''Caoutchouc'' (English: ''Rubber'') is a painting created circa 1909 by the French artist

Francis Picabia Francis Picabia (: born Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia; 22January 1879 – 30November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, writer, filmmaker, magazine publisher, poet, and typography, typographist closely associated with Dada. When consid ...

. At the crossroads of

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture. Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...

and

Fauvism Fauvism ( ) is a style of painting and an art movement that emerged in France at the beginning of the 20th century. It was the style of (, ''the wild beasts''), a group of modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong col ...

, ''Caoutchouc'' is considered one of the first abstract works in

Western painting The history of Western painting represents a continuous, though disrupted, tradition from classical antiquity, antiquity until the present time. Until the mid-19th century it was primarily concerned with Representational art, representational ...

. The painting is in the collection of

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...

Musée National d'Art Moderne The Musée National d'Art Moderne (; "National Museum of Modern Art") is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in the 4th arrondissement of Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou. In 2021 it ranked 10th in the list of ...

, in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

Background

''Caoutchouc'' is a

watercolor Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (Commonwealth English; see American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin 'water'), is a painting metho ...

gouache Gouache (; ), body color, or opaque watercolor is a water-medium paint consisting of natural pigment, water, a binding agent (usually gum arabic or dextrin), and sometimes additional inert material. Gouache is designed to be opaque. Gouach ...

, and

India ink India ink (British English: Indian ink; also Chinese ink) is a simple black or coloured ink once widely used for writing and printing and now more commonly used for drawing and outlining, especially when inking comic books and comic strips. In ...

on cardboard with dimensions 45.7 × 61.5 cm (18 by 24.2 inches). The work is signed ''Picabia'' lower left, but is undated. For this, much speculation remains about its actual date. Art historian Virginia Spate writes: "''Caoutchouc'' is so different from Picabia's other works of this period that on merely stylistic grounds I would date it to 1913 .. However, the

Musée national d'art moderne The Musée National d'Art Moderne (; "National Museum of Modern Art") is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in the 4th arrondissement of Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou. In 2021 it ranked 10th in the list of ...

dates the painting circa 1909. Speculation remains, too, about its degree of abstraction. Critics have claimed that imagery is present in the form of circular structures clustered on the left of the painting, much as fruits are clustered in a still life painting. Two other still lifes from the period indeed represent fruits in a bowl, one of which was claimed by Picabia's wife, Gabrièle Buffet-Picabia, to be closely related to ''Caoutchouc'' compositionally.Robert J. Belton, ''Picabia's 'Caoutchouc' and the Threshold of Abstraction''
RACAR: revue d'art canadienne / Canadian Art Review, Vol. 9, No. 1/2 (1982), pp. 69-73 The historian W. Scott Haine wrote that ''Caoutchouc'' was "the first clear artistic expression of abstractionism" that would subsequently be expounded upon by

Robert Delaunay Robert Delaunay (; 12 April 1885 – 25 October 1941) was a French artist of the School of Paris movement; who, with his wife Sonia Delaunay and others, co-founded the Orphism (art), Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and g ...

, Sonia Delaunay,

František Kupka František Kupka (23 September 1871 – 24 June 1957), also known as ''Frank Kupka'' or ''François Kupka,'' was a Czech painter and graphic artist A graphic designer is a practitioner who follows the discipline of graphic design, eit ...

and Auguste Herbin.

Abstract art

From 1909 to 1913 several experimental works in the search for purely non-representational art had been created by a number of artists. In addition to Picabia's ''Caoutchouc'', early abstractions included,

Wassily Kandinsky Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky ( – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter and art theorist. Kandinsky is generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstract art, abstraction in western art. Born in Moscow, he spent his childhood in ...

's '' Untitled (First Abstract Watercolor)'', 1913, ''Improvisation 21A'', the ''Impression'' series, and ''Picture with a Circle'' (1911);

's Orphist works, ''Discs of Newton'' (Study for ''Fugue in Two Colors''), 1912 and ''Amorpha, Fugue en deux couleurs'' (''Fugue in Two Colors''), 1912;

's series entitled ''Simultaneous Windows'' and ''Formes Circulaires, Soleil n°2'' (1912–13); Léopold Survage's ''Colored Rhythm'' (Study for the film), 1913;

Piet Mondrian Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (; 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944), known after 1911 as Piet Mondrian (, , ), was a Dutch Painting, painter and Theory of art, art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He w ...

's ''Tableau No. 1'' and ''Composition No. 11'', 1913; and

Kasimir Malevich Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (

completed his first entirely abstract work, the Suprematist composition entitled '' Black Square'', in 1915. Francis Picabia - Caoutchouc

The title ''"Caoutchouc"'' was derived from a book by Raymond Roussel, ''Impressions d'Afrique'' (1909). It was chosen by Picabia several years after the painting was executed. During the months of May or June 1912, Picabia—along with

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, ; ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, Futurism and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Pica ...

and

Guillaume Apollinaire Guillaume Apollinaire (; ; born Kostrowicki; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist and art critic of Poland, Polish descent. Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of the ...

—went to see the stage version of Roussel's ''Impressions d'Afrique'' in Paris at the Théâtre Antoine. In both the novel and the play, an ancestral African emperor had planted a rubber tree and a palm for his twin sons. The first tree to bloom would determine which of his sons would become the heir to his throne. The palm bloomed first and one of the sons became king, setting off a feud that resulted in the death of the newly crowned king, whose decaying body was displayed resting against the aged rubber tree (''caoutchouc caduc''); the rubber tree itself became the symbol for the end of a branch of family lineage. It has been argued by Belton that ''Caoutchouc''—rather than representing the beginning of a period of abstraction in the oeuvre of Picabia—represented the end of a branch of figurative pictorial lineage, the end of a series of experimental paintings that approached total abstraction without ever attaining it. Though the artist painted several works between 1909 and 1912 that were clearly figurative, they were superseded by non-objective works at a time when Picabia gave his painting the title ''Caoutchouc''. Art historian and critic has vehemently argued in favor of the abstract nature of ''Caoutchouc'', while Gabrièle Buffet-Picabia referred to it as a

still life A still life (: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, human-m ...

, and the artist Philip Pearlstein, who wrote his thesis on Picabia, described the subject of the painting as a bouncing rubber ball.Philip Pearlstein, ''The Paintings of Francis Picabia, unpublished Master of Arts thesis, New York University, Institute of Fine Arts, February 1955, p. 24 Whether a purely abstract work or a still life, the composition itself is highly abstracted in style, not dissimilar to Picabia's proto-Cubist landscapes of 1908 through 1910.William A. Camfield, Francis Picabia
New York : Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1970 Whatever the artists intention, he did not pursue pure abstraction following ''Caoutchouc'' until 1912 (with paintings such as '' La Source (The Spring)'').

References

External links

Culture.gouv.fr, Base Mémoire, La Médiathèque de l'architecture et du patrimoine

Agence Photographique de la Réunion des musées nationaux et du Grand Palais des Champs-Elysées
{{DEFAULTSORT:Caoutchouc Paintings by Francis Picabia Cubist paintings 1909 paintings Paintings in the Musée National d'Art Moderne Watercolor paintings

Background

Abstract art

See also

References

External links