拍品专文
Foujita came to France in 1913 landing at Marseilles on the fifth of May and travelling straight to Paris. It was not long after his arrival that Foujita began to mix with the best of the avant-garde painters of Montparnasse. Picasso was introduced to Foujita by the painter Ortiz de Zarate who took the Japanese on a visit to the great man's studio. He was shocked and overwhelmed by what he saw, "Mais, déjà, s'imposent à ses yeux une multitude de tableaux cubistes, totalement étranges pour un ancien étudiant de l'école impériale des Beaux-Arts de Tokyo...Il sait que cette visite ce fait pénétrer d'un seul coup au coeur même de l'avant-garde." (loc. cit., p. 34).
It was not only Cubism that influenced Foujita at this time but also the naïve work of Le Douanier Rousseau which caused him to work in a style which attempted to blend elements of both eastern and western naïve painting. Foujita was critical of his Japanese colleagues such as Seiki Kuroda who simply aped western styles without attempting to penetrate or understand them. As with naïve painting so too with Cubism Foujita brought his own particular accent to bear. Foujita produced a great many paintings during the course of 1914 of which very few survive having been lost or destroyed in the course of the First World War. It was with the Salon d'Automne of 1914 in mind that he worked through the spring and summer. "Encouragé par Picasso et Diego Rivera qui apprécient son cubisme Japonais, Foujita compte bien exposer à leurs côtés au prochain Salon d'automne "les disaient que le cubisme japonais les interressait par sa difference et promirent d'adopter mes tableaux"." (loc. cit., p. 40).
The present work is one of the very few remaining paintings from this period of Foujita's 'japanese cubism'. In it can be seen the influence of the French artists but also can clearly be seen a purity of composition and clarity of conception which was Foujita's individual contribution to the Cubist movement.
It was not only Cubism that influenced Foujita at this time but also the naïve work of Le Douanier Rousseau which caused him to work in a style which attempted to blend elements of both eastern and western naïve painting. Foujita was critical of his Japanese colleagues such as Seiki Kuroda who simply aped western styles without attempting to penetrate or understand them. As with naïve painting so too with Cubism Foujita brought his own particular accent to bear. Foujita produced a great many paintings during the course of 1914 of which very few survive having been lost or destroyed in the course of the First World War. It was with the Salon d'Automne of 1914 in mind that he worked through the spring and summer. "Encouragé par Picasso et Diego Rivera qui apprécient son cubisme Japonais, Foujita compte bien exposer à leurs côtés au prochain Salon d'automne "les disaient que le cubisme japonais les interressait par sa difference et promirent d'adopter mes tableaux"." (loc. cit., p. 40).
The present work is one of the very few remaining paintings from this period of Foujita's 'japanese cubism'. In it can be seen the influence of the French artists but also can clearly be seen a purity of composition and clarity of conception which was Foujita's individual contribution to the Cubist movement.