Albert Gleizes: For and Against the Twentieth Century

Unless you're an avid fan of Cubist painting, you probably have never even heard of French painter Albert Gleizes (1881-1953), yet author Peter Brooke believes Gleizes to have been one of the 20th century's most important painters. Brooke's love and passionate respect of Gleizes's work has spurred him to write an intensely researched and well-written case on the magnitude of Gleizes's contributions to Cubism. In Albert Gleizes: For and Against the Twentieth Century are stories of the artist's life in France in the early 1900s, New York in the '20s, and his return to Europe in the '30s. Throughout are detailed analyses on the practice of Gleizes's painting, his movement from an early impressionistic style towards representational, and later nonrepresentational cubism. Gleizes's friends and fellow artists include such art-world luminaries as Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia.

From his early years as a member of an art/poetry collective, Gleizes questioned how art fit into society at large. Brooke explains that this collective, the Abbaye de Creteil, was named after an idea of Rabelais as a place of "refuge of honest, idealistic thinkers against a hostile world". How extremely and darkly troubling it then seems that along with his conscious questioning and awareness of his own place in society, Gleizes appears to bear a certain affinity for Germany and the Nazis during WWII. Brooke is uncertain of Gleizes's possible anti- Semitism, citing instances where Gleizes praises the Jews. It is an uncomfortable moment as Brooke confesses to the reader that while Gleizes never spoke in favor of any of the deportations in France, he never spoke out against them. Throughout everything, Brooke remains resolute in his commitment to Gleizes's artistic place in history. If you are a serious reader of art history or modern art, it will be a thesis that you won't want to miss. --J.P. Cohen