Over the course of his nearly fifty-year career, the protean avant-garde artist Francis Picabia hopscotched across modernist styles and genres, from geometric abstraction to pseudo-classicism, and from painting to poetry and film. Though he remains closely associated with Dada, he drew on the pictorial innovations of Cubism in the early 1910s to paint dynamic arrangements of abstract fragments in jewel-like color.
Initially active in Paris, Picabia sought refuge in New York City as World War I raged in Europe. He arrived in January 1913, just after the opening of the legendary International Exhibition of Modern Art, known as the Armory Show, in which he exhibited several paintings. The city was a source of deep inspiration for Picabia, who proclaimed that he would make a new series of works to "express the spirit of New York as I feel it, and the crowded streets of your city as I feel them, their surging, their unrest, their commercialism, and their atmospheric charm." Within weeks of arriving, he had produced a number of watercolors capturing the energy and noise of the city, this one among them.
Negro Song I responds to Picabia’s experience at a Harlem cabaret, where he heard the vocal improvisations of a Black jazz singer. The artist translated that musical dynamism into a visual vocabulary of geometric shapes, accumulated in the center of the sheet and rendered in deep-toned hues of brown and purple. (Picabia made a synesthetic claim for purple as "the inevitable and dominant hue" resulting from the song he had heard).
Soon after completing his New York watercolors, Picabia received his first solo exhibition in the United States at 291, the gallery run by artist and dealer Alfred Stieglitz in midtown Manhattan. The show opened on March 17, 1913, two days after the close of the Armory Show. Among the works presented were two watercolors made in reaction to African American music, both exhibited with the title Negro Song. These incorporate a now outdated and derogatory term to denote persons of Black African heritage, though it was common at the time. That Picabia visited Harlem, then made and exhibited these works in a matter of weeks owes to his chosen medium of watercolor. Inexpensive, quick-drying, and fluid, it allowed for more direct expression in comparison to oil paint. The counterpart to this sheet, Negro Song II, is also held in The Met collection.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Negro Song I
Artist:Francis Picabia (French, Paris 1879–1953 Paris)
Date:1913
Medium:Watercolor and graphite on paperboard
Dimensions:26 1/8 x 22 in. (66.4 x 55.9 cm)
Classification:Drawings
Credit Line:Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949
Accession Number:49.70.15
Inscription: Inscribed (upper left, in pencil): CHANSON NÈgRE; signed (lower center, in pencil): Picabia
the artist (spring 1913 to Stieglitz); Alfred Stieglitz, New York (1913–d. 1946; his estate, 1946–49; gift to MMA)
New York. Gallery of the Photo-Secession. "An Exhibition of Studies Made in New York, by François [sic] Picabia, of Paris," March 17–April 5, 1913, no. 12 or 13 (as "Negro Song").
Philadelphia. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. "Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Representative Modern Masters," April 17–May 9, 1920, no. 183 (as "Chanson Nègre").
Philadelphia Museum of Art. "History of an American, Alfred Stieglitz: '291' and After, Selections from the Stieglitz Collection," July 1–November 1, 1944, no. 105.
Museum of Modern Art, New York. "Alfred Stieglitz Exhibition: His Collection," June 10–August 31, 1947, no catalogue (checklist no. 87).
Art Institute of Chicago. "Alfred Stieglitz: His Photographs and His Collection," February 2–29, 1948, no catalogue (checklist no. 88).
Museum of Modern Art, New York. "From the Alfred Stieglitz Collection: An Extended Loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art," May 22–August 12, 1951, no catalogue (checklist no. E.L.51.691; loan extended to May 15, 1961).
Marseille. Musée Cantini. "Picabia," March 20–May 15, 1962, no. 22.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Drawings from the Alfred Stieglitz Collection," September 9–November 12, 1967, no catalogue (unnumbered checklist).
New York. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. "Francis Picabia," September 16–December 6, 1970, no. 27.
Paris. Cabinet des dessins, Musée du Louvre. "Dessins français du Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York de David à Picasso," October 25, 1973–January 7, 1974, no. 69.
Paris. Galeries nationales du Grand Palais. "Francis Picabia," January 23–March 29, 1976, no. 33.
London. Tate Gallery. "Abstraction: Towards a New Art, Painting 1910–1920," February 6–April 13, 1980, no. 44.
Tokyo. Seibu Museum. "Dada y Constructivismo," October 8–November 13, 1988, unnumbered cat. (p. 62).
Seibu Tsukashin Hall, Amagasaki. "Dada y Constructivismo," November 19–December 19, 1988, unnumbered cat.
Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama. "Dada y Constructivismo," January 5–February 12, 1989.
Madrid. Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. "Dada y Constructivismo," March 9–May 1, 1989, unnumbered cat.
Paris. Centre Pompidou, Galerie 1. "Sons & lumières: Une histoire du son dans l'art du XXe siècle," September 22, 2004–January 3, 2005, unnumbered cat. (p. 153).
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Stieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe," October 13, 2011–January 2, 2012, no. 16.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde," November 26, 2012–April 14, 2013, extended to Sept 2, 2013, no catalogue.
[Samuel Swift]. "New York by Cubist is Very Confusing." Sun (March 18, 1913), p. 9, as "Chant de nègre".
Harriet Monroe. "Davidson Sculpture Proves That Artist Has Ideas." Chicago Sunday Tribune (March 23, 1913), sec. 8, p. 5, quotes Jo Davidson's comments regarding this work and "Negro Song II" in Exh. New York 1913.
Gabrielle Buffet. "Modern Art and the Public." Camera Work (June 1913), p. 12, as "Negro Songs".
"International Art Show Echo—Studies of Picabia, a Pure 'Abstractionist'." Evening Mail (March 20, 1913), p. 10.
"Futurist Art in a Nutshell." World (April 13, 1913), p. 11, ill.
Florence N. Levy. "Modern Masters at the Pennsylvania Academy." International Studio 71 (August 1920), p. XXXIII.
Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia. "Picabia: L'inventeur." L'oeil 18 (June 1956), p. 35, ill. (reversed).
Philip Pearlstein. "The Symbolic Language of Francis Picabia." Arts 30 (January 1956), pp. 37, 39, 42, ill.
Michel Sanouillet. Picabia. Paris, 1964, pp. 27, 94, ill.
William S. Rubin. Dada and Surrealist Art. New York, 1968, pp. 45, 53, 475, fig. 27.
Marc Le Bot. Francis Picabia et la crise des valeurs figuratives: 1900–1925. Paris, 1968, pp. 53, 81, 91.
Eileen Southern. The Music of Black Americans: A History. New York, 1971, p. 366.
Jean-Hubert Martin and Hélène Seckel, ed. Francis Picabia. Exh. cat., Galeries nationales du Grand Palais. Paris, 1976, pp. 67, 185, no. 33, ill.
William A. Camfield. Francis Picabia: His Art, Life and Times. Princeton, 1979, pp. 48–49, 284, fig. 74.
Virginia Spate. Orphism: The Evolution of Non-Figurative Painting in Paris, 1910–1914. Oxford, 1979, pp. 321, 363 n. 61.
Barbara Rose in William C. Agee and Barbara Rose. Patrick Henry Bruce: American Modernist. A Catalogue Raisonné. New York, 1979, p. 94 n. 63.
Mona Hadler. "Jazz and the Visual Arts." Arts Magazine 57 (June 1983), pp. 94–95, fig. 8.
Laura Rosenstock in"Primitivism" in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern. Ed. William Rubin. Exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art. New York, 1984, p. 477.
Maria Lluïsa Borràs. Picabia. New York, 1985, pp. 99, 101, 105 n. 71, pp. 142, 507, no. 143, fig. 253.
Gabriel Boillat. A L'Origine, Cendrars. Les Ponts-de-Martel, Switz., 1985, p. 61.
Judith Zilczer. "'Color Music': Synaesthesia and Nineteenth-Century Sources for Abstract Art." Artibus et Historiae 8, no. 16 (1987), pp. 103–4, fig. 4.
Donna M. Cassidy. "Arthur Dove's Music Paintings of the Jazz Age." American Art Journal 20, no. 1 (1988), p. 10, fig. 6.
Christopher Finch. Twentieth-Century Watercolors. New York, 1988, p. 154, pl. 180, as "Negro Song".
Eileen Southern and Josephine Wright. African-American Traditions in Song, Sermon, Tale, and Dance, 1600s–1920: An Annotated Bibliography of Literature, Collections, and Artworks. New York, 1990, p. 270, no. 2245.
Cathy Bernheim. Picabia. Paris, 1995, p. 71.
Katherine Hoffman. Georgia O'Keeffe: A Celebration of Music and Dance. New York, 1997, p. 38.
Donna M. Cassidy. Painting the Musical City: Jazz and Cultural Identity in American Art, 1910–1940. Washington and London, 1997, pp. 6, 47, fig. 29, calls it "Negro Song".
Jody Blake. Le Tumulte noir: Modernist Art and Popular Entertainment in Jazz-Age Paris, 1900–1930. University Park, Penn., 1999, pp. 47–48, 51–52, fig. 26.
Eileen Southern and Josephine Wright. Images: Iconography of Music in African-American Culture, 1770s–1920s. New York and London, 2000, p. 265.
Sophie Duplaix and Marcella Lista, ed. Sons & Lumières: Une histoire du son dans l'art du XXe siècle. Exh. cat., Centre Pompidou, Galerie 1. Paris, 2004, pp. 153, 370, ill. p. 153 (color).
Katherine Hoffman. Stieglitz: A Beginning Light. New Haven and London, 2004, p. 263.
Mark Antliff and Patricia Leighten, ed. A Cubism Reader: Documents and Criticism, 1906–1914. Chicago, 2008, p. 558.
Jessica Murphy inStieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ed. Lisa Mintz Messinger. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2011, pp. 45, 246, no. 16, ill. (color).
Brenda Leach. Looking and Listening: Conversations Between Modern Art and Music. London, 2015, p. 40.
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