Francis Picabia

Vincenzo A. Nicodemo, Milan (acquired in the 1930s)

Private Collection (by descent from the above)

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Amsterdam, De Onafhankelyken, 3de Internationale Jury-Vrije Tentoonstelling, 1914, no. 415

Willard Bohn, Apollinaire and the Faceless Man: The Creation and Evolution of a Modern Motif, London & Toronto, 1991, mentioned p. 160

William A. Camfield, Beverly Calté, Candace Clements, Arnaud Pierre & Pierre Calté, Francis Picabia Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven & London, 2014, mentioned p. 94

En badinant is one of four watercolours that Picabia painted in the South of France in the Spring of 1914, and sent to an exhibition in Amsterdam which opened in May of that year. This group of works were executed following the artist’s return from New York the previous year (fig. 1); Picabia had decided to enter four paintings in the now legendary Armory Show of 1913, hoping for a more open-minded reception in America than the one his work encountered in Paris at the time. The exhibition included a large number of works by Cubist, Expressionist, Fauve, Neo-Impressionist and Symbolist artists working in Europe. As the only French artist who could at the time afford to travel to New York, Picabia took on the role of spokesman for the European avant-garde, giving numerous interviews. Immediately after the Armory Show his works were exhibited in Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery ‘291’, where they were enthusiastically received.

 

Picabia’s journey to America was filled with excitement and with a great cultural and intellectual stimulation that made a profound impact on the work he produced subsequently. In an interview given during his stay in New York he commented: ‘I am seeking a certain balance, through tones of colour or shades, in order to express the sensations I receive from things in the manner of a leitmotiv in a musical symphony. Creative art is not interested in the imitation of objects’ (F. Picabia in World Magazine, 1913). This sentiment is beautifully realised in the present composition, which appears to pulsate with a sense of rhythm and movement.

 

Picabia’s wit also extended to the wilfully obtuse titles he gave to his abstract works. William A. Camfield writes: ‘In some instances, the titles themselves suggest jest or mockery, as in En badinant (in jest, playfully) and Embarras (trouble/problem/hindrance) [fig. 2]. In Chose admirable à voir, mockery exists in the disconnect between the title and image inasmuch as that ‘thing admirable to see’ is one of the most chaotic compositions in Picabia’s entire career […]. Apollinaire, however, did record at that time their mutual interest regarding the interface of art and words, of the visual and linguistic. Apollinaire was composing ‘calligramme’ poems in the form of visual images, and he made an intriguing reference to what he called Picabia’s “poèmes peints”’ (W.A. Camfield et al., op. cit., pp. 94 & 96). These comments demonstrate that in 1914 Picabia was already moving away from his purist abstract concerns of the previous two years, and towards a Dadaist sensibility that revelled in mockery and badinage.