page_title: Brooklyn Bridge (Gleizes)
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Brooklyn Bridge (Gleizes) / Background
context_page_description: Brooklyn Bridge is a 1915 painting by the French artist, theorist and writer Albert Gleizes. Brooklyn Bridge was exhibited at the Montross Gallery, New York, 1916 along with works by Jean Crotti, Marcel Duchamp and Jean Metzinger.
  This is the first in a series of three highly abstract paintings by Gleizes of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was the most abstract painting of the bridge to date. Gleizes and the Italian-American artist Joseph Stella had been friends since 1915 and it has been of interest to compare this painting with Stella's Brooklyn Bridge of 1919-20.
  The American collector John Quinn acquired Brooklyn Bridge and several other works by Gleizes that had been on view at Montross Gallery, either during the exhibition or subsequently. In 1927, an exhibition and sale of Quinn's art collection took place in New York City. The sale was conducted by Otto Bernet and Hiram H. Parke at the American Art Galleries. A catalogue was published for the occasion by the American Art Association. Brooklyn Bridge was purchased at the sale for $60.
  Brooklyn Bridge forms part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection.
context_section_description: Gleizes stated his admiration for the Brooklyn Bridge in the first interview after his arrival in the United States, comparing it to the noblest achievements of European architecture.
  The Brooklyn Bridge was a key component of the New York landscape for the Ashcan School, though it hadn't held for them the fascination that it did for the generation of modern artists that arrived or returned from Europe during the First World War.
  Joseph Stella wrote of the Brooklyn Bridge: "Seen for the first time, as a weird metallic Apparition under a metallic sky, out of proportion with the winged lightness of its arch, traced for the conjunction of Worlds… it impressed me as the shrine containing all the efforts of the new civilization of America".
  Albert Gleizes remarked: "the genius who built the Brooklyn Bridge is to be classed alongside the genius who built Notre Dame de Paris". Supporting Gleizes' claim that the Brooklyn Bridge belongs in the same category as the Notre Dame Cathedral, Marcel Duchamp said America's greatest works of art are its bridges and its plumbing. (Stella and Walter Arensberg accompanied Duchamp to a plumbing supply store in 1917 to purchase the infamous urinal, soon to be entitled Fountain and signed "R.Mutt").
  Whereas other proto-modernists such as Henry James, H. G. Wells and Alvin Langdon Coburn pondered the bridge from a distance—contemplating its cultural and industrial aspects—artists like John Marin, Max Weber, Joseph Stella and Gleizes worked directly at the bridge itself, reveling in the personal experience. This is what Alan Trachtenberg called “the classic moment” when the bridge—in front of the eyes—transforms itself from a public icon to “a private event”. The classic moment is not studied or pondered but entirely instant and radically subjective. It is a personal response to modernity of the unique structure, an attempt to “know the bridge from the inside”.
  Stemming back to his years at the Abbaye de Créteil, the interest in ambitious subjects continued to inspire Albert Gleizes throughout the 1910s: Passy, Bridges of Paris, La Chasse (The Hunt), Harvest Threshing (Le Dépiquage des Moissons), Les Joueurs de football (Football Players). From 1915, Gleizes drew inspiration from the music of jazz, from the skyscrapers of New York, from neon signs, from the hustle and bustle of busy Manhattan streets and avenues such as Broadway, and from the Brooklyn Bridge; expressing the various sensations and vast drama of modern city life in an unprecedented series of works.
  During the months of autumn, following his demobilization in 1915, Gleizes married Juliette Roche and moved to New York. There they were met by Carlos Salzedo, Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, and Jean Crotti (who would eventually marry Suzanne Duchamp). Marcel Duchamp had emigrated to New York several months earlier after being judged physically unfit for his service in the military. Shortly after his arrival, Gleizes, accompanied by Salzedo, frequented jazz clubs in Harlem. With all it had to offer, New York had a strong impact on the artist's production.
  Gleizes had previously been to New York for the occasion of the Armory Show (which in 1913 introduced European modern art to an American audience), exhibiting his La Femme aux Phlox (Woman with Phlox)’’, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and L'Homme au Balcon, Man on a Balcony (Portrait of Dr. Théo Morinaud)’’, Philadelphia Museum of Art.
  In New York Gleizes met Walter Pach (who he knew from Paris), Stuart Davis, Max Weber, Joseph Stella, and participated in a show at Montross Gallery (April 1916)—exhibiting Brooklyn Bridge—with Duchamp, Crotti and Metzinger (who remained in Paris). At this exhibition the group was dubbed 'The Four Musketeers' in the press. The Montross exhibition introduced some of the most avant-garde French art of the time to the New York art scene, causing a sensation and once again forcing American artists to rethink their ideas about art. This exhibitions demonstrated that there existed an even more radical approach in art than that offered by the Futurists
caption: Joseph Stella, 1919-20, Brooklyn Bridge, oil on canvas, 215.3 x 194.6 cm, Yale University Art Gallery
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