Francis Picabia: Our head is round to allow thoughts to change direction.
Mercator Fund| N° d'inventaire | 20154 |
| Format | 25 x 31 |
| Détails | 368 p., illustrations, hardcover with dust jacket. |
| Publication | Brussels, 2016 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | |
A “kaleidoscopic series of experiments.” This is how Marcel Duchamp described the artistic career of his friend Francis Picabia (1879–1953), whose breathtakingly diverse work moved, in the space of fifty years, from Impressionism to radical abstraction, from Dadaist provocation to pseudo-classicism, and from photographic realism to Art Informel. Fearless and daring, impetuous and brilliant, Picabia became both famous and infamous for his position at the forefront of Dadaism only to publicly break with it in 1921. Having left Paris in 1925 to live on the French Riviera, where he would remain until after the Second World War, the artist continued to pursue his art and his life, combining painting, writing, boating, gambling, party planning, and a passion for sports cars. This inveterate shapeshifter, who constantly questioned the purpose and meaning of art and seemed always one step ahead of his critics and peers, inspired many younger artists, even if his iconoclastic legacy and impact on 20th-century modernism remain largely unknown to the general public. Francis Picabia: Our Head Is Round to Allow Thought to Change Direction accompanies the first comprehensive retrospective of the artist's career ever organized in the United States, and the first in Europe in over a decade. The book, produced in collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Kunsthaus Zurich, explores Picabia's oeuvre as a whole, with significant aspects of the artist's complex career being discussed in depth by leading scholars. A detailed chronology and annotated works list complete this wide-ranging study of one of the most provocative and influential artists of the last 100 years.
A “kaleidoscopic series of experiments.” This is how Marcel Duchamp described the artistic career of his friend Francis Picabia (1879–1953), whose breathtakingly diverse work moved, in the space of fifty years, from Impressionism to radical abstraction, from Dadaist provocation to pseudo-classicism, and from photographic realism to Art Informel. Fearless and daring, impetuous and brilliant, Picabia became both famous and infamous for his position at the forefront of Dadaism only to publicly break with it in 1921. Having left Paris in 1925 to live on the French Riviera, where he would remain until after the Second World War, the artist continued to pursue his art and his life, combining painting, writing, boating, gambling, party planning, and a passion for sports cars. This inveterate shapeshifter, who constantly questioned the purpose and meaning of art and seemed always one step ahead of his critics and peers, inspired many younger artists, even if his iconoclastic legacy and impact on 20th-century modernism remain largely unknown to the general public. Francis Picabia: Our Head Is Round to Allow Thought to Change Direction accompanies the first comprehensive retrospective of the artist's career ever organized in the United States, and the first in Europe in over a decade. The book, produced in collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Kunsthaus Zurich, explores Picabia's oeuvre as a whole, with significant aspects of the artist's complex career being discussed in depth by leading scholars. A detailed chronology and annotated works list complete this wide-ranging study of one of the most provocative and influential artists of the last 100 years.