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Artist or Maker: Max Weber (1881-1961)
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Provenance: (Probably) 291, New York.
Estate of the artist.
Joy Weber.
Downtown Gallery, New York.
Bernard Danenberg Galleries, Inc., New York.
Sotheby's, New York, 2 December 1982, lot 90.
Forum Gallery, New York.
Private collection, New York, 1982.
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Literature: P. North, "Bringing Cubism to America: Max Weber and Pablo Picasso," American Art, fall edition, 2000, p. 69, illustrated (as Vaudeville).
P. McDonnell, On the Edge of Your Seat: Popular Theater and Film in Early Twentieth-Century American Art, New Haven, Connecticut, 2002, illustrated.
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Notes: Painted in 1909, the present painting, Burlesque #2 is a work from Max Weber's crucial transitive period from 1909 to 1912, which "marked the end of his apprenticeship and his embarkation on the mature phase of his career." (P. North, Max Weber: The Cubist Decade 1910-1920, Atlanta, Georgia, 1991, p. 26)
Weber spent the three years prior to 1909 studying in Europe. He began working under Jean-Paul Laurens at the Académie Julian, but quickly eschewed the French academic method in favor of independent study of the Old Master painters and interaction with peers such as Jules Flandrin, Henri Rousseau and Henri Matisse. Paul Cèzanne, along with ancient and primitive art, were also strong influences that would inspire him throughout his career. By 1908, Weber had thoroughly immersed himself in the burgeoning Parisian art scene.
On December 21, 1908, Weber left Paris and "returned to New York a new and fervent initiate into the heady realm of modernism, only to discover a cultural 'North Pole...Just bleak, nothing.' He found himself relegated to an environment he considered infinitely inferior to that of Paris, which he had left so reluctantly." (Max Weber: The Cubist Decade 1910-1920, p. 14) Four years before the seminal Amory Show of 1913, New York's modern art scene was in stark contrast to the thriving community in Paris. There was only Alfred Stieglitz's then fledging Little Gallery of the Photo-Secession, commonly called '291', and the still largely unknown artists who he promoted. Over the course of the following three years, Weber would reconcile his relationship with New York while simultaneously developing his mature style.
New York was a burgeoning city much changed from when Weber had left seven years earlier. It was from this urban vitality that Weber drew his inspiration, and it proved to be the ingredient that would lead to the development of Weber's mature style. "While the first modernist works he produced in America reflected the forms and subjects of his French mentors and contemporaries...Weber soon diverged thematically from their aesthetic to produce a body of work that glorified the drama and excitement of America in the twentieth century...By extending his range to include images of American popular culture viewed from the new perspective of European modernism, he helped redefine the stylistic and thematic boundaries for fine art in America." (Max Weber: The Cubist Decade 1910-1920, p. 21)
Vaudeville performances were among the first New York subjects that appealed to Weber. The artist felt an innate connection to all types of production, "For Weber performance--theatrical, musical, cinematic, athletic, or terpsichorean--was a metaphor for the making of a work of art. In painting, the time consuming process of artistic creation is obscured by the unchanging image of a single isolated incident, whereas in performance it is an obvious component of an artistic event." (Max Weber: The Cubist Decade 1910-1920, p. 26)
Burlesque #2 is one of three paintings depicting burlesque shows that Weber painted in 1909. These works, originally exhibited with the title Vaudeville, manifest the marriage of Modernism and the American subject matter in Weber's work. The Fauvist palette, simplified drawing and crowded composition are conflated with American flags and burlesque dancers whose "short frilly costumes...are evidence of their extrapolation from the popular stage entertainments at Coney Island." (Max Weber: The Cubist Decade 1910-1920, p. 26)
The distortion of the dancers in Burlesque #2, demonstrates Weber's early attempts to reconcile the discrepancy between painting and performance. He is attempting to capture movement on a static surface, portraying multiple moments and perspectives in a single composition. Weber's increasing interest in capturing a form in various stages of motion would lead him away from his Fauvist roots to his crystal figures and subsequently prismatic Cubism. Weber revisited the subject of performance as his style evolved in later works such as Russian Ballet (1916, Edith and Milton Lowenthal Collection) and The Two Musicians (1917, The Museum of Modern Art, New York).
Burlesque #2 also exhibits the continuing influence of primitive art on Weber's work. The large eyes of his dancers recall those in Meso-American totems as well as African masks and sculpture. The oddly placed face in the lower left corner of Burlesque #2 could be an allusion to a primitive mask, which would emphasize the theme of performance and masquerade. Traditionally worn for weddings and other ceremonies, tribal masks had powerful, widely-accepted connotations of ritual performance in social settings. "His love of primitive art...showed in the sculptural massiveness of his figures, their contorted forms, and their unnaturalistic proportions, as in their big heads and eyes, the latter often shown full-faced with the head in profile." (L. Goodrich, Max Weber, New York, 1930, p. 22)
Over the course of the next few years, Weber would further explore Primitivism in works such as Two Figures (1910, The Regis Collection, Minneapolis, Minnesota) and Figure Study (1911, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York). As his style evolved the manifestation of this influence in his art changed. "In his early American period (1909-1912), Weber...thought much about the power of the childlike and the primitive in art, and he was drawn to a searching study of the force that is in the aboriginal arts of America...From this work Weber was led into a research in construction and geometric consistency." (H. Cahill, Max Weber, New York, 1930, p. 42) The continued influence of the powerful angular elements and monumental stature of primitive art can be seen in Weber's Cubist work through the late 1910s.
Many Cubist artists, most notably Picasso, were also drawn to the formidable lines and mystique of primitive art. During his student days in Paris, Weber was familiar with Picasso's use of African sculpture, "Weber and other artists who had been concerned with problems similar to those upon which Picasso was working at once hailed this new work as a significant step in the research of modern art." (Max Weber, p. 18). It is highly likely that Weber saw Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907, The Museum of Modern Art, New York) before he left Europe. Two of the five women in Picasso's masterpiece wear tribal masks. While this work probably influenced Weber and there are strong societal ties between the subject of burlesque and brothels, it is in the divergence in the two artist's treatment of their subjects that demonstrates the early influences of American culture on Weber's psyche.
While the palette and composition of Burlesque #2 still evince Weber's European training, the contorted figures and flattened space contain the seed of his Cubist exploration, which he would continue to develop and lead to the most prolific and successful decade of his career. The present work represents an integral stage in Weber's transition from his student years in Europe to the development of his mature style.
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