Exhibitions: Modern Paintings (Sidney Janis Collection)

Date unknown, approximately 1937: In connection with the opening of the International Water Color Exhibition (Ninth Biennial) at the Brooklyn Museum this Saturday, May 8, (reception and preview May 7th), the Sidney Janis Collection of modern paintings will be installed in the main entrance hall of the Museum to remain on view through the summer. The collection includes The Dream by Henri Rousseau; Still Life with Guitar, Still Life, Vive la France, Seated Woman and The Painter and His Model by Pablo Picasso; Evangelical Still Life by Giorgio de Chirico; Figure in Chair by Henri Matisse; in the Grass by Paul Klee; Pipe and Book by Juan Gris; Oval Composition and Composition with Vine by Fernand Leger; Illuminated Pleasures by Salvatore [Salvador] Dalk [Dali]; Composition by Piet Mondrian; Composition by Archile Gorky; Mother and Child, Man with Hat, Moonlight Idyl, and Bathers by Louis Elseemius.

The following statement by Harriet Janis is quoted published by the Arts Club of Chicago in 1935.

"Twentieth Century painting, focused in Paris since 1907, is a record of a composite concept.

"From this time until interrupted by the war, a group of painters headed by Braque and Picasso worked in common for the purpose of submerging their personal identities in the interest of achieving a new plastic solution. Although personal art again entered the scene, painters still worked toward their respective objectives in groups. The pooled ideas of these various movements, when related to each other, form a new collective painting attitude.

"Cubism dissected the object, using its component parts to reconstruct a new reality towards a two-dimensional integration. Surrealism dissected the idea or subject. Futurism multiplied the object to visualize motion. Neo-Plasticism reduced spatial conception to planes. It discarded formal perspective and light. It is the furthest point removed from Impressionism. Dada denied all values. Still it derived part of its technique from Cubist collage and transferred to Surrealism its detachment from reality. Here it became a positive force leading to the deliberate release of the subconscious.

"The collection, neither complete nor final, has attempted to select tendencies that show this interplay of attributes.

"'Tête' (Picasso 1912), in papier collé, is disciplined by poverty of material and precision of the scissors into a sharp definition of statement. This medium not only supplements the palette but introduces the surface plane, and in 'Nature Morte with Guitare' (1913), Picasso applies the paint to the same end as the collage.

"The emphasis on construction in 'Tête' is elaborated in the Chirico, from where it is directed to Russian Constructivism.

"In Picasso's 'Artist and His Model' (1928), its complex and monumental structure in flat areas is a climax to his investigations. The dynamic impulse behind this canvas and the sublimation of Mondrian are two extremes of similar intent. The austere Cubism of Gris is committed to the oblique. 'Viva la France' (1914-1915), besides its inventive interlocking of planes, shows an influence of manner from Seurat and Rousseau which later developed into a profound influence of purpose.

"The affinity between the Chirico (1916) and the Dali (1929) is marked. They are similar in composition. Chirico penetrates deeply into metaphysical invention and Dali sets into the same melancholy cosmos his own memory of images intensified by his command of painting. Klee creates his contemporary hieroglyphics from an ingenious insight into a Surrealist world of mind and spirit. Curiously, the microscopic jungle of 'Im Grass' approximates the subject of Rousseau's 'Le Rêve'.

"'Le Rêve' (1910) with its magnitude of poetic urge captured in primitive forms by an omniscient painting sensibility, is a source from which Leger, especially, drew vitality."

Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1937 - 1939. 04-06_1937, 098-9. View Original 1 . View Original 2