In 1911 Francis Picabia met Marcel Duchamp, who had devised a unique style of painting that combined Cubist elements with pseudodiagrams in humorous compositions. Stimulated by Duchamp’s example, Picabia pioneered a new, colorful, and intellectual visual language, of which Edtaonisl is a prime example.
This picture relates to Picabia’s experience aboard a transatlantic ship in 1913, on his way to the opening of the Armory Show, North America’s first major exhibition of modern art. Picabia was amused by two fellow passengers—a Polish dancer named Stacia Napierskowska and a Dominican priest who could not resist the temptation of watching her rehearse with her troupe. While the tumultuous shapes in this work suggest fragments of bodies and nautical architecture, the depiction of specific forms is less important than the effective expression of contrast and rocking motion, which evokes the sensations of dance and a ship moving through rolling seas. On the top right of the canvas, Picabia painted the word Edtaonisl—an acronym made by alternating the letters of the French words étoile (star) and dans[e] (dance), a process analogous to the artist’s shattering and recombining of forms. He subtitled the work Ecclesiastic, hinting at the juxtaposition of the spiritual and the sensual.
Status
On loan to Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City for Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910-1930
Date
Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.
“Francis Picabia,” Art Digest 28, 6 (December 15, 1953): 4.
Pearlstein, Philip, “The Paintings of Francis Picabia, 1908-1930,” M.A. thesis, New York University, 1955, 4-5, 10, 26, 41, 52, 60, 70, 92, 108-10, XXIII, note 178, pl. 6, fig. 16 (ill.).
___, “The Symbolic Language of Francis Picabia,” Arts 30, 4 (January 1956):. 43.
Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1961), 355, 428 (ill.).
Hunt, Ronald, “Introduction,” Francis Picabia, exh. cat. (University of Newcastle upon Tyne/ Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1964), n.p., fig. i (ill.).
Sanouillet, Michel, Francis Picabia et “391,” vol. 2 (Paris, Eric Losfeld, 1966), 29, 30, 32.
Speyer, A. James, “Twentieth-Century European Paintings and Sculpture,” Apollo 84, 55 (September 1966): 225.
Camfield, William A., “The Machinist Style of Francis Picabia,” Art Bulletin 48, 3-4 (September-December 1966): 313, note 26.
Rubin, William S., Dada and Surrealist Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1968), 44, 53, 54, 55 (color pl. III), 58, 453.
___, Dada, Surrealism, and Their Heritage, exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1968), cat. 260, ill. 21.
Camfield, William A., Francis Picabia, exh. cat. (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1970), cat. 32 (ill.).
Pearlstein, Philip, “Hello and Goodbye, Francis Picabia,” Art News 69, 5 (September 1970): 53 (ill.), 74, 76.
Camfield, William A., “Francis Picabia,” Art and Artists 6, 3 (June 1971): 49, 52.
dell’Arco, Maurizio Fagiolo, Francis Picabia: Mezzo Secolo di Avanguardia, exh. cat. (Torino, Galleria Civica d’Art Moderne, 1974), fig. 74 (ill.).
Inoue, Yasushi, Shuji Takashina, and Toshio Nishimura, Futurisme, la peinture métaphysique et le Dadaïsme, Grands maîtres de la peinture moderne, vol. 21 (Tokyo: Chuokoron-Sha, 1975), pl. 46 (color ill.), 122 (ill.).
Camfield, William A., Francis Picabia: His Art, Life and Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 59-63, 270, 281, pl. VI.
Speyer, A. James, and Courtney Graham Donnell, Twentieth Century European Painting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 61, no. 3C6.
Borràs, Maria Lluïsa, Picabia (New York: Rizzoli, 1985), 100-01, 113, notes 92, 94.
Berman, Avis, “An Interview with Katharine Kuh,” ed. William McNaught, Archives of American Art Journal 27, 3 (1987): 11 (ill.), 12.
Guy Loudmer, Paris, Importants Tableaux Modernes, sale cat. (Paris: Guy Loudmer, March 25, 1990), n.p. (ill.).
Green, Christopher, The European Avant-Gardes: Art in France and Western Europe, 1904-c1945: the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection (London: Zwemmer; Wappingers Falls, N.Y., 1995), 362-63 (ill.).
Art Institute of Chicago, Twentieth-Century Painting and Sculpture (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1996), pp. 27 (color ill.), 160.
Anne Umland and Cathérine Hug, Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction, exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, Zürich: Kunsthaus Zürich, 2016), 45; 48; 49; 61, pl. 23 (color ill.).
Alex Greenberger, “A Wonderful Orphism Show at the Guggenheim Surveys the Modernist Movement That Wasn’t” ARTnews, Nov. 15, 2024, (color ill.), https://www.artnews.com/art-news/reviews/orphism-guggenheim-museum-review-1234723722/#recipient_hashed=dfb90d17d30a59f37654d5ad632a459c3a63034207e3f20ef17029aa37145cb3&recipient_salt=1120ccf45a0b528da17a7ee560e5f118690cf6287ca595abbca01ce73b9e3d80&utm_medium=email&utm_source=exacttarget&utm_campaign=artnews_today&utm_content=566613_11-15-2024&utm_term=16473664
Paris, Grand Palais, Salon d’Automne, 11e Exposition, November 15, 1913-January 5, 1914, cat. 1675.
Paris, Galerie René Drouin, 491, 50 ans de plaisir, March 4-26, 1949, cat. 11.
New York, Rose Fried Gallery (The Pinacotheca), Picabia, February 1950, hors cat.
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Dada, Surrealism, and Their Heritage, March 27-June 9, 1968, cat. 260, ill. 21; traveled to Los Angeles County Museum of Art, July 16-September 8, 1968, and Chicago, Art Institute, October 19-December 8, 1968 (New York and Chicago only).
New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Francis Picabia, September 18-December 6, 1970, cat. 32 (ill.); traveled to Cincinnati Art Museum; Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario; and Detroit Institute of Arts (New York only).
Kunsthaus Zurich, Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction, June 3, 2016–Sept. 25, 2016; New York, Museum of Modern Art, Nov.20, 2016–Mar. 19, 2017, pl. 23.
Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia [this and the following according to letter from Armand Bartos to Courtney Donnell, Feb. 5, 1976, in curatorial file]; Rose Fried Gallery, New York, by 1950; sold to Mr. and Mrs. Armand P. Bartos, New York, 1950; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1953.
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.
