Louis Vauxcelles

Louis Vauxcelles, actually Louis Mayer, pseudonym Pinturicchio ( born January 1, 1870 in Paris, † 1943 ibid ) was one of the most influential art critic of the 20th century. He coined among others, the art-historical terms Fauvism, Cubism and Tubismus.

Work

Influenced by his very conservative default setting, Vauxcelles rejected the avant-garde movements of the painting at the beginning of the 20th century on principle and attacked especially the cubists sharply. He initially worked for various magazines (including L'Art et la Vie ), from 1904 primarily for the art section of the influential journal Gil Blas, on whose behalf he papiers (eg: reports) on the contemporary Parisian art exhibitions wrote. In these " reports " he coined many terms that are now entered into the art historical terminology: about Fauvism (Text Station October 1905: "Mais c'est Donatello parmi les Fauves ", such as: "But Donatello among the Fauves " [ the "young and wild ", meaning the designated later this term Parisian painter ] ) or are Cubism ( November 1908: "M Braque [ ... ] réduit tout sites figures maisons à the schémas géométriques, à des cubes", about "Lord Braque [ ... ] solves everything, places, people, houses, geometrical figures, in cubes on ").

The actual analysis of the works entered by the offensive formulation often in the background; his " reports " often depicting polarizing attacks on almost all newer developments (not only) the painting dar. After the exhibition in the Salon des Independants of 1911, in which the Puteaux group had presented their works, he called Fernand Léger as a tuba player and coined thus a term used in the description of this painter plays a role today. Also, he called all the painters of this group pejoratively as " Ubu Kub " (derived from the words " Ubu Roi " and the German version of the word cube for cube) and the rumor spread that the group " entreprise dirigee par les Allemands, contre la peinture française " (a" directed by the Germans against the French painting company ") is. It was this statement that responded to the 1912 satirical Picasso with his " Bouillon Kub ". Picasso himself was also not spared from the biting criticism Vauxcelles ', although it should obviously have hardly knew his works: " J'ai crainte que le mystère dont s'entoure Picasso ne serve sa legende. Qu'il summarize une exposition [ ... ] nous le jugerons. André Salmon le compare à Goethe. C'est bien grave ... "-" I have fear that the secrecy Picasso his afterlife is not relevant. Should he make an exhibition [ ... ] we will judge him. André Salmon compares it with Goethe. That's an exaggeration ... " (article in Les Arts, 1912). Also from the spring Vauxcelles ' is originally the later widespread rumor, Cubism is merely the combination of Vulgarisations Ideas for the non-Euclidean geometry and edited by Maurice Princet theories Riemann dar.