page_title: Bords de la Marne
section_title: Structural rhythms
hierarchical_section_title: Bords de la Marne / Structural rhythms
caption_attribution_description: Henri Le Fauconnier, Ploumanac'h, 1908
context_page_description: Bords de la Marne, also called Les Bords de la Marne and The Banks of the Marne, is a proto-Cubist oil painting on canvas created in 1909 by the French artist, theorist and writer Albert Gleizes. In this work can be seen a departure from the representation of the observable world. The subject is treated neither as a confined symbolic allegory nor as a cultural background indicated by specific real appearance, but is instead presented in concrete and precise geometric terms. The development of Cubist and abstract art in the work of Gleizes was necessarily a transformation from the synthetic preoccupation with his subject matter. The passage of Gleizes' painting from an epic visionary figuration to total abstraction was foreshadowed during his proto-Cubist period. Bords de la Marne measures 54 × 65 cm, and is currently in the permanent collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon.
context_section_description: Gleizes' style changed rapidly between 1905 and 1909. From a paint application technique akin to Impressionism and a palette similar to Neo-Impressionism and Fauvism, his painting became more robust. Color and brushwork became simpler, his structural rhythms more pronounced, though softened by curvilinear forms. A synthetic view of the world—presenting the remarkable properties of space, time, multiplicity and diversity—suddenly materialized. These paintings were a visual parallel to the ideals verbally realized in the Abbaye de Créteil poetry.
  Experienced in the treatment of inclusive landscapes (writes Robbins), he nevertheless had to solve the problem of balancing many simultaneous visions on a painted surface. Gleizes mitigated the distortion of distance by linear perspective, by flattening the picture plane; his skies were on the same plane as the simple flat objects in front and, although scale was retained, a form in the distance would be brought to the foreground by making it bright. Every element of the painting had to be reduced to clear planes, treated as uniformly as possible, for attention lavished on any one part would jeopardize the whole dehcate balance. In 1908, although color range expanded in the winter river scenes and contracted in the summer landscapes, the horizon line consist ently crept higher and higher.
  Henri Le Fauconnier, living in Brittany in comparative isolation, was pursuing similar ends. A former student at the Académie Julian and a friend of Maurice Denis and Les Nabis, he was painting rocks and seascapes in a progressively geometric fashion. He exhibited his seascapes at the 1909 Salon des Indépendants but Gleizes had not yet exhibited in that salon and appears not to have seen the work until they met through Alexandre Mercereau the same year. Mercereau, perhaps, realized the extent of their common interests.
  According to Gleizes, Mercereau is also responsible for having introduced him to Jean Metzinger in 1910—the same year that Mercereau included these three artists in a Moscow exhibition, probably the first Jack of Diamonds Exhibition. Prior to meeting, Gleizes and Metzinger had been linked by Louis Vauxcelles' disparaging comments on "des cubes Blafards" which likely referred to Metzinger's Portrait of Apollinaire and Gleizes' L'Arbre (The Tree) (1910) at the Salon des Indépendants. Mercereau had previously included Gleizes' Les Brumes du Matin sur la Marne in a Russian exhibition of 1908.
  "Given Mercereau's long standing delight in promoting group activity", writes Robbins, "it is easy to recognize his pleasure in having brought together three painters whose works exhibited similar interests and who could be identified with his own synthetic ideals, ideals which had been influential in the Abbaye's development". As organizer of the literary section of the Salon d'Automne of 1909, he was able to introduce Gleizes to painters exhibiting there and to introduce his own concepts to the world of painting".
  In 1909 and 1910 a significant group of artists came together through Mercereau. The entire group—including Allard, Barzun, Beauduin, Castiaux, Jouve, Divoire, Parmentier, Marinetti, Brâncuși, Varlet and even Apollinaire and Salmon—became sympathetic to the ideas of the Abbaye. During the Summer of 1908 Gleizes and Mercereau organized a great Journée portes ouvertes at the Abbaye, with poetry readings, music and exhibitions. Participants included the Italian Symbolist poet, and soon principle theorist of Futurism, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, and the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși.
  Salmon and Apollinaire were only peripheral members, participating in divers literary and artistic circles, but clearly Apollinaire's conception of Cubism was influenced by the epic notions found in the old Abbaye circle. In his preface to the 1911 Brussels Indépendants, Apollinaire wrote: 
  ...thus has come a simple and noble art, expressive and measured, eager to discover beauty, and entirely ready to tackle those vast subjects which the painters of yesterday did not dare to undertake, abandoning them
caption: Henri le Fauconnier, 1908, Ploumanac'h, Museum Kranenburgh, Bergen, the Netherlands
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