Max Weber

Max Weber

(b. Russia, 1881-1961)

Born in Bialystok, Russia, Max Weber settled in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in 1891. He studied at Pratt Institute from 1898 to 1900 with Arthur Wesley Dow, who was among the most progressive teachers of the time. From 1901 to 1903 Weber taught construction drawing and manual training in public schools in Lynchburg, Virginia. He subsequently taught at the State Teachers College in Duluth, Minnesota, until 1905.

From 1905 to 1906 Weber studied at the Julian, Colarossi, and de la Grande Chaumière Academies in Paris. He befriended members of the French avant-garde, including Pablo Picasso, Robert Delaunay, and the self-taught Henri Rousseau, as well as the young American painters Samuel Halpert and Abraham Walkowitz. Weber also studied with Matisse, helping to organize the master's class in 1908. At this time, Weber became interested in African sculpture and Japanese prints. He frequented the salon of Gertrude and Leo Stein and exhibited in the progressive Salon d'Automne and Salon des

Indépendants.

Out of money, Weber reluctantly left Paris in 1908 and returned to New York. As a pioneer of modernism enthralled with the dynamism of the big city, Weber experimented with Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, and German Expressionism. He was among the first Americans attracted to primitive art, especially the art of the Native Americans of the Southwest. Weber's brief association with photographer-dealer Alfred Stieglitz resulted in a one-man show in 1911 at the gallery "291" and a number of articles on innovative topics for “Camera Work”. Weber also taught art history, art appreciation, and design at the Clarence H. White School for Photography in New York from 1914 to 1918.

Weber's shift to figurative subjects and a more expressionistic, representational style about 1919 coincided with his growing spirituality and desire to explore humanitarian themes. Domestic interiors and family scenes emerged after his marriage in 1916. In the 1920s Weber began to paint Jewish subjects, which became increasingly important in his later work. Honored with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1930, Weber also had major exhibitions during his lifetime at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1949), Jewish Museum (1956), and Newark Museum (1959).

Abstraction, 1913

Pastel, charcoal, and collage on paper, 24 ? x 18 3/4 in. (62.2 x 47.6 cm)

Signed (lower right): Max Weber 1913

Charles F. Smith Fund (1953.4)

Abstraction

Part of an extended series created between 1911 and 1915, this abstract interpretation of the newly constructed Woolworth building reflects Weber's fascination with the growth of New York. Stimulated by Cubist and Futurist works he saw at "291" and at the 1913 Armory Show, Weber set this building-the city's tallest at the time-into motion. His juxtaposition of flat, angular, crystalline facets and diagonal "force" lines invests the structure with a spiraling sense of energy.

It has been suggested that Weber was well aware of such Cubist-Futurist works as Marcel Duchamp's “Nude Descending a Staircase No.2”(1912;Philadelphia Museum of Art) and Umberto Boccioni's “Development of a Bottle in Space”(1912; Museum of Modern Art, New York). (1) He was most likely also aware of John Marin's delicate dynamic watercolors of the Woolworth building exhibited at "291" in 1913. By introducing Cubist and Futurist principles into his work, Weber achieved a pictorial realization of his theories of the fourth dimension, which he had articulated as early as 1910 in Camera Work. He defined this "ideal dimension" of infinity as "the consciousness of a great and overwhelming sense of space-magnitude in all directions at one time . . . the space that envelops a tree, a tower, a mountain, or any solid." (2) In Abstraction, the fourth dimension is suggested by the energetic texturing of the background, as well as the building itself, "imbued with intensity or energy" and "reaching out into space." (3)

“Abstraction” is one of many pastels that Weber executed between 1912 and 1916. The impoverished young artist evidently reduced his expenses by working primarily in pastel, gouache, and watercolor. Weber's attraction to the medium may have been nurtured by his friendship with Arthur Dove, who had made his solo debut in 1912 at "291" with the Ten Commandments pastel series. Like other pastels of this period, “Abstraction” is characterized by vivid color harmonies, dynamic and decorative curves, and a variety of applications of the medium, from crisp lines or spirited staccato marks to dense rubbed passages, to light washlike sections, to areas where the paper support is visible.

Weber's reputation as a pioneering American modern rests on such youthful Cubist-Futurist works as Abstraction. One of his remarkable pastels based on Manhattan, “Abstraction” is a potent reminder of the burgeoning city's dynamic magnificence.

GS

Bibliography:

Holger Cahill, Max Weber, exhib. cat. (New York: Downtown Gallery, 1930); Alfred Werner, Max Weber (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1975); Percy North, Max Weber: American Modern, exhib. cat. (New York: Jewish Museum, 1982); Percy North, Max Weber: The Cubist Decade, 1910-1920, exhib. cat. (Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 1991).

Notes:

1 . Lisa Oliver, in Kermit Champa et al., Over Here: Modernism, the First Exile, 1914-1919, exhib. cat. (Providence, R.I.: David Winton Bell Gallery, List Center, Brown University, 1989), p. 197.

2 . Max Weber, "The Fourth Dimension from a Plastic Point of View," Camera Work 31 (July 1910): 51.

3 . Ibid.