.
The impressionists were the first to reject the absolute value of the subject and to consider
its value to be merely relative. That is the tie that links and explains the entire modern
evolution. (…) they considered painting for its color only, neglecting all form and all line
almost entirely. (…) For the impressionists a green apple on a red rug is no longer the
relationship between two objects, but the relationship between two tones. (…) One painterCubism and Color

81

among the impressionists, Cézanne … felt the necessity for a new form and draftsmanshipclosely linked to the new color.[32] [Emphasis YK]
Here in Léger’s statement, Paul Cézanne, who had been regarded more as a painter of structureand form, distinguished himself as a painter of color. However, in fact, as Judith Wechsler
pointed out, Cézanne’s work was marked for its color by contemporaries such as Zola,
Huysmans, and Bernard, among others. Indeed, in 1877, Zola designated Cézanne as the “greatcolorist,” while Bernard spread the tenet of “there is no line nor modeling, but only contrasts”
as a teaching of Cézanne.[33] Then, what is this “new color” that invalidated the “absolutevalue” of delineation by putting everything in relation to each other? Why did this new media
capture the hearts of the avant-gardists from the Impressionists to the Cubists?

Living Color, or the Quality of Life
Henri Bergson, whose work was well read by the avant-garde artists, including major
Symbolists, Futurists, and Cubists –– some of whom had frequented the Abbaye de Créteil[34]–– commented in his Time and Free Will in 1889.
Shall we call the intensity of light a quantity, or shall we treat it as a quality?...Look closely
at a sheet of paper lighted … by four candles, and put out in succession …. You say that thesurface remains white and that its brightness diminishes. … [However] you will find thatwhat you really perceive is not a diminished illumination of the white surface. … If you callthe first surface in all its brilliancy white, you will have another name to what you now see,for it is a different thing…. The variations in brightness of a given color … would thus benothing but qualitative changes.[35]In the chapter including the previous citation, Bergson raised an objection against
contemporary psychophysics that quantified every state of consciousness. Moreover, in thesame chapter, Bergson repetitively used the rhetoric of the color gradation to visualize the everchanging flow of what he called “duration,” or the unquantifiable state of consciousness.[36] Inorder to enliven all the parts of the spatial consciousness by avoiding mechanical quantification–– that is, argue that any part of visual consciousness could shoulder élan vital –– color
representation was indispensable as it filled in the entire visual space.
The discourse that embraced the material value of space started with Ludwig Büchner’s
Power and Matter in 1855, and gradually terminated with Albert Einstein’s refutation of theether theory in 1905. Notably, during this period, many intellectuals –– including those among
the avant-garde painters –– claimed color to be a major component of the spatial perception.
For example, Hippolyte Taine, in his representative work On Intelligence (1870), read by
Monet and Zola,[37] famously argued that the blind person who gained vision in a day could
only see color patches; therefore the painter had only to juxtapose various color patches on thecanvas.[38] The French psychologist Theodule Ribot, who co-edited with Taine the journal
Revue Philosophique starting in 1876, and contributed to popularizing German and British

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neuro-physiology as well as Schopenhauer philosophy, also asserted that the primary
representation of vision was color.[39] Both Taine and Ribot rejected the so-called absolute
apriori space, and claimed that the sense of space could only be generated by the relative
movements among multiple points in space.[40] In sum, according to their theory, color
contributed to the visualization of space by representing various “qualities” in relation to eachother. Therefore, color was supposed to be associated with time and duration because of its
dynamic movements among multiple points of visual space. Such a concept as durational color
was evident not only in the work of Bergson, but also in that of Schopenhauer, whose theory
had circulated well among French artists and intellectuals since the 1860s through various
survey books including that of Theodule Ribot.[41] Considering the fact that Schopenhauer,
Ribot, and Taine were ardently read by many avant-gardists –– from Impressionists to Cubists
up to and including Robert Delaunay[42] –– as well as the fact that Bergson (who positively
inherited Ribot’s psychology) had a great impact on the formation of Cubist aesthetics,[43] it isevident that the theoretical conglomeration of color/quality/duration drove the avant-garde
intellectuals to the new modern dynamism around the turn of the century.
One approach for examining such discourse of the“new color” and its relation to Cubism, involves looking
into the work and theory of the Cubist painter Jean
Metzinger (1883-1965), who played a critical role inmediating the Picasso-Braque circle and the Salon Cubists
starting in 1906, and Apollinaire further designatedMetzinger as a founder of Cubism as well as the other two,
Picasso and Braque.[44] Born in Nantes, Metzinger moved
to Paris around 1903 and started his career as a pointillist
painter. The style of his work during this early period canbe seen in his mosaic-like painting, which he drew
together with Robert Delaunay –– who was to be called
Fig. 4: Jean Metzinger.
“Cubist” along with Metzinger as a result of thePortrait of Robert Delaunay,
Indépendant exhibition in 1911 onward (Fig. 4).[45] In
1906, oil, 68.4cm x 53.3cm,
1907, the year during which Metzinger created pointillist
Lost.
work, he stated:
I ask of divided brushwork not the objective rendering of light, but iridescences andcertain aspects of color still foreign to painting. I make a kind of chromatic verificationand for syllables I use strokes which, variable in quality, cannot differ in dimension
without modifying the rhythm of a pictorial phraseology destined to translate the diverse
emotions aroused by nature.[46] [Emphasis YK]
Here we see the coalition of the “new color” that Léger proposed and the visual world filledwith the colored “quality” that Bergson depicted. More importantly, until his Cubist era,
Metzinger had maintained his idea that color embodied the Bergsonian concept of quality. In
1912, in their theoretical book, On Cubism –– which is said to be the first theory book onCubism and Color

83

Cubism written by the Cubists themselves –– Metzinger and his collaborator Gleizes proposedthat one should see light in terms of color and quality. Their argument was obviously
influenced by Bergsonism in view of their keen interest in Bergson’s theory during this period.
The Neo-Impressionists … they know too well that color in art is a quality of light, and that
one cannot divide a quality. [However] It is still light that they divide. (…) We do not
automatically associate the sensation of white with the idea of light, and no more thanblack with the idea of darkness. (…) Loving light, we refuse to measure it.[47] [Emphasis
YK]
Because of its chromophobic tendency, the literature of Cubism to date has not examined theseemingly incomprehensible notions of color/light and quality. However, having scrutinized
the color-space discourse emerging in the late nineteenth century, it now seems appropriate toargue that this understanding of color and quality was a part of the huge transitional discourse.
Another reason why the critics’ argument remains relatively unexamined probably lies in
the fact that almost no theoretical works by Gleizes and Metzinger during the pre-war period
was known to the academic world except their On Cubism (1912). However, Metzinger did
complete a little-known article written in Czech, “Kubistiká Technika (Cubist Technique)”(1913), which was first publicized as a work of art history in Mark Antliff and Patricia
Leighten’s A Cubism Reader in 2008.[48] As the article as a whole –– including the Czech
avant-garde movement within the journal Volné Smĕry (Free Direction) –– was examined indetail in A Cubism Reader, here in the discussion will focus on confirming that the Bergsonian
concept of color and quality succeeded in “Kubistiká Technika” as well.
A work of art that is executed in keeping with this kindof [Cubist] perspective will possess as many 'horizons'as the artist deems to be necessary. The space will not
be divided up following the visual cone –– thevanishing lines –– but rather by perpendicular crosssections which will be suitable for preserving thequalities and properties of each of the forms.[49][Emphasis YK]
During this period, when Metzinger described the Cubist
pictorial space as in the previous comment, he in fact
painted a tableau with no distinction between the subject
and the background, which made the whole pictorial spaceof his painting function as “quality” (Fig. 5). In view of thetheoretical consistency in Metzinger’s writing, this Cubist
work had presumably the same root as his former mosaic
work, which was filled with color patches (Fig. 4). In“Kubistiká Technika” (1913), as in On Cubism in 1912,

Fig. 5: Jean Metzinger.
Dancer in a Café, 1912, oil,
63cm x 50cm, Albright-Knox
Art Gallery, Buffalo, New
York.

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KATO Yukiko

Metzinger claimed that color had a quality by which it could be distinguished from light.[50]He subsequently evaluated the avant-garde movement since Impressionism:
Although impressionism failed as an aesthetic project it did prove to us that color gains in
expressive power if –– instead of simply applying paint to a canvas –– we place the basic
elements of each tone separately on the canvas in small dots or patches. We are guided by
the same analytical spirit as the impressionists, but our circumstances have changed. We
no longer form the world out of the vibrations of the sun’s rays, but rather out of thevibrations of the mind.[51] [Emphasis YK]
As color theorist Junichi Murata pointed out, color is a visual media that could offer the spacein which the ability to sense and to be sensed could fuse together since a color itself was a
product of sensation. Color, therefore, could embrace the possibility of functioning as a place of“living” by overcoming the dichotomy between viewing and being viewed.[52] The discussion
thus far has confirmed that the modern dynamic aesthetics based on humanity’s lively
perception was in fact historically incarnated by the collaboration between the avant-gardists
and the theorists who found the unquantifiable flow of consciousness in color expressions.
Among them, color was expected to embody the “quality” that could repel the dry and sterile
concept of abstract space/time –– a concept most detested by the modern Lebens Philosophie,or the philosophy of life. In this stage, color was to function as a moral code in modern society.
Insightfully, in his book thematizing the ethics rooted in the discourse of the “quality of life,”sociologist Joseph Sirgy quoted the following epigram at the beginning of his book: “Life is likean artichoke. You strip away a few years. You peel off an illusion or two, and what remains isessential… the heart.” (anonymous).[53] In this modernist discourse centralizing life first andforemost, what one needs is innumerable “patches” to fill with one’s life, whether these patches
are those of an artichoke or not.

Polyfocus or the Unfinished: A Trace of Effort in Color
The morality embodied by the colored space, therefore, would reject any kind ofcompleteness and stillness. This Sisyphean torture, however, could generate a sense of
euphoria in the modern discourse based on the praise of life. Phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty
discovered the proof of life in Cézanne’s anxiety caused by the painter’s failure andindecisiveness.[54] Similarly, the fragmental spatial representation from Impressionism to
Cubism arguably embraced the paradoxical desire for struggle, failure, and saturation, as
evidenced by Bergson’s statement:
No image will replace the intuition of the duration, but many different images, taken fromquite different orders of things, will be able, through the convergence of their action, todirect consciousness to the precise point where there is a certain intuition to seize on. By
choosing images as dissimilar as possible, any one of them will be prevented usurping theplace of the intuition it is instructed to call forth, since it would then be driven

Cubism and Color85

immediately by its rivals. By seeing that in spite of their differences in aspect they all
demand of the mind the same kind of attention and, as it were, the same degree of tension,
one will gradually accustom consciousness to a particular and definitely determined
disposition, precisely the one it will have to adapt in order to appear unveiled to itself.[55][Emphasis YK]This paradoxical thesis argued that one could reach the essence of things only by suspending
one’s attention, by not staying at one specific point, and by letting different orders intermingle.
Not only the aesthetic but also the political phase of Cubism seems to have embraced this harshmodern discourse. Parallel to its unstable form, since its start Cubism had interfered with thedomains of the Other, continually transgressing and involving them: for example, Africanmasks, “primitive” women, prostitutes, and non-Euclidean geometry. This was far from theexpectation of the stability of high art and had never settled in a certain fixed domain.[56]Although Cubism had nevertheless been regarded as a French avant-garde before the war, once
World War I broke out, even such bare identity would face danger. As Kenneth Silver discussed
in detail, during the period of the “call to order,” which promoted nationalistic and antiGerman sentiment in France, “Cubism” was disdained as a German oppositional art as“Kubism” since Kahnweiler was of Jewish origin.[57] This ironical ambiguity was probably
most crystallized in the artistic and political status of Apollinaire, who had been one of themost significant opinion leaders of Cubism. In 1930, when national and racial tensions
culminated in Europe, the critic Michel Puy –– who had continued writing on Cubism since its
early period –– reviewed the position of Apollinaire situated among the pre-war avant-garde as
follows:
Pole in his origin, brought into France and Italy, the great reader of the literature ofdelicacy, and the admirer at the same time of Chrétien de Troyes and de Paul Féval, hebrought foreign dispositions into French literature, or our culture and our race. He was themost representative figure of an epoch where, under the influences of the Nordic, Oriental,
Jewish, the French artists were taken from their own lineage, and given up in letting theartistic creation bloom naturally from their sensibility.[58]Having renovated the blood of modern art by introducing tensions and attentions accompaniedwith the paradoxical coexistence of different orders, Apollinaire truly embodied the Lebens
Philosophie through his own aesthetic and socio-political topology.
Jonathan Crary, in his Suspension of Perception (2000), depicted the modernity beginningin the nineteenth century as a movement in which the foundation of perception itself wasinterrogated through interruption, void, and friction of perception.[59] In other words, it was
the age that confessed to the self-hurting love of life and that summoned the pleasure of theincompleteness by hurting and interrupting our own perception and life itself. Zola foundpleasure after his initial distasteful feeling when he saw Manet’s painting.[60] Ogden Rood also
found transparent beauty in the dizziness caused by viewing pointillism.[61] Similarly, theresistant history of Cubism that never stays in one place –– reminding us of our own history of

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post-colonial age as well, which never allows us to have a dogmatic point of view –– did notdesire the finished, but rather the incompleteness. Apollinaire’s The Cubist Painters (1913) aswell as his eulogy on Fauve (1908) began with the following phrases:
The plastic virtues: purity, unity, and truth, hold nature subjugated at their feet. In vain
the rainbow is curved into shape, the seasons tremor, crowds rush towards death, science
unmakes and remakes what already exists, worlds fade forever from our minds, ourmoving images kept recurring or reawaken their thoughtlessness, and the parades ofcolours, smells and sounds astonish us, before disappearing from nature. … This monsterof beauty is not eternal. We know that the breath of our life and creativity had no
beginning and will have no end, yet we conceive before all else the creation and the end of
the world.[62]The story or the history that began with Jules Romains has returned to the place of color again.
As Romains saw the fusion and dissolution of his identity in his encounter with the Other,
Cubism and its history have regenerated itself through the incessant dialogues between the self
and the Other by capriciously swallowing the knowledge it touched.[63] Color has always been
joined with its endless erotic desire.

Notes[1] Jules Romains, La Vie Unanime, Gallimard, 1983.
[2] Junichi Murata, Shikisai no Tetsugaku (Philosophy of Color), Iwanami Shoten, 2002, p. 247f.;
Fujio Maeda, “Color,” Tetsugaku no ki, Kodansha, 2002, p. 427f.
[3] For a detailed history of the Abbaye de Créteil, see Christian Sénéchal, L'Abbaye de Créteil, Paris,
1930.
[4] Daniel Robbins, “From Symbolism to Cubism: the Abbaye of Créteil,” in: Art Journal, vol.23,(1963-4 winter), pp. 111-16; Marianne W. Martin, “Futurism,Unanism and Apollinaire,” in: Art
Journal vol.28 (1969 spring), pp. 258-68; Daniel Robbins, “Sources of cubism and futurism”, in:
Art Journal, vol. 41(1981 winter), pp. 324-27.
[5] Sherry A. Bucherrough, Robert Delaunay: The Early Years, Ph. D. Dissertation, University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, 1978, p. 103f.; Virginia Spate, Orphism, Oxford University Press, 1979, p. 30f.
[6] Fujio Maeda, “Ueberlagerung bei Paul Klee, Alternative Poetik und Glas Malerei, Ausst.” Kat.,
Kawamura Memorial Museum, Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, The Miyagi Museum, The
Tokyo Shimbun, S.233-245.
[7] Émile Zola, “Une nouvelle manière de peindre: Édouard Manet” (1867), in: Le Bon Combat,
Paris,1974, pp. 81-82.
[8] Ernst Cassirer, Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff, Berlin, 1910, Kapitel 1.
[9] Sanford Wurmfeld, “Color Painters/ Color Painting,” in: Color Perception, ed. Steven Davis,
Oxford U. Press, 2000, pp. 31-51.
[10] Daniel Henry Kahnweiler, The Rise of Cubism, trans. H. Aronson, New York: Schultz, 1949 (1920),
pp. 6-8.
[11] M. Hoog, “Le cubisme et la couleur,” in: Le Cubisme, Saint-Étienne, Université de Saint-Étienne,
1973, pp. 41-43; Dora Vallier, “Cubisme et Couleur,” in: Du Noir au Blanc, L’Échoppe, 1989, pp. 4762. These texts are some exceptions. However, like the documents in note 5, their discussion

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[13]
[14]

[15]

[16]
[17]

[18]

[19]
[20]
[21]
[22]
[23]
[24]
[25]
[26]

[27]
[28]
[29]

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focuses primarily on Robert Delaunay. Subsequent studies by Nochlin and Krauss discussed thesymbolic function of color in Picasso’s papiers collés; however, the latter study particularly follows
Kahnweiler’s view on color (Linda Nochlin, “Picasso color: Schemes and Gambits,” in: Art inAmerica, vol. 68. No.10 (Dec. 1980), pp. 105-23, 177-83; Rosalind Krauss, The Picasso Papers, New
York, 1998, pp. 159-92). From the 1990s on, the literature of Cubism covers various painters otherthan Picasso and Braque, including the studies of Cottington, Antliff, and Leighten (David
Cottington, Cubism in the Shadow of War, Yale U. Press, 1998; Mark Antliff and Patricia Leighten,
Cubism and Culture, Thames & Hudson, 2001; A Cubism Reader, Chicago, 2008). However, almost
no studies have thematized color in Cubism. The only exception now would be Fritz Metzinger’s
study (Fritz Metzinger, Avant le cubisme, R. G. Fischer, 1994), however, the discussion is limited
to the activity of Jean Metzinger. Meanwhile, Robert L Herbert’s Neo-Impressionism, Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum (1968) limits itself to implying the continuity between Neo-Impressionism
and Cubism.
David Batchelor, Chromophobia, London, 2000.
Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, Elsevier
Publishing Company, 1966. The dictionary refers to “color,” “conceal,” “cell,” and “cover.”John Gage, Color in Art, Thames and Hudson, 2006, pp. 95-109; In French art history, thedichotomy between color and design proposed by Charles Blanc was most influential starting in
the mid-nineteenth century (Charles Blanc, Grammaire des Arts du Dessin, Paris, 1867, p. 21f.)
Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, Hamburg, 2001, pp. 77-78. For the application of Kantianphilosophy in the literature of Cubism, see: Paul Crowther, “Cubism, Kant, and ideology,” in:Word and Image, vol. 3, no.2, Apr-Jun 1987, pp. 195-201; Mark Cheetham, “Kant and Cubism
revisited,” in: Word and Image, vol. 17, no. 3, Jul-Sep 2001, pp. 293-98.
J. W. Goethe, Shikisairon vol. 1 (Color theory), translated from German to Japanese by Yoshito
Takahashi & Fujio Maeda, Kosakusha, 1999, p. 81.
Shigemi Inaga, Edouard Manet botsugo no tosou, Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, 1997, p. 248f.;
Huysmans was well versed with the color therapy emerging at the end of the nineteenth century:
Michael Zimmermann, Seurat and the Art Theory of his Time, Antwerp, 1991, p. 292.
Joyce Henri Robinson, “‘Hi Honey, I’m Home’: Weary (Neurasthenic) Businessmen and the
Formulation of a Serenely Modern Aesthetic,” in: Not at Home, Ch. Reed, ed. London, 1996, pp.
98-112.
Batchelor, op.cit., pp. 51-71.
Asao Komachiya, Shikisai no Arukeoroji (Archeology of Color), Keiso Shobo, 1978, pp. 84-101.
Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans Michael Show, University of Minnesota Press,
1984, pp. 18-19.
“Conversation with Picasso” (1935), in: Art in Theory 1900-2000, ed. Charles Harrison & Paul
Wood, Blackwell, 2003, p. 507f.
Edward Fry, Cubism, Thames & Hudson, 1966, 21f.
Kenneth Silver, Esprit de Corps, Princeton University Press, 1989, pp. 3-27.
Gelett Burgess, “The Wild Men of Paris,” in: The Architectural Record (May 1910), pp. 400-14(Antliff and Leighten, A Cubism Reader, University of Chicago Press, 2008, Document 3, p. 34).
Ernest Fillonneau, “Les Impressionnistes,” in: Le Moniteur des Art, 20 avril 1877, as cited in T. J.
Clark, The Painting of Modern Life, Princeton, 1984, p. 19, note 13: “M. Pissarro devient
complètement inintelligible. Il marie dans ses tableaux toutes les couleurs de l’arc-en-ciel; il est
violent, dur, brutal.”
Guillaume Apollinaire, Chroniques d’Art, Gallimard, 1960, p. 71f.
As for the detailed genesis of the book, see: Guillaume Apollinaire. The Cubist Painters, trans byPeter Reed, 2004, University of California Press, 2004, p. 100f.
Michel Puy, “Les Indépendants,” in: Marges, juil 1911, p. 27; Apollinaire (1950), p. 24; Kahnweiler

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[31]
[32]
[33]

[34]
[35]
[36]

[37]
[38]
[39]
[40]
[41]

[42]
[43]
[44]
[45]
[46]
[47]
[48]
[49]
[50]
[51]
[52]
[53]
[54]
[55]
[56]

KATO Yukiko(1949), p. 4; Youngna Kim, The Early Works of Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy and Othon Friesz,
Ph.D. Diss., Ohio State University, 1980, p. 174f.
Herbert (1968), p. 221; Daniel Robbins, “Jean Metzinger,” in: Jean Metzinger in Retrospect,
University of Iowa Museum of Art, 1985, p. 11; Vallier (1989), pp. 47-62; Fritz Metzinger (1994), pp.
61-75. For detailed study on the Neo-Impressionist impact on later avant-garde art, see ErichFranz, Signac et la liberation de la couleur: de Matisse à Mondrian, Paris: Réunion des musées
nationaux, 1997.
Arthur Eddy, Cubists and Post-Impressionism, Chicago, 1914, p. 80.
Fernand Léger, “The Origins of Painting and its Representational Value,” in: Montjoie, Paris, 1913
(Harrison, Charles and Paul Wood, ed. Art in Theory: 1900-2000, Blackwell, 2003, pp. 202-203.)
Judith Wechsler, ed. Cézanne in Perspective, Prentice-Hall, 1975, p. 15. Wechsler introduced
various contemporary statements that appreciated Cézanne’s usage of color. These include Zola’s
1877 remark that designated Cézanne as “the greatest color painter in the Impressionists” (ibid, pp.
28, 29, 31, 35, 36, 37-8, 42, etc.); Paul Smith also deals with the function of color in Cézanne in his
Interpreting Cézanne, New York, 1996, p. 44f.
Mark Antliff, Inventing Bergson, Princeton University Press, 1993, p. 39f.
Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will, trans. F. L. Pogson, Dover, 2001 (1889), pp. 50, 53-54.
Bergson, ibid., pp. 39; 51-58. Bergson argued that the visualization of duration was strictly
speaking impossible. However, he used much of the rhetoric of color in his other works (e.g.
Bergson, The Creative Mind, trans. M. L. Andison, New York, 1946, pp. 25f.; 164f.; 225f.)
Smith (1996), p. 48.
Hippolyte Taine, On Intelligence, trans by T. D. Haye, New York, 1875, pp. 69-70.
Théodule Ribot, German Psychology of Today, trans by James M. Baldwin, New York, 1886 (1879),
p. 109.
Taine, ibid., pp. 11-12; Ribot, ibid., p. 21.
Louis Reynaud, L’influence allemande en France au XVIIIe et au XIXe siècle, Paris: Hachette, 1922,
p. 269f.; Schopenhauer, Ishito hyosho no sekai I (The world as will and representation), trans from
German to Japanese by Nishio Kanji, Chuko Classics, 2004, pp. 24-25; Arthur Schopenhauer, On
Vision and Colors, trans E. F. J. Payne, Oxford, 1994, pp. 31-32.
Robert Delaunay 1906-14, exhibit cat., Centre Pompidou, 1999, p. 88.
For Bergson’s opinion on Ribot’s theory, see Matter and Memory (1896).
Apollinaire (1950), p. 24.
Centre Pompidou (1999), p. 95; Max Imdahl and Gustav Vriesen, Robert Delaunay: Light andColor, trans Maria Pelikan, New York, 1996, p. 16; Metzinger (1994), p. 69.
His statement reprinted by Georges Desvallières in La Grande Revue (vol. 124, 1907) as cited in
Herbert (1968), p. 221.
Robert Herbert, ed. Modern Artists on Art: Ten Unabridged Essays, New York, 1986, pp. 10-11.
(Gleizes and Metzinger, Du Cusisme, Paris: Eugène Figuières, 1912, pp. 23-24; 26.)
Antliff and Leighten (2008), document 72, p. 602f.
Ibid., 72: p. 4.
Ibid., 72: pp. 10-11.
Ibid., 72: pp. 16-17.
Murata, op.cit., p. 233f.
Anonymous in: M. J. Sirgy, The Psychology of Quality of Life, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002,
the first page.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Le doute de Cézanne,” in: Sens et non-sens, Paris, 1948, p. 49.
Bergson, “Introduction to Metaphysics,” 1903 in: Creative Mind, 1974, p.166; “Introduction à lamétaphysique” (1903), in: La pensée et le mouvant, Paris, 1934, pp. 210-11.
For various issue political and theoretical issues on Cubism, see Antliff and Leighten (2001).

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[58]
[59]
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Silver (1989), p. 11.
Michel Puy, L’Effort des Peintures modernes, Paris, 1933, p. 145.
Jonathan Crary, Suspensions of Perception, MIT Press, 2000, pp. 9-10 et al.
Zola (1974), p. 82.
Ogden Rood, Modern Chromatics, New York, 1973 (1879), pp. 158-60.
Reed (2008), p. 5.
For the concept of generation in terms of fragmentation, see Maeda (2006).

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