Max Weber
American, born Russia, 1881 - 1961Untitled (Cubist Still Life), ca. 1920
On view
Oil on canvas on board
Dimensions36 × 30 in. (91.4 × 76.2 cm)
Bequest of Mary Mallery Davis, by exchange, 2002.5
One of the first American artists to study abroad, assimilate the tenets of European Modernism, and introduce them to artists back home, Max Weber was integral to the evolution of modern art in the United States. Henri Matisse, from whom he received critiques in Paris, was influential, but the work of Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso proved to be more profound forces in shaping Weber's artistic development.
There are obvious visual parallels between Untitled (Cubist Still Life) and the still-life compositions of Paul Cézanne, evident in the irregular angularity of the drapes, the exaggerated uneven form of the fruit bowl, and the flattening of the perspective of the floor and tabletop. Weber also found influential ideas in the work of Picasso, another prodigious still-life painter. But Weber met Picasso and saw his work while visiting France and was one of the first artists to comprehend and absorb his ideas about Cubism. Weber began experimenting with the new style after his return to New York in 1909 and continued to investigate various permutations of Cubism throughout the next decade, although he would continue to execute works, such as this, that were not fully Cubist in approach. The painting does, however, make an obvious reference to the Analytical Cubism developed by Picasso and Braque in its monochromatic use of color, one of the style's key characteristics.
