Juan Gris
Legend has it that on his way to visit Picasso at the Bateau-Lavoir, the ramshackle complex of artists' studios in Montmartre, dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler glanced into Juan Gris's open window and asked to see more of his work. Gris (the adopted name of José Victoriano Carmelo Carlos González Pérez) had eked out a living as a caricaturist and illustrator, but by late 1912, after securing Kahnweiler's financial support, he was able to devote himself to fine art. Having watched Braque and Picasso develop Cubism, Gris made it his own with precisely delineated compositions, flattened planes, and rhythmic surface patterns. His penchant for architectural motifs and standardized geometric shapes led to a new style of Cubism during the war years: one that aimed for classical restraint and synthesis, rather than the analytic deconstruction of form.
Fantômas
The Leonard A. Lauder Collection contains an unparalleled selection of mixed-media collages created by Gris during the first half of 1914. Several incorporate witty references to the fictional criminal mastermind Fantômas, the protagonist of a wildly popular French crime series, which was published in cheap-paper editions and then produced as silent films. This shadowy thief and murderer, a master of disguise, fascinated Gris and his avant-garde circle. More than any other Cubist artist, Gris emphasized duplicitous identities, shape-shifting, and hidden clues in his work from this period. All of the collages displayed here ostensibly represent still lifes with newspapers, bottles, and glasses, yet visual sleuthing reveals objects that seem present and absent at the same time, even a headless man and a looming bull's head.
