拍品專文
In the world of Parisian couture, design and art in the 1920s, the name Jacques Doucet was synonymous with impeccable taste. Doucet, a leading couturier and art patron, was known for his adventuresome eye and provocative stance on collecting. After having extensively collected 18th-century painting, drawing and furniture, he decided in 1912 to sell his entire holdings at auction, ridding himself of his belongings in order to start anew. After the war, Doucet's appetite for collecting reached grand proportions, as he developed his eye for the 20th-century avant-garde. In painting, he preferred Matisse and Picasso, acquiring major works by both artists. For example, he purchased the Spaniard's masterpiece, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, for 25,000 FF. He supported Brancusi as well, attracted by the sculptor's reductive and primitivist forms. Interestingly enough, in regards to Noire et Blanche, he also gathered a noted collection of African art, promoting his finds to his friends.
Doucet's distinguished manner was well known and his simple and sober personality seemed antithetical to his position as dean of Paris dress making. Eventually he divested himself from the family-owned couture house however, preferring to live off the royalties gained selling his share of the business. In 1925, with his collection burgeoning and needing more vast housing, he and his wife moved to a spacious setting in Neuilly. This new home became both a studio and gallery, and in creating this collector's refuge he commissioned the finest designers of the time: Eileen Gray, Rose Adler, Pierre LeGrain and others. In The 1920s: Age of the Metropolis, Malcolm Gee writes: Doucet's taste in art was self-consciously radical, but the ensemble he created was a modern form of rococo - delicate, refined, integrated opulance... His collection was a monument to the collector's urge to use art as a protection against the mundane, and even time itself. (cf. p. 415; see fig. 545 for a view of the Neuilly apartment).
Surprisingly, a wonderfully precise description of the setting has survived, written by someone with an equally discerning eye and close associations with the major artists of the time - Aline Meyer Liebman. The following comes from a European diary entry from the summer of 1929 and was written while Mrs. Liebman was searching out examples of new design and architecture: At Jacques Doucet's house, saw entrance hall - floor of silvered material glass-covered put in rectangular forÿms, - with inlay of red glass or other material - perfectly stunning. Staircase the most beautiful thing I have seen. - Steel or aluminum in wonderful design with panels of black engraved glass. - Clock by Legrain with top of beautifully arranged glass strips in lovely color effects lighted from behind. Door made of cylindrical glass tubing backed with plate glass. - Designed by Legrain and Doucet, - that is many of the different features of home are...a stunning pedestal made of sharkskin of green upon which a Brancusi head...Several pieces by Miss Adler; tables - one of which has a top of transparent sharkskin with light inside. Another...of unusual design...Paintings by Cézanne, Manet - Daumier, large Picasso....
As one might expect, Doucet was no stranger to Man Ray - or Kiki - and the circles of Dada and Surrealism. Man Ray, in a rare portrait sitting of the collector, photographed Doucet. It is also known that Doucet acquired works from the artist. (See Perpetual Motif, pp. 108-9; 127; 134, N. 48) In 1924 Doucet commissioned Duchamp's Rotative Demisphere (See Christie's, New York, October 13, 1992, lot 303) by purchasing the parts and paying for the construction. (Kiki's Paris, p. 232, "Relâche", N. 3) Doucet must certainly have met Kiki as she was living on the same floor as Duchamp.
Man Ray's portrait of Kiki of Montparnasse with an African mask was published in Vogue in Paris the year it was made. In this regard, Man Ray was no stranger to Doucet's world of la mode. As early as July, 1921, Man Ray went to see Paul Poiret, another leading couturier from before the war, with his portfolio. He photographed the designer's wife Denise in a Poiret creation and in July 1925, a mannikin draped in a gown, attributed to Poiret appeared in a Man Ray study reproduced on the cover of La Révolution surréaliste. (Man Ray in Fashion, pp. 45-6)
Man Ray's quiet, elegant and dreamy study, Noire et Blanche would have naturally appealed to Doucet. His own vision, which combined the ancient and primitive arts with his graceful and Modern polished taste, seems complimented by Man Ray's vision of a surreal twist of tonality.
The mask Kiki balances has been attributed as being Baule but it is more likely a mix of styles, probably made for the trade some ten years earlier. Where Man Ray got the mask is not known. It is tempting to consider however, that perhaps this exquisite print, in its unusual, intimate presentation folder (it has never been framed) was given to Doucet, the eclectic collector, in appreciation for the loan of the mask, perhaps in lieu of a model's fee.
Doucet's distinguished manner was well known and his simple and sober personality seemed antithetical to his position as dean of Paris dress making. Eventually he divested himself from the family-owned couture house however, preferring to live off the royalties gained selling his share of the business. In 1925, with his collection burgeoning and needing more vast housing, he and his wife moved to a spacious setting in Neuilly. This new home became both a studio and gallery, and in creating this collector's refuge he commissioned the finest designers of the time: Eileen Gray, Rose Adler, Pierre LeGrain and others. In The 1920s: Age of the Metropolis, Malcolm Gee writes: Doucet's taste in art was self-consciously radical, but the ensemble he created was a modern form of rococo - delicate, refined, integrated opulance... His collection was a monument to the collector's urge to use art as a protection against the mundane, and even time itself. (cf. p. 415; see fig. 545 for a view of the Neuilly apartment).
Surprisingly, a wonderfully precise description of the setting has survived, written by someone with an equally discerning eye and close associations with the major artists of the time - Aline Meyer Liebman. The following comes from a European diary entry from the summer of 1929 and was written while Mrs. Liebman was searching out examples of new design and architecture: At Jacques Doucet's house, saw entrance hall - floor of silvered material glass-covered put in rectangular forÿms, - with inlay of red glass or other material - perfectly stunning. Staircase the most beautiful thing I have seen. - Steel or aluminum in wonderful design with panels of black engraved glass. - Clock by Legrain with top of beautifully arranged glass strips in lovely color effects lighted from behind. Door made of cylindrical glass tubing backed with plate glass. - Designed by Legrain and Doucet, - that is many of the different features of home are...a stunning pedestal made of sharkskin of green upon which a Brancusi head...Several pieces by Miss Adler; tables - one of which has a top of transparent sharkskin with light inside. Another...of unusual design...Paintings by Cézanne, Manet - Daumier, large Picasso....
As one might expect, Doucet was no stranger to Man Ray - or Kiki - and the circles of Dada and Surrealism. Man Ray, in a rare portrait sitting of the collector, photographed Doucet. It is also known that Doucet acquired works from the artist. (See Perpetual Motif, pp. 108-9; 127; 134, N. 48) In 1924 Doucet commissioned Duchamp's Rotative Demisphere (See Christie's, New York, October 13, 1992, lot 303) by purchasing the parts and paying for the construction. (Kiki's Paris, p. 232, "Relâche", N. 3) Doucet must certainly have met Kiki as she was living on the same floor as Duchamp.
Man Ray's portrait of Kiki of Montparnasse with an African mask was published in Vogue in Paris the year it was made. In this regard, Man Ray was no stranger to Doucet's world of la mode. As early as July, 1921, Man Ray went to see Paul Poiret, another leading couturier from before the war, with his portfolio. He photographed the designer's wife Denise in a Poiret creation and in July 1925, a mannikin draped in a gown, attributed to Poiret appeared in a Man Ray study reproduced on the cover of La Révolution surréaliste. (Man Ray in Fashion, pp. 45-6)
Man Ray's quiet, elegant and dreamy study, Noire et Blanche would have naturally appealed to Doucet. His own vision, which combined the ancient and primitive arts with his graceful and Modern polished taste, seems complimented by Man Ray's vision of a surreal twist of tonality.
The mask Kiki balances has been attributed as being Baule but it is more likely a mix of styles, probably made for the trade some ten years earlier. Where Man Ray got the mask is not known. It is tempting to consider however, that perhaps this exquisite print, in its unusual, intimate presentation folder (it has never been framed) was given to Doucet, the eclectic collector, in appreciation for the loan of the mask, perhaps in lieu of a model's fee.