La Femme à l'Éventail, or Woman with a Fan, is a painting by the French artist Jean Metzinger. The work was exhibited in 1914 at Moderni Umeni, S.V.U. Mánes, Prague. A 1914 photograph taken at the exhibition in Prague was published in the magazine :cs:Zlatá Praha |Zlatá Praha showing Woman with a Fan hanging next to another work by Metzinger known as En Canot , 1913. Donated by Mr. and Mrs. Sigmund Kunstadter in 1959, Woman with a Fan forms part of the permanent collection in Gallery 391B at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Description
Woman with a Fan, signed JMetzinger is an oil painting on canvas with dimensions 92.7 x 65.7 cm, representing an elegantly dressed Parisian woman, perhaps Lucie Soubiron, who Metzinger married in 1909, painted in a geometrically Cubist style with a stylish feathered or plumed hat while holding a fan. A vase on a table and decorative wall paper can be seen in the background. The vertical composition is divided, fragmented or faceted into series rectangular and square surfaces accentuated by the flowing curvilinear forms of the models garments and hat. Rather than depicting the Woman with a Fan from one point of view, Metzinger has used a 'mobile perspective' to portray the subject from a variety of locations and from different angles, her detailed face, neck and hat are observed from a succession of spatial angles or locations captured over an extended period of time, resulting in a complex series of profile and frontal views seen simultaneously. One of the most accomplished works of this period, Woman with a fan "anticipates Picasso in exploring the legacy of Neo-Impressionism: Here Metzinger is almost exclusively concerned with principles of pictorial construction: the interplay of horizontals, verticals and curves, with color playing an important but secondary role. Rather than depicting the Woman with a Fan from one classical point of view, Metzinger has used a 'mobile perspective' to portray the subject from a variety of locations and from different angles. The images captured from multiple spatial view-points and at successive time intervals are all shown together on one canvas. The observer now played an active role. The reconstruction of the total image was left to the creative intuition of each individual. The sum of the parts from which the 'total image' is composed now resides in the mind of the observer. The dynamism of form set in motion by the artist, implicit or explicit within the properties of the work, could be reassembled and understood in an interactive dynamic process. This reciprocity between the artist and the public is perhaps one of the reasons Metzinger felt the need to include elements of the real world into his paintings of the period, untouched by the wrath of total abstraction. "The reminiscence of natural forms cannot be absolutely banished; not yet, at all events" wrote Metzinger and Gleizes in 1912. Art, to them, could not "be raised to the level of a pure effusion at the first step."
