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become more numerous, took place in 1911 at the Independants
where Room 41, reserved for the Cubists, produced a profound
impression. Here were seen the skillful and seductive works
of Jean Metzinger; landscapes, L’homme Nu and the La
femme aux Phlox by Albert Gleizes; the portrait of Mme.
Fernande X . . . and Les Jeunes Filles by Mile. Marie
Laurencin; La Tour by Robert Delaunay, UAbondance by
Le Fauconnier, Nus dans un Paysage by Fernand Leger.
The first foreign exhibition of the Cubists was held in Brus
sels in the same year, and in the preface of the catalogue to this
exhibition I accepted, in the name of the exhibitors, the appel
lation Cubism, and Cubist.
At the close of the year 1911, the exhibition of Cubists the
Salon d’Automme made a considerable noise, ridicule was spared
neither Gleizes (La Chasse, Portrait of Jacques Nayral) nor to
Metzinger (La Femme a la Cuiller) } nor Fernand Leger. A
new painter, Marcel Duchamp, and a sculptor architect, Du-
champ-Villon, were added to the group.
Other collective exhibitions took place in November, 1911, at
the gallery of Contemporaneous Art, rue Tronchet, Paris; in
1912 the Salon des Independants was marked by the advent of
Juan Gris. At Barcelonia, in the month of May, Spain received
the young Frenchman with enthusiasm. Finally in June, at
Rouen, at an exhibition organized by the society of Norman
Artists, the advent of Francis Picabia was hailed by the new
school.
That which differentiates Cubism from the old schools of
painting is that it is not an art of painting, but an art of concep
tion which tends to rise to that of creation.
In representing the concept of reality, or the created reality,
the painter can give the appearance of three dimensions, he can,
so to speak, cube it. He cannot do this in rendering simply the
reality as seen, unless he makes use of an illusion either in per
spective or foreshortening which deforms the quality of the form
conceived or created.