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"Everything in nature takes its form from the sphere, the cone, and the cylinder," wrote Paul C�zanne. It was the major C�zanne retrospective in Paris in 1907, together with Picasso's discovery of African and Oceanic art around the same time, that gave rise to the Cubist movement which propelled art into the twentieth century and the machine age. Picasso's famous 1907 painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon shows Cubism in its earliest formative stage; its fractured perspectives derive, I believe, from Picasso's memories of the endless reflections he had glimpsed in the heavily mirrored brothels of the barrio chino in Barcelona, where the painting is set. In 1907 and 1908 Picasso, in close collaboration and friendly rivalry with Georges Braque, worked out the template for Cubism, an art in which the single perspective of a static onlooker is replaced by the multiple perspective of an all-seeing eye. Pablo Picasso, Three Musicians Pochoir after a painting from Eugen

I've been doing a little more digging on Jeanne Bardey (still without sight of the book on her by Hubert Thiolier). According to the Union List of Artist Names at the J. Paul Getty website, Jeanne Bardey's dates were 1876-1944, so it seems she was 7 years younger than I thought, and died 4 years earlier: I can't remember where I got my previous dates, but these seem more reliable. [Though apparently not: see the update at the foot of this post]. I have found several works by her illustrated in the Gazette des Beaux Arts, and a short essay on her in the Gazette's series Peintres-Graveurs Contemporains. The essay, published in 1913 and accompanied by the etched portrait reproduced in my last post, is by R. M. (presumably the art critic Roger Marx). Sorry for the poor quality of the images in this post, which are simply quick photos of reproductions in the Gazette, but it seems worthwhile posting what I can on this underservedly obscure artist, about whom so little informa

A comment from Emeline on my last post, about the profound unacknowledged contribution of his pupil, assistant, and mistress Camille Claudel to Rodin's work, reminded me that I have a number of etchings and drypoints by another of Rodin's pupils and mistresses, Jeanne Bardey. Like most of the women in Rodin's life - his longterm partner Rose Beuret, Camille Claudel, Gwen John - Jeanne Bardey got a raw deal from her relationship with him. She was born in Lyon 1869. She was therefore 5 years younger than Camille Claudel, and seven years older than Gwen John [N.B. This information appears to be wrong; her correct dates are 1872-1954; see the next post]. Rodin made a will in her favour, which was anulled when, after his fourth stroke, and when it has been argued he was incapable of informed assent, he was persuaded to sign a deed of gift willing all his estate to the French State. There's a whole book about this controversy, which I haven't seen, Jeanne Bardey et Rodin:

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) remains one of the most famous sculptors of all time. He is less well-known as a graphic artist. His drawings and watercolours are an important part of his work, and he also made 13 drypoints. Rodin was taught the technique of incising a drawing onto a copper plate with a drypoint needle by his friend Alphonse Legros, in London in 1881. Rodin and Legros had met in the drawing class of Horace Lecoq de Bosbaudran. Rodin loved the immediacy of drypoint, the way he could use it to transfer his thoughts directly onto the copper. He didn�t work out a composition and then transfer it to the plate, he allowed the image to evolve on the plate. His drypoint portraits, for instance, generally show several views of the subject, more like a page from a sketchbook than a finished work.  My Rodin drypoint, La Ronde, is more finished than most. Oddly the image is confined to the top quarter of the plate, while his monograph is a long way below at the bottom right, with the re

In 1934 the Paris art world was in a ferment of Surrealism. Salvador Dal� was at the height of his powers. Everyone was delving into the subconscious. One artist, Andr� Villeboeuf (1893-1956), published in that year a remarkable album of 16 Surrealist etchings, entitled Lubies (Whims, or Whimsies). 26 copies were published "Aux d�pens des Cinq-Vingt". I have copy 25, which was Villeboeuf's own. Each etching is signed, justified and titled in pencil, but low down the sheet rather than directly below the image. The etchings are printed on Hollande van Gelder wove paper, presumably by the artist himself, as no printer is mentioned. These etchings look beyond the modish self-regard of the Surrealists to locate the surreal in a long artistic tradition. There are touches in them of the grotesqueries of Hieronymous Bosch, the absurd animal/human hybrids of J.J. Grandville, even the fairy fantasies of Richard Doyle. But the artist they reference most is the one Andr� Villeboeuf

On Friday I took a magical mystery tour of London by Routemaster bus, conducted by typographers Phil Baines and Catherine Dixon, whose knowledge of London's public lettering is unparalleled.  Along the way we scorned the "mean serifs" of the inscription on the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour, admired the fantastic Victorian storefront of James Smith & Sons (Umbrellas) Ltd in New Oxford Street, and learned that the windows spelling out OXO on the iconic Oxo Tower were a cunning way of bypassing a ban on advertising on the riverfront. This enchanting experience would have prompted me to post on the shopfronts of London and Paris in the parallel art of Eric Ravilious and Lucien Boucher, but I've already done that here . So instead I shall leap from the Oxo Tower in London to the Martini Tower in Brussels, as seen by the artist Laure Malcl�s-Masereel. This modernist masterpiece with its distinctly 1960s sanserif lettering was pulled down in 2001-2002, the